Emmy nominations 2024: Snubs and surprises
With the 2024 Emmy nominations announced today, the time is now to check the fallout.
High expectations were fulfilled for "Shōgun," "The Bear" and "Baby Reindeer," but there are still many surprises and snubs to go around.
Ahead of the awards show, which will be broadcast live on Sunday, Sept. 15, at 8:00 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on ABC, here are the inclusions and exclusions sure to get TV addicts talking, sometimes bitterly.
Hey, it's all in fun, right?
You can also check out a full list of nominations here.
SURPRISE: I fully expected the historical Japanese epic "Shōgun" to be Emmy nominated for drama series but I'm over the moon about the way audiences and Emmy voters have embraced it. Its 25 nominations make it the leader of this year's Emmy pack. Well deserved. On a personal note: If the sublime Anna Sawai doesn't win as lead actress in a drama series, someone will have to answer to me.
SNUB: Never mind that "Masters of the Air" had everything you want from prestige TV, including the name value of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks as the greatest celebrators ever of the greatest generation of men at war in World War II. But this tribute to the 100th Bomb Group of pilots -- the "Bloody Hundredth" -- during daytime runs over Europe from 1943 to 1945 could not achieve liftoff with Emmy voters. It sounds kind of unpatriotic.
SURPRISE: It's no shock that season 2 of "The Bear" -- season 3 isn't eligible till next year -- is again nominated for outstanding comedy series, even though -- come on -- it's not really a comedy. The shock is that "The Bear" just broke the Emmy record for most nominations for a comedy series in one year with 23 nominations, putting the former single year champ "30 Rock" in the shade. Wowza!
SNUB: Few series received the kind of critical kudos earned by "The Curse," starring the shamefully un-nominated Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder as a newly married couple trying to conceive a child while co-starring in a reality show about real estate. Like many shows that are ahead of their time, the time will come for "The Curse."
SURPRISE: Unlike "The Curse," originality and risk-taking didn't hurt "Baby Reindeer," the shockingly funny and fierce limited series that Emmy-nominated creator and star Richard Gadd carved out of his own harrowing experiences with a female stalker. Jessica Gunning is truly Emmy bound as the stalker and actress Nava Mau also scored a nomination in the outstanding supporting actress category for her role in the series.
SNUB: Oscar and Emmy winner Kate Winslet usually gets nominated just for showing up. But Emmy turned its back on the British acting legend in "The Regime." Was it the fact that this series about the chancellor of a fictional country in crisis in central Europe was a pretentious pile of poop? Hope so.
SURPRISE: Selena Gomez always gets snubbed for the charm and sly fun she adds to "Only Murders in the Building." But get this: The perennial third wheel to costars Steve Martin and Martin Short finally has a well-deserved Emmy nomination for lead actress in a comedy series. It's about time. And she just shared a best actress prize at the elitish Cannes Film Festival for "Emilia Perez." Don't say her luck is changed. It's her talent that has everything to do with it.
SURPRISE: Newbie "Palm Royale" made the cut for outstanding comedy series, starring the always-welcome Kristen Wiig as an outsider trying to make it in Palm Beach high society. Did you think it was good? Me neither. But I guess the promise of what it could have been is enough to carry the banner in these dog days.
SNUB: Kelsey Grammer returned to the role of his career as snobby, wine-sipping shrink Frasier Crane in "Frasier." He actually has already won four Emmys for playing the part. So one snub shouldn't matter. But it does.
SURPRISE: And a darned good one is the inclusion of "Reservation Dogs" in the outstanding comedy series category for the third and final season of the indigenous coming-of-age tale that deserved Emmy love even in the show's last gasp. The icing on the cake is the overdue salute to D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, who earned a nod in the outstanding lead actor in a comedy series category for his role as Bear Smallhill.
SNUB: How does any Emmy voter who pretends to know quality when he or she sees it neglect to include "The Great Lillian Hall" as outstanding TV movie and star Jessica Lange for giving her heartfelt all to the role of an actress having a final face-off with dementia?
SURPRISE: And I mean this only in the sheer absurdity of the category is the nomination of the great Jamie Lee Curtis as comedy guest actor in "The Bear." Comedy? The dramatic fireworks Curtis unleashes in her episode as the unforgettably unhinged matriarch of the Berzatto clan is acting at its roaring best. I have my own category that Curtis has no competition for: performance of the year.
