Emmys: It's "Hacks" vs "Widow's Bay" for Best Comedy

by Cláudio Alves

With 24 individual citations, the last season of HACKS is the year's most nominated comedy.

Just as this post hits the timeline, the TV Academy will be in the middle of its two-day celebration of the so-called Creative Arts Emmys. In other words, the show where they give out every “below the line” category, with the Guest Acting prizes thrown in for good measure. The main ceremony, when the big awards will be announced to a new class of television luminaries – or more of the same, since they sure love to reward the same folks, over and over again – happens on September 14th. It’s a bit of a chaotic time, here at The Film Experience, with the fall festivals on a roll and the film awards season starting to peek over the horizon, while the small screen demands attention of its own. And indeed, we must pay respects to TV and the industry’s highest honors. 

With that in mind, Eric Blume, Nathaniel R, and I decided to have a quick look at the principal races and share our predictions, starting with the Comedies…

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Team Experience: 2015's Best Emmy Nominees

Andrew here with some more Emmy treats.

In anticipation of Sunday's big night for TV, the television lovers at The Film Experience are bringing to you a special Team Experience top 10 list.Sure, each year a handful of Emmy nominees leave us scratching our head in confusion, but we wanted to celebrate the citations that the voters got right this year and compiled our list of favourite nominees. Unlike usual Team Experience top 10s, though, we're offering you a look at each of our individual top 10s.

Nathaniel always points out how interesting individual ballots in awards tends to be more dynamic than the final tally and to celebrate the wide range of nominees in the prizes still to be handed at Sunday's ceremonies. So, we disregarded the already decided on categories from the Creative Awards ceremonies and from the 26 categories to be decided on Sunday, our twelve person team each submitted their favourite of the nominees.

Unsurprisingly, our individual ballots were full of Actresses. Go below the jump to see them all.

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HBO’s LGBT History: Da Ali G Show, Entourage & The Comeback

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.

Last week we looked at The Sopranos, The Wire and Carnivàle. I commended each of those series for putting LGBT characters front and center and, more importantly, for not treating their sexuality as their only character dimension. But what of HBO’s comedies? If these dramas were doing the heavy lifting, what can we glean from looking at their comedic contemporaries?

Well, let’s just say that, in 2015 journalistic parlance, HBO had some “problematic” characters on display.

A limp wrist. A lilting high-pitched voice. A jutting hip. A flair for style. We all know these characteristics of the stereotypical gay male of the late twentieth century; it’s as reviled as it is ubiquitous. But it also demands close scrutiny; why should we refuse to give voice to these flamboyant members of the LGBT community? And yet, why should all mainstream America be solely exposed to them as if they were the entire community? This week we’ll try and address these questions while talking about “gay minstrelsy” as we discuss Da Ali G Show, TFE fave, The Comeback and Entourage after the jump...

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Team Experience: Collective Emmy Ballot, Comedy

HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT: RED SHOES WILL BE UP IN THE MORNING. RUNNING LATE !

See Part 1 for Drama
Here's Part 2 of 2... COMEDY!

Eleven members of our team, those most excited by television, turned in full Emmy ballots. So here is what we communally hope for when the real Emmy nominations are announced. Nomination ballots are due tomorrow, June 26th so if you happen to be an Emmy voter, check out our FYC series (shameless plug).  The Emmy nominations will be announced on July 16th though who knows why it takes them over three weeks to tally the results. Slackers. 

Comedy Series and acting races after the jump...

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FYC: Lisa Kudrow for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy

Team Experience sharing their personal Emmy dream picks every day at Noon. Here's Manuel on Lisa Kudrow...

For anyone who watched the criminally underseen first season of Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback, you know how the former Phoebe Buffay created a portrait of an actress so intent on controlling her image and reclaiming her sitcom career that the dark humor and awkwardness of it all was perhaps too much to bear. If the first season was an excruciating exercise in reality TV satire, the second season was an indictment of Hollywood sexism that used the show’s meta structure (Valerie gets cast as the thinly veiled version of herself in an HBO show about the very show she starred in The Comeback’s first season) to force us to yes, laugh at Valerie’s seeming cluelessness but also to examine why and how those laughs are being elicited. There’s humor in Valerie quite literally living out the demented humiliations that a former writer thrusts upon her as part of making his HBO show “edgy” but with every laugh at Valerie (in a trunk full of snakes, standing awkwardly next to two naked women, going down on Seth Rogen) there was a performance that asked you to empathize with this yes, self-deluded character.

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