--- title: 2021 Emmy Nominations Show the Award Show Is Broken description: The individual snubs sting, but this year's Emmy nominations reveal much more about outmoded thinking on an institutional level. canonical: https://time.com/6080005/emmy-nominations-2021-broken-institution/ author: Judy Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-07-13T19:14:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T10:06:42.253Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Forget the Individual Snubs. The 2021 Emmy Nominations Reveal a Fundamentally Broken Institution og:description: The Primetime Emmy Awards have become every bit as outdated as their anachronistic name suggests og:url: https://time.com/6080005/emmy-nominations-2021-broken-institution/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdf985bca49a415af/698a1b0816d8841c6bc3984b/GettyImages-1328527063.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 2021 Primetime Emmy Nominations Announcement og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Forget the Individual Snubs. The 2021 Emmy Nominations Reveal a Fundamentally Broken Institution twitter:description: The Primetime Emmy Awards have become every bit as outdated as their anachronistic name suggests twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdf985bca49a415af/698a1b0816d8841c6bc3984b/GettyImages-1328527063.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Forget the Individual Snubs. The 2021 Emmy Nominations Reveal a Fundamentally Broken Institution  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Jul 13, 2021 7:14 PM UTC  Television Academy Chairman and CEO Frank Scherma speaks during the 2021 Primetime Emmy Nominations Announcement on July 13, 2021. Television Academy Chairman and CEO Frank Scherma speaks during the 2021 Primetime Emmy Nominations Announcement on July 13, 2021.Getty Images—2021 Handout  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Jul 13, 2021 7:14 PM UTC The 2021 Emmy nominations are out, and Tuesday morning’s live announcement stream—hosted by last year’s heartwarming father-daughter winner duo Ron Cephas Jones and Jasmine Cephas Jones—offered the usual long list of items to complain about. There were the mispronunciations (_Ann Taylor-Joy_ sounds like the name of an extremely weird women’s workwear brand) and the obligatory nods to past-their-prime Emmy darlings, from [_The Handmaid’s Tale_](https://time.com/5614125/the-handmaids-tale-season-3/) to [_This Is Us_](https://time.com/4501766/this-is-us-show-review/). The surprises were mostly bad ones: _Emily in Paris_ for best comedy series? Yet another nomination for Jimmy Kimmel in a world where [_Desus & Mero_](https://time.com/collection/time-100-next-2019/5718862/desus-mero/) exists? And as hard I try not to care too much about this absurd yearly ritual, some of the snubs really stung. I mean, did these people even _watch_ the great HBO Max miniseries [_It’s a Sin_](https://time.com/5940173/its-a-sin-review-hbo-max/), or Renée Elise Goldsberry in [_Girls5eva_](https://time.com/6050055/best-tv-shows-may-2021/), or Ethan Hawke in [_The Good Lord Bird_](https://time.com/5895308/good-lord-bird-showtime-review/), or [_The Underground Railroad_](https://time.com/6048075/underground-railroad-review-amazon/)‘s versatile young star Thuso Mbedu? But to gripe at length about these choices would be to miss the bigger picture: the Primetime Emmy Awards have, as an institution, become every bit as outdated as their anachronistic name suggests. For once, the main problem is not a pool of nominees who are #SoWhite or #SoMale. It’s that the very categories the Television Academy divides them into, and particularly the ones it chooses to highlight in the nominations announcement and subsequent Emmy telecast, are increasingly ill-equipped to showcase the best of TV as we watch it now. For one thing, the distinction between comedy, drama and the once-obscure, now supremely competitive limited series category has become arbitrary at best and purely political at worst. Look at this year’s nominees. Can anyone explain what makes Amazon’s superhero satire _The Boys_ a drama but HBO Max’s darkly funny murder mystery _The Flight Attendant_ a comedy? Could HBO possibly have canceled [_Lovecraft Country_](https://time.com/5877205/lovecraft-country-hbo-review/), whose Season 1 finale felt pretty final, in order to enter it in the less-crowded drama-series category, [as some have suggested](https://twitter.com/TheFienPrint/status/1414974400722464772)? (Cancel culture strikes again, am I right?) Also: did [Steve McQueen’s excellent _Small Axe_](https://time.com/5916687/steve-mcqueen-small-axe/)—five individually titled, feature-length works set in London’s West Indian community between the 1960s and the 1980s—not meet the Academy’s definition of a limited series, or was it simply deemed