Emmy prediction is usually a fool’s game, because who could ever predict something like Jeff Daniels from “The Newsroom” beating Bryan Cranston, Jon Hamm, Kevin Spacey, and Damian Lewis?
At least in previous years, the brave prognosticator could at least lean on the knowledge that the voters in each category have actually watched the submitted episode or episodes, and try to make decisions accordingly. This doesn’t always work (Hamm didn’t win for “The Suitcase”), but with Daniels, for instance, you could at least understand that people liked his delivery of the speech about how America’s no longer the greatest country in the world. (See also James Spader’s multiple Emmy wins for delivering David E. Kelley position paper-style monologues.) That requirement to watch the episodes is about the only way that Cranston was able to win his first Emmy, given how few people were watching “Breaking Bad” at the time, and it’s how plenty of underdogs with better tapes have been able to beat more famous competitors.
This year, though, the rules are literally different. The TV Academy expanded the voting pool beyond the traditional blue-ribbon panel concept to allow virtually the entire membership to vote in everyone’s respective categories. Everyone is still technically supposed to watch the submissions, but it’s now done entirely on the honor’s system.
The effect of a much larger voting pool that may not be voting on the work itself was evident at Saturday night’s Creative Arts Emmy ceremony, which featured a number of head-scratching winners. Margo Martindale won the drama guest actress award, for instance, for her most recent appearance on “The Americans,” and while it’s lovely to see that show get any kind of awards love, Martindale appeared in one scene, and not one so extraordinary (a la Beatrice Straight’s five-minute Oscar-winning performance from “Network”) as to merit a win over the likes of Diana Rigg, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson, et al. I’m a bad Emmy predictor under the best of circumstances, but so much of the Creative Arts winners list deviates from the way the awards have functioned in the past that I have even less confidence in my picks than usual this year.
At the same time, this could be a fun Emmy ceremony (it airs Sunday night at 8 on FOX, hosted by Andy Samberg), precisely because they’ll be so unpredictable. The last time this happened was in 2000, when the blue-ribbon panel concept shifted from an in-person event – which tended to attract only retired or unemployed Academy members, who had the time to devote a day or two to being present for it – to a process voters could participate in at home, so long as they agreed to watch the screeners for their category. It shifted the demographics of those voting, and while the new bloc would in time develop their own favorites (see the five-season best comedy win streak for “Modern Family”), at the start it felt like a big break from the repetition of voting in the ’80s and ’90s.
Maybe Hamm’s best chance at winning an Emmy for “Mad Men” may, ironically, come from a process where people aren’t required to watch all the episodes, simply because the larger group voting might feel he’s due. On the other hand, maybe it becomes more of a popularity contest, and Kevin Spacey walks off with the trophy. (That Martindale and Reg E. Cathey won guest star trophies Saturday over more famous competition suggests we shouldn’t assume that, though.)
As always, you should not attempt to wager any money based on my predictions of who will win, which are almost sure to be wrong, but maybe my picks for who I think should win the major categories will interest you.