Five Random Emmys Predictions
Sunday is television's biggest night. Did you know? Did I?
The 76th Primetime Emmys air this Sunday on ABC. Despite the egregiously bloated number of series out there, television’s premier awards ceremony is more predictable than ever. Nearly every expert or predictor is making the same picks. Boring, if smart. I’m neither. Here are five random and bold predictions about key races and the telecast.
Shōgun wins as many trophies in the four acting categories as The Morning Show
Shōgun is already an Emmy juggernaut with 14 wins during two nights of the Creative Arts Emmys celebration. The FX series is a heavy favorite to win the series, writing, and directing races on the drama side. While leads Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai are generally predicted to win their respective categories, they face decently stiff competition. The supporting categories can be wonky. Maybe it’s not as clear-cut as we think.
Shōgun has four performers scattered across three races (Tadanobu Asano and Takehiro Hira are together in the supporting actor category). Meanwhile, Apple TV+’s The Morning Show has a staggering nine actors across three races. The star-studded drama hasn’t been a huge Emmy winner in its first two seasons, but Billy Crudup won before and the supporting cast is pretty great. Of course, there’s a strong likelihood that all The Morning Show people, including Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon in lead actress, split the vote and ultimately win nothing. But it’s more likely that one of Sanada or Sawai loses in a surprise and someone from The Morning Show (Crudup or Greta Lee most notably) survives the crowded supporting races.
The Traitors wins Outstanding Reality Competition Program
This category is deeply frustrating. Only five series have won here since the category started in 2002 (The Amazing Race, Top Chef, The Voice, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and, wildly, Lizzo’s Watch Out for The Big Girls). The race this year is made up of four of those series and The Traitors, one of the breakout reality hits of the past few years. I’m picking (manifesting?) the newbie to win. Season two was not without controversy, but the least the voters could do is give us some fresh acceptance speeches in this category.
Plus, a Traitors win greatly improves the chances we see CT on the Emmys stage, where he’s long belonged.
One of Robert Downey Jr. or Meryl Streep wins in their respective supporting performer races
Stars matter! Experts are high on Fellow Traveler’s Jonathan Bailey, a limited series and performance I haven’t seen. He’s surely great, but RDJ did interesting and good work on The Sympathizer and is coming off an awards season heater capped off by an Oscar win. It’s hard for me to ignore.
Meryl is Meryl. She loses more than she wins simply by being nominated for everything, and she didn’t win for an admittedly weird run on Big Little Lies season two. She had a better episode to submit for her turn on Only Murders in the Building, even if the season didn’t ultimately come together. It’s Meryl!
The Levys will make a “concept of a plan” joke in the monologue
A reference to pet-eating fear-mongering is such a low bar and opens up another round of “woke Hollywood” discourse. But “concept of a plan” will live on for years. I’m betting that the line will be thrown out in a riff about the bursting streaming bubble or the economics of the restaurant business on The Bear.
ABC celebrates the 20th anniversaries of Lost and Desperate Housewives (and Grey’s Anatomy)
ABC’s 2004-2005 season is the greatest of this century with Lost and Desperate Housewives debuting in September and Grey’s Anatomy coming later in March. While none of the series maintained the Emmys momentum from the 2005 ceremony, they were, and are still, historically significant. The rotating broadcast rights keep the Emmys from being full network propaganda each year, but there’s no harm in a little three-minute segment going to a commercial break.
This is TV Plus, a newsletter about television written by Cory Barker, a media studies professor and veteran blogger. You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky, or email me at barkerc65[at]gmail.com. Thanks for tuning in.