Fall Preview Reviews
Emmys A-Z
“Stop handing out all those statuettes to everyone!”
That was my initial reaction upon studying who has won Emmys over the last 60 years. Even though TV’s highest honors have been around for less time than the Oscars, the main awards for the motion picture industry, or the Tonys (for Broadway’s best), the Emmys have mushroomed into having so many more categories than the others that they easily outpace them in sheer volume of the awards dispensed alone. As a result, many shows can legitimately call themselves Emmy nominees that you would never expect in the least, from Ramar of the Jungle (for sound editing in 1954) to According to Jim (for cinematography in 2006 and 2007).
Stop Giving Out All Those Emmys!!!
Those serendipitous revelations in studying six decades of Emmy nominees attracted me to write this. They are fascinating yet often overlooked facts about TV history - I recall trading with one game show fanatic who told me plenty of information I never knew who nevertheless was stunned to learn that Masquerade Party had been an Emmy nominee for his field in the 1950s (its 1974 revival also earned an Emmy nomination too, but you will have to look it up to find out what it was for, since I do not want to spoil the surprise).
I realized when going through the official Emmy nominees list that I would have to prune out some from consideration just due to the sheer depth of coverage, as I mentioned earlier. This meant I would go strictly in covering only entertainment nominees - no informational, religious, cultural, sports or news programming could be included if I wanted to keep this section under 2,000 entries.
Also, since the basic information on many of these shows is available on many books and websites devoted to TV series, individual genres and specific series, I have decided to give them the barest of summaries in order to point out virtually unknown facts about them and sometimes their winners and nominees. I also have made an effort to watch as many of these programs as possible so that I can give you a critical perspective on whether Emmy made the right call or a colossal blunder when naming the production and/or certain people involved in it as the best in the industry. If you do not agree with my opinion, hey, no one says you have to do so, but given how I have watched at least 60 percent of what is discussed in these pages, and have been writing about TV professionally for more than a decade, I believe I have a fairly solid perspective about where to rank the relative quality of these entries. For shows that I have not viewed, I have made sure not to include sort of critical comment, instead I just give the basic facts about them.
Most importantly, I have tried to bring out facts regarding the show’s Emmy win(s) and/or nomination(s) that you may not have realized, which are abundant (did you know that Brian Keith competed against his supposed supporting actor Sebastian Cabot in Family Affair for best actor in a comedy?). To help out, I have cross-referenced nominees, and I tell you at the end of each entry which other productions the person(s) received nominations, which also is enlightening - I had no idea that sound editors and mixers have been up so many times for the statuette, yet these lists prove it. I have even uncovered in my research a few times where the series was not eligible to win its category based on the academy’s criteria and noted that - for those instances, see My Hero and Racket Squad.
Keep in mind too that you cannot necessarily simply count the entry and its cross-references and determine that the total is the same number of Emmy nominations the person had. As stated earlier, there can be Emmy mentions in informational, religious, news and sports programming for the person that are not shown here, plus in the case of a series entry a person can and often is nominated more than once during its run.
FUTURE PLANS [STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION]: In case you wonder who competed against each other, or what productions made the final cut in a category for a show you are studying, we will begin by giving you a summary of each year’s nominees and overall commentary about trends for every group of years. As you will see, the Emmys started as a small ceremony, then bloomed into bigger efforts each year, finally leading to the daytime shows getting their own awards in the 1970s, cable awards being allowed to compete in the 1980s, and lately Internet productions as well (those are so new and experimental that I will not cover them here).
For matters of space, I have abbreviated the titles of most categories to their basic elements. I also use EP to stand for executive producer and just P to stand for producer, as there are multiple listings in many of these cases and again I want to save space. Along the same line, once I mention someone’s name in the wins or nominations before the main entry, I will use their last name thereafter, including in the cross-references.
Enough with this talk. TO SEE THE EMMY NOMINEES ALPHABETICALLY, GO TO EMMY NOMINEES - THE COMPLETE LIST AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE, AND A DROPDOWN LIST WILL APPEAR. HIGHLIGHT THE SHOWS YOU WANT TO SEE BY ITS FIRST LETTER, THEN HIGHLIGHT THAT SECTION AND CLICK THE OPTIONS YOU SEE ON THE RIGHT FOR SUBCATEGORIES THERE. Then you can see who won what, and prepare to be amazed, astonished, amused and angered by the selections. That’s the Emmys for you, folks, love her or hate her, and you will probably do both in this section. Enjoy!
PLEASE NOTE: THIS SECTION REMAINS UNDER CONSTRUCTION AS I ATTEMPT TO WATCH AS MANY NOMINEES AS I CAN AS WELL AS DISCOVER NEW ENTRIES, PARTICULARLY FOR DAYTIME TECHNICAL CREDITS. CHECK BACK FREQUENTLY FOR UPDATES.