inferior to Marvel’s prestige-lite [_WandaVision_](https://time.com/5929715/wandavision-review/)? _Small Axe_ standouts [_Mangrove_](https://time.com/5914110/small-axe-mangrove-review/) and _Lovers Rock_ didn’t receive recognition as features, either, although it’s hard to blame the Academy for that, because they weren’t submitted for individual consideration. In fact, no category is stranger or more dissonant with how America consumed entertainment during our pandemic year than Television Movie. Lifetime’s quickly forgotten Mahalia Jackson biopic, middling Amazon originals _Sylvie’s Love_ and _Uncle Frank_, HBO dad-bait _Oslo_ and [_Dolly Parton_](https://time.com/5843323/dolly-parton-when-life-is-good-again/)_‘s Christmas on the Square_, from Netflix, represent… what, exactly? A notoriously arcane set of category restrictions? A [hilariously weak self-selected pool of contenders](https://variety.com/feature/2021-emmy-predictions-best-tv-movie-1234967606/) (albeit one that did include some quality picks, like [_Unpregnant_ ](https://time.com/5887858/unpregnant-review-hbo-max/)and _Black Box_)? Certainly, these nominations bear little resemblance to the actual, ongoing convergence of TV and film during a year when icons from Borat to Wonder Woman to Bill and Ted were beamed straight to our smart TVs. I’m frustrated by the way the Emmys continue to bury their documentary categories, excluding them from all high-profile broadcasts. Could the Academy possibly not realize, at this point, that [docuseries in particular](https://time.com/5951774/new-documentaries-streaming/) are among the biggest draws on TV? Digging into the dozens of categories unceremoniously dumped on the Emmys website following the announcement, I was happy to see [_City So Real_](https://time.com/5904912/city-so-real-review-nat-geo-hulu/), [_Pretend It’s a City_](https://time.com/5927033/pretend-its-a-city-netflix-review/) and _Allen v. Farrow_ nominated as docuseries—but I don’t think it makes sense for them to share a category with a long-running, episodic anthology like fellow nominee _American Masters_. At least the rise of nonfiction TV has fared better at the Emmys than another major trend in American viewing, one that the Academy isn’t so much as touching: the influx of very good, very popular foreign-language television. [_Lupin_](https://time.com/6071904/lupin-review-netflix/), [_Call My Agent!_](https://time.com/6049981/best-tv-shows-2021-so-far/), [_Veneno_](https://time.com/5913112/veneno-hbo-max/), [_Losing Alice_](https://time.com/5932641/foreign-language-streaming-tv/), [_Kingdom_](https://time.com/5835519/best-korean-dramas-netflix/), [_Beartown_](https://time.com/5942418/best-tv-shows-february-2021/), _Shtisel_, [_Sky Rojo_](https://time.com/5950072/best-tv-shows-march-2021/), _The Investigation_—none of these acclaimed shows were even [submitted for consideration](https://variety.com/feature/2021-emmy-predictions-best-drama-series-1234966033/) and [many wouldn’t qualify anyway](https://www.indiewire.com/2021/06/foreign-language-content-emmys-1234644587/) because they aren’t American co-productions. Anglophone imports have fared almost as poorly. Some of this stuff is bound show up among the nominees for the International Emmy Awards, which most people probably didn’t realize existed and not even I, a TV critic, have ever watched. What an unfortunate fate for series that Americans devour on various streaming platforms and premium cable networks, as the distinction between what we watch in our native language and what we consume in subtitled form keeps shrinking. From [COVID](https://time.com/5839873/coronavirus-streaming-wars-hbo-max/) to the [streaming wars](https://time.com/5922040/streaming-wars-2020/), the medium that we call television has changed rapidly—perhaps more rapidly than ever before—in the 13 months since the 2021 Emmys eligibility window opened. The way we watch now bears little resemblance to the way we watched less than a decade ago, when the phrase “Netflix Original” would’ve sounded like a contradiction in terms. Professional organizations are sluggish things; we can’t expect them to move at the pace of the zeitgeist. But they can, and do, evolve to address the shifting realities of their industry. This year’s chaotic round of Emmy nominations should be a wake-up call to an Academy whose Emmy telecasts [keep hitting new ratings lows](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-09-21/the-virtual-emmys-score-smallest-audience-ever-for-a-major-awards-show): modernize or become a relic. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6080005/emmy-nominations-2021-broken-institution/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6080005/emmy-nominations-2021-broken-institution/"},"headline":"Forget the Individual Snubs. 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