\n\tPer longstanding annual tradition, The Hollywood Reporter granted anonymity to a member of the TV Academy \u2014\u00a0this year a male Emmy-winning member of the organization\u2019s producers peer group \u2014 in return for candor about why he made the choices that he did on his Emmys ballot.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe share \u201cBrutally Honest Ballots\u201d not because the views of any single member are representative of the views of all 27,000 members; obviously, they are not. Rather, we believe that they can offer interesting and valuable insight into the sorts of things that are on voters\u2019 minds as they decide what and whom to support.<\/p>\n
\n\tUnlike many of the other outlets that have shamelessly ripped off this feature without acknowledgment, THR waits until voting has closed before sharing any ballots and views.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe 78th Primetime Emmy Awards will take place on Sept. 14, and will be preceded by the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Sept. 5 and 6. Follow THR.com for complete coverage.<\/p>\n
\n\t* * *<\/p>\n
\n\tBEST DRAMA SERIES<\/p>\n
\n\tI skipped The Gilded Age \u2014 I\u2019d rather prep for a colonoscopy than watch another period drama. I also did not watch A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms \u2014\u00a0I\u2019m completely Throne\u2019d out. Your Friends and Neighbors, a dumb show about entitled people who I don\u2019t care about, got nominated over Industry \u2014 what the fuck? I\u2019m a fan of Vince Gilligan, but there\u2019s a sort of arrogance to Apple TV shows, including Pluribus, where they\u2019re like, \u201cWe don\u2019t really care if you watch. We don\u2019t need to grab you in the first episode.\u201d For a couple of episodes I was like, \u201cIs this show ever going to fucking get going?\u201d And then I bailed. Slow Horses has had better seasons. Task is in the wrong category [more on this later]. I really liked Paradise \u2014\u00a0I could watch Sterling K. Brown read the phone book, and Shailene Woodley was a great addition. I loved this season of The Diplomat, and as a West Wing fan it was pretty great seeing Allison [Janney] and Brad [Whitford] back together. But The Pitt is the best show on television, made by people who have been working at such a high level for so long that they\u2019ve forgotten more about how to make great TV than most people will ever know. There isn\u2019t a bad piece of casting, or acting, or writing, or directing. And the fact that the show comes back after six months? Some shows go away for years between seasons and when they come back they\u2019ve lost all of their momentum \u2014\u00a0The Old Man, for instance \u2014 but these guys are already well into season three. Just please don\u2019t kill off Noah