{"id":159026,"date":"2025-09-15T18:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T18:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/159026\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T18:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T18:30:08","slug":"how-the-pitt-beat-severance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/159026\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘The Pitt’ Beat ‘Severance’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe 77th Emmy Awards<\/a> offered an important reminder that stats are interesting, but, at the end of the day, the members of the TV Academy march to the beat of their own drum.<\/p>\n

\n\tBest drama series was always going to be a race between the second season of Apple TV+\u2019s Severance<\/a> and the first season of HBO Max\u2019s The Pitt<\/a>, two outstanding options, but most indicators suggested that Severance would pull out a win. It was, after all, the most Emmy-nominated TV show of the season, with an astounding 27 nods, more than twice as many as The Pitt\u2019s 13, and the year\u2019s most nominated drama had won the best drama series Emmy every year since 2017, when HBO\u2019s Westworld (22) lost to Hulu\u2019s The Handmaid\u2019s Tale (13). Plus, The Pitt did not receive a picture editing nom, without which few shows have won best drama series (the picture editors peer group is the TV Academy\u2019s third largest).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet\u2026 best drama series went to The Pitt.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Pitt was surely helped by being the shiny new toy, and Severance was surely hindered by the nearly three-year gap between its first and second seasons. TV Academy members with whom I interacted spoke about \u201cfalling in love\u201d with the characters on The Pitt, while finding the characters on Severance a bit too \u201ccold.\u201d They also got the message that The Pitt was and is shot in town, whereas Severance was and is not. And while they certainly have a great fondness for Scott, they have a longer history with Wyle, and many found his comeback to be something of \u201ca Cinderella story.\u201d Any or all of these things may have tipped things slightly towards The Pitt.<\/p>\n

\n\tI suspect that the vote was awfully close. The two shows evenly split the four dramatic acting awards: Severance\u2019s\u00a0Britt Lower<\/a>, who wasn\u2019t even nominated for her show\u2019s first season, won best actress (in a slight upset over Kathy Bates<\/a>, the sole representative of network TV in the entire field of dramatic acting nominees), and Tramell Tillman won best supporting actor (prevailing over two of his own castmates and three stars of HBO\u2019s The White Lotus), whereas The Pitt\u2019s Noah Wyle<\/a> won best actor (over Severance\u2018s Adam Scott<\/a>) and Katherine LaNasa won best supporting actress (over Severance\u2019s Patricia Arquette). And both shows lost best director (for which they each had two nominees) to Apple TV+\u2019s Slow Horses and best writing (for which The Pitt had two nominees and Severance one) to Disney+\u2019s Andor.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m sure that Apple TV+ is a little bummed, because if Severance had won best drama series on an evening on which another of its shows, The Studio<\/a>, won best comedy series, the streamer would have become the first platform to claim both of those top honors in the same year since 2016, when HBO did it with Game of Thrones and Veep. Even so, Apple TV+, had its best showing ever, with\u00a022 wins, thanks largely to The Studio, a new show, like The Pitt, which came in with a comedy rookie-record 23 noms and utterly dominated the comedy field, collecting 13 wins (which breaks the record for most wins by a comedy in a single year that had been set last year by FX\u2019s The Bear<\/a>, with 11), including four for Seth Rogen<\/a> (the first person ever to win Emmys for comedy producing, directing, writing and lead acting in a single year).<\/p>\n

\n\tI suspect that much of the country doesn\u2019t \u201cget\u201d what the big deal is about The Studio, because it\u2019s essentially \u201cinside baseball\u201d for those of us who work in Hollywood. (I don\u2019t think most people in the rest of the country know or care about \u201coners\u201d or Sarah Polley cameos, although we do!) But most of the people who vote for the Emmys work in Hollywood, and The Studio\u2019s strong showing is a reminder of how much the industry likes watching stuff about itself.<\/p>\n

