Why I Don't Predict the Emmys

I am an Oscar devotee. I engage in all the mad speculation over potential nominees months before the ballots even go out. I do my best to watch every nominee that I can, or at least be in the know about all their facts and stats. I read over reams of analysis by more seasoned Oscar race prognosticators. And every year, without fail, the vast majority of my predictions are completely wrong. I still have a lot of fun, though.

With the Emmys, it's different. I watch the award ceremonies, and I enjoy them. However, I can't think of any year where I was significantly invested in who the winners and losers were. Right now we're in the middle of the nominating period for the 2012 Emmys. Nominees will be announced in July, and the Emmy telecast will broadcast in September. I certainly have my favorites, like "Community" and "Breaking Bad," who I'd love to see make appearances as nominees this year, but I'm not really paying attention to how the various races are shaping up. It's not that I don't value television as much as movies, or that the Emmy races can't be as exciting as the Oscar ones, but the Emmys are a lot tougher to get involved in for many reasons.

First, television requires a lot more investment to follow than movies, so I watch fewer of them to begin with, and I end up being completely clueless about the majority of the nominees when they're announced. A dozen movies would take me a week to burn through, but familiarizing myself with a dozen television shows would take months. I haven't seen many of the major critical favorites like "Modern Family," "Homeland," "Justified," "Downton Abbey," "Parks and Rec," and "Boardwalk Empire," not for the lack of interest, but because of the time commitment. Maybe I'll get around to them after I finish "The Sopranos." And "The Wire." And the original "Star Trek."

Then again, I usually end up missing a bunch of the Oscar nominees too, because of limited releases and other factors. I didn't see "War Horse" or "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" until their DVD releases, and I'm not sorry I waited in either case. But then at least I had decent proxies by way of all the reviews and discussions about the films. There wasn't a film critic out there who wasn't writing "Memos to the Academy" or "If I Picked the Winners" pieces. Television critics are a much rarer breed, and I've only just started finding a couple of good writers who are actually knowledgeable about a broad spectrum of television shows, such that they can have similar conversations about the Emmys that the movie critics have about the Oscars. Again, there's the sheer volume of material is an issue. There are so many shows, most TV critics can only follow and write about a handful in any depth.

Even if you are watching all the right shows, you're not watching them the way that the actual Emmy voters are watching them. Mindful of the time it takes to evaluate all these different programs, submissions are made in the form six of episodes picked from the most recent season, and individual actors send in the ones that they feel best highlight their performances. These submission decisions aren't highly publicized, and if you're not a close industry watcher or an insider, then you wouldn't know which six episodes your favorite shows are actually being judged by, or which episode a performance is being judged by, which means it's harder to analyze them against each other in a way that's actually relevant to what's going on at the Emmys.

And in the end, a lot of it's just personal preference. The Primetime Emmy Awards aren't as exciting or have as much cultural cachet as the Oscars. I've never gone out of my way to watch a show simply because it won an Emmy. There are also a lot of entrenched biases in the organization, that means the more daring, more innovative cable shows often get passed up for more palatable network fare. "Louie" and "Community" have never even been nominated for Best Comedy. And then there are the multi-year winners, like "30 Rock" and "Mad Men" both taking home top awards four years in a row. If I really got into some of these races, results like this would be frustrating as hell.

So I only stay minimally involved, hoping Lena Dunham gets some sort of recognition for her work on "Girls," and that Giancarlo Esposito will be remembered in the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category. And I can just sit back and watch the spectacle for the spectacle, and enjoy the luxury of not caring about the outcomes.
---