Fifty years ago, the Emmy Awards implemented a change deemed such a disaster it was quickly eliminated.
For the 1974 ceremony, the Television Academy created a “Super Emmy” that pitted winners in the comedy and drama balloting against each other. For example, the “M*A*S*H” star Alan Alda took home two trophies that year: one for best comedy actor and a second in a head-to-head showdown with Telly Savalas, who had already won the drama lead acting award for “Kojak.”
The stated goal was to streamline the televised ceremony — the category honors were given out before the telecast and only the Super Emmys were awarded on air. But Alda and his fellow winner Mary Tyler Moore joined critics like John J. O’Connor of The New York Times in panning the stunt, and organizers retreated.
Yet a half-century and a reshaped television environment later, the Super Emmy, that strange visitor from the 1970s, might be one of those once-bad ideas whose time has finally come.
Not that the Emmys are looking to prolong the show, which will air Sunday on ABC. Unlike the Oscars, TV’s most prestigious award remains pretty rigidly held to its allotted time, so adding a category would likely require pushing another out of the main broadcast.
But a Super Emmy would do more than merely add a “Highlander”-style bolt of excitement — “There can be only one!” — to a generally predictable telecast. It would also acknowledge the blurring of lines in TV’s categorical designations, which often makes it hard to differentiate between drama, comedy and limited series.
In recent years, the comedy category in particular has been loosely defined, with contenders that fulfill the academy’s mandate of honoring excellence without much resembling traditional players like the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” (Moore claimed her Super Emmy win by topping Michael Learned of the family drama “The Waltons.”)
Take “The Bear,” the reigning top Emmy comedy and an odds-on favorite to retain that crown. Even the most fervent admirers of the FX series about a Chicago chef and his eccentric collaborators would likely concede that the kitchen doesn’t serve up many laugh-out-loud moments. “Barry,” HBO’s fitfully brutal series about a hit man turned actor, also provoked its share of head scratching on the comedy ballot.
By contrast, many popular dramas, like the HBO Emmy favorite “Succession,” yield plenty of laughs and dark humor. Nor is that new in the modern era of prestige TV, as the “Sopranos” creator David Chase notes in the HBO documentary “Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos.” Citing the absurd situations conjured around the character Paulie Walnuts, as played by Tony Sirico, Chase tells his interviewer, “I really don’t know whether it was a drama or a comedy.” While “The Bear” is perhaps the most-debated contender in terms of its categorization, it isn’t the only awkward fit among this year’s nominations.
“Shogun,” FX’s sweeping adaptation of James Clavell’s novel about feudal Japan, was originally considered a limited series. That’s the category in which the 1980 version, starring Richard Chamberlain, competed (and won). The show became such a breakthrough success, though, that FX chose to order additional seasons built around the character of Lord Toranaga (played by Hiroyuki Sanada), shifting “Shogun” into the drama competition and throwing the limited-series field wide open.
Part of the issue has to do with the latitude the Emmys grant producers to determine the field in which to submit their show, an imprecise science that also involves strategy and the politics of the awards.
That pattern was established in 1999, when “Ally McBeal” became the first one-hour series to win the Emmy for best comedy. It was placed in that category partly so it wouldn’t have to compete with “The Practice,” another show from the same producer, David E. Kelley. That year, Kelley pulled off a double, taking home top series prizes for both.
Another shift involves a streaming environment where shows don’t have to neatly fit into prime-time schedules as they did back when the major networks ruled the roost, so an episode of “The Bear” or “Ted Lasso” might run as long as one for “Succession” or “The Crown.”
Fifty years ago, the Super Emmy felt gratuitous even to the participants. Today, a one-size-fits-all award would simply emulate what other organizations already do by tossing different TV genres into one big basket.
The Television Critics Association, for example, recognizes a “program of the year” (“Shogun” being the latest recipient), while the American Film Institute’s annual Top 10 list lumps together dramas, comedies and limited series, even finding room last year for an unscripted-comedy hybrid, “Jury Duty.”
Admittedly, adding another layer to the awards process not only creates an opportunity to win but for someone else, well, not to. As Variety noted, while Alda and Moore emerged as double honorees in 1974, “Savalas and Learned were somehow simultaneous Emmy winners and losers,” celebrated in the drama voting but relegated to runner-up status for the Super Emmy.
In the bigger picture, however, those can be dismissed as high-class problems. Besides, we now live in the reality-TV age, where only one person triumphs in “Survivor” or “Big Brother,” and nobody’s there to make friends. As for other major awards, the Oscars anoint one best picture and the Grammys an album of the year without bending anyone’s nose out of joint. (OK, maybe a little.)
Given all that, singling out a best program, regardless of genre, feels less like a relic from the past than an idea very much of our time. With “The Lord of the Rings” now part of the TV firmament thanks to the lavish Amazon series, perhaps it’s time to borrow another concept from J.R.R. Tolkien: One award to rule them all.
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