Emmy categories need a shakeup

Once again, it's Emmy-nomination time, a season packed with thrills, chills, and nonstop 2oi3rj&tffzzzzzz.

Forgive me — I must have dozed off for a moment there.  Oh, yes.  Emmy nominations.  I apologize for not showing more enthusiasm, but — for what?  The Emmy Awards have become infamous for their predictability.  The same programs and actors tend to get nominated, and to win, over and over again, and for every award that's deserved, there's another that's a knee-jerk holdover from a show's better days (last year, "The West Wing"), or a prize based on longevity instead of quality (Debra Messing).

It's easy to blame the Emmy voters for the stranglehold that certain past-their-prime shows maintain on the top prizes; it's certainly possible that the members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences have questionable tastes and short attention spans. 

More likely, though, it's a problem with the Emmy system itself, and the television academy has tried to address at least one aspect of that by changing the nomination process.  This year, instead of selecting only five entries, voters may propose as many as ten, and the five most popular entries will go on to become the official nominees.  The idea is that a bigger nominations pool will give newer shows, and shows on lesser-known channels, a more realistic shot at the top awards.

Will it work?  It might; giving members the opportunity to recognize a larger number of basic-cable offerings could mean that shows like "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck" are no longer anomalies in a field usually dominated by network and premium-cable offerings like "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "The Sopranos."

Categories need a shake up
But the categories themselves require a top-to-bottom renovation too.  The "Variety, Music or Comedy Program" grouping is far too broad, and should be split into two categories: "Musical Programs or Special Events" and "Late-Night Programming."  Sure, "late-night" is broad, too, but everyone knows what it would include — Letterman and Leno, "Saturday Night Live" and "Mad TV" — the kind of show that shouldn't have to compete with the Tony Awards. 

A miniseries is not the guaranteed ratings draw it was twenty years ago, and no one really cares who directed ‘Iron Jawed Angels.’

The academy should also shorten up the seemingly endless processional of awards for the "Miniseries or Movie" format, which bog down the broadcast every year. A miniseries is not the guaranteed ratings draw it was twenty years ago, and no one really cares who directed "Iron Jawed Angels."  Split the category in two — "Miniseries" and "Movie" — and award only three Emmys for each category: Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Overall.  (It might not seem like TV movies merit their own category, but the academy should start recognizing the woman-in-peril Lifetime-movie efforts of actors like Nancy McKeon and Markie Post, if only for unintentional-hilarity purposes.)

That frees up room for awards for reality programming.  Still written off by many as an upstart genre whose days are numbered, reality TV actually consists of a number of very different (and apparently quite hardy) genres. The academy should give reality shows several categories instead of just one (and turn the "Non-Fiction" category into one).  The recently instituted "Reality/Competition Program" is a good start, but what about educational and "how-to" reality shows like "MythBusters" and "Trading Spaces"?  Where to put a show like "City Confidential," which is more of a documentary series than a reality show — or pop-culture programming like VH-1's "I Love the '80s" and Trio's "Flops 101"?

A lot of worthy shows don't fit into the current categories, and revamping them to better reflect the current face of TV would let new and pioneering shows get the acclaim they should — but we can't blame the Emmy voters for that.

We can, however, blame them for overlooking various contributions.  Among those whose work should be nominated this year:

Poppy Montgomery, "Without a Trace."  The entire cast is outstanding, but Montgomery plays Samantha Spade as a woman of many, often prickly, contradictions; she's sometimes unsympathetic, but always genuine.

Marg Helgenberger, "CSI."  Although TV's top-rated show has lost focus, Helgenberger manages to invest even the feebler storylines with gravitas.

Jennifer Garner skillfully battled baddies and amnesia on "Alias."

Jennifer Garner, "Alias."  The amnesia plotline is one of acting's more thankless tasks; Garner handled it with sensitive flair.  Plus, she's a great crier. 

Reiko Aylesworth, "24."  The writing on the Fox drama's third season often resembled a game of 52 Pick-Up, but Aylesworth's Michelle Dessler kicked butt and made us care.  Well, not about President Palmer, but hey, she's not a miracle-worker.

"Everwood"'s male leads.  Treat Williams and Tom Amandes do subtly great work, not least in the scenes they share.  Amandes has turned Dr. Harold Abbott from a sweater-vest-wearing caricature into a finely drawn portrait, and both actors can turn on a dime from poignancy to wit.  "Everwood" might look like a teen drama, but Amandes and Williams have made it much more.

The "Joan of Arcadia" writing staff.  After a couple of midseason stumbles, the show dealt deftly with weighty issues like first love, disabilities, school violence — oh yeah, and the existence of a higher power.  Helped by outstanding acting from the entire cast, the writing stepped on only a few clichés in a minefield's worth of them, and deserves at least a nomination for its auspicious and intelligent debut.

Why didn't someone add booze to the talk-show format years ago?

"Dinner for Five."  Host Jon Favreau gathers four independent-film friends around the dinner table, pours the wine, and chews the fat.  Favreau's own name-dropping has attained drinking-game status, but the insights of other actors and directors into the industry is almost always interesting and funny, especially when the stars struggle manfully not to trash-talk a colleague — but fail.  Why didn't someone add booze to the talk-show format years ago?

"Scrubs."  It's stayed funny despite repeated rounds of Guess My Time Slot.

"Reno 911."  Thomas Lennon's short-shorts alone should get this a nod, but the talents of the cast — several of them veterans of comedy troupe "The State" — and the wit of the premise can't hurt.

"Arrested Development."  Razor-sharp acting and writing that refuses to compromise will probably earn the show a number of nominations — and on their heels, hopefully, the larger audience numbers that strangely eluded it all season.

AP file Will The Donald's "Apprentice" win an Emmy?

"The Apprentice."  What looked like a midseason-replacement vanity project for The Donald turned into a fever that swept the nation.  Strong concept, brilliant execution, and one of the most hateable villains in recent memory in the smugly vile Omarosa.

"Deadwood."  It's a weird little show in a tough genre, and Timothy Olyphant really needs a walking coach -- his only gait is "wooden paddle-puppet."  But Ian McShane is excellent as Al Swearengen -- and if Brad Dourif gets an Emmy, maybe he can stop doing the voice-overs for the "Chucky" movies.  Brad, we're pulling for you.

Stephen Collins, "7th Heaven."  No, not really.  Just seeing if you were paying attention.

Maybe Emmy voters are afraid to nominate new or unconventional programming — afraid that shows like "The Apprentice" or "Chappelle's Show" are just fads that they'll look silly for appreciating a few years later. 

But it's a risk they should take, because, at the moment, they look silly for not taking any risks.  It's fine to reward consistent performers, but the ATAS can't keep confusing "proven" with "dated," or it risks becoming irrelevant.

Sarah D. Bunting is the co-creator and co-editor-in-chief of Television Without Pity.com. She lives in Brooklyn.

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