\n\tHBO Max\u2019s Hacks, which won best comedy series last year, is, of course, also about the biz, and claimed two of this year\u2019s comedy acting awards: best actress for Jean Smart (it\u2019s her fourth win for the show and seventh win overall, which thrusts her into an elite club of actresses with seven or more wins, the other members being Allison Janney, Cloris Leachman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mary Tyler Moore), and best supporting actress for Hannah Einbinder (it\u2019s her first win for the show, and long overdue).<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for the last comedy acting award? Best supporting actor went, in one of the biggest Emmy upsets of all time, to Jeff Hiller for the final season of HBO\u2019s Somebody Somewhere. Hiller\u2019s nomination caught almost everyone by surprise, and his win \u2014 over The Studio\u2019s Ike Barinholtz (aka \u201cSal Saperstein\u201d), Harrison Ford for Apple TV+\u2019s Shrinking, Ebon Moss-Bachrach for The Bear (who won last year), Colman Domingo for Netflix\u2019s The Four Seasons and Bowen Yang for NBC\u2019s Saturday Night Live \u2014\u00a0was even more shocking. If Somebody Somewhere was watched and liked by enough people for Hiller to win, as it clearly was, then I don\u2019t understand why it received only two nominations across its three seasons. But hey, I\u2019m happy for Hiller, and his win is a reminder that nobody should be counted out next Emmy season.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe limited\/anthology series categories also defied stats, albeit less unexpectedly. HBO\u2019s The Penguin<\/a> came in with 24 noms, second among all shows only to Severance, but was always going to face an uphill climb in its matchups with Netflix\u2019s Adolescence<\/a>, which had just 13 noms, but captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way that few recent shows have. (The same was true for the other recent Netflix shows that won in this category, The Queen\u2019s Gambit in 2021, Beef in 2023 and Baby Reindeer in 2024.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn every major category in which the two shows went head-to-head, Adolescence prevailed over The Penguin: for best limited\/anthology series, actor (Stephen Graham<\/a> over Colin Farrell<\/a>, a slight upset), supporting actress (Erin Doherty over Deirdre O\u2019Connell), directing and writing. Plus, the face of Adolescence, 15-year-old Owen Cooper, won supporting actor, becoming the youngest male ever to take home an acting Emmy. The Penguin\u2019s sole major win was best actress, for Cristin Milioti<\/a>, who deserved it.<\/p>\n

\n\tA few final thoughts\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was great to see the TV Academy send a message of support to Stephen Colbert<\/a> and CBS\u2019s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a> in the wake of the Tiffany Network announcing the show\u2019s cancelation \u2014 which may or may not have been caused by pressure from Pres. Donald Trump<\/a>, who certainly celebrated its demise \u2014 by awarding it best talk series for the first time. (It also won best directing for a variety series at one of the Creative Arts ceremonies last weekend.) However, some may be surprised to find that the show will be back on the ballot next year, given that it won\u2019t be terminated until May 2026.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetwork TV\u2019s only other win on Sunday night, on a show that aired on network TV (CBS, specifically), was for NBC\u2019s Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special in the category of best live variety special. Why, as I ask every year, do the broadcast networks want to continue taking turns promoting their competition? It seems like it would be wise for them to get together and insist on separate categories for network shows and\/or an expansion of existing categories to improve their shows\u2019 chances of being included.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s particularly egregious that the main Emmys-eligible area in which network TV excels, late night, is minimized by the TV Academy: best talk series had only three slots this year, while best scripted variety series had just two, once again pitting against each other HBO\u2019s Last Week Tonight and SNL \u2014 which are\u00a0truly apples and oranges \u2014 with Last Week Tonight winning yet again. (Last Week Tonight also beat SNL, again, in the category of best writing for a variety series.) Are CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX gluttons for punishment, or do they want to get their act together and finally do something about this?<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile we\u2019re on the topic of category reappraisals, would someone please have a word with the team behind The Bear? The show is great, but after winning 10 Emmys for its first season and 11 for its second, it went 0-for-13 for its third. That\u2019s not because the show stopped being good. It\u2019s because, I would submit, the show has become a punchline among members of the TV Academy, who find it absurd that it continues to be submitted as a comedy series rather than as a drama series. I\u2019m fairly certain that, if it had been submitted as a drama series this season, it would have been nominated in a bunch of categories, including best drama series, and might have actually won something. Showtime\u2019s Shameless and Netflix\u2019s Orange Is the New Black, among other shows, changed their genre classifications midway through their runs. So what is The Bear waiting for?<\/p>\n

\n\tFinally, congratulations to HBO\/HBO Max and Netflix, the two biggest behemoths each Emmy season, which, rather poetically, finished in an exact tie for most Emmy wins for a platform this season, with 30 each. That should tide them over for the few weeks until they start going at it again for the SAG, Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 77th Emmy Awards offered an important reminder that stats are interesting, but, at the end of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[57175,18945,13202,95953,64116,24851,12,88,38132,95957,1011,12649,13021,10674,77122,38524,10675,69127,1012,12798],"class_list":["post-159026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-2025-emmys","tag-adam-scott","tag-adolescence","tag-britt-lower","tag-colin-farrell","tag-cristin-milioti","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-jeremy-allen-white","tag-kathy-bates","tag-noah-wyle","tag-seth-rogen","tag-severance","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-stephen-graham","tag-the-bear","tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-the-penguin","tag-the-pitt","tag-the-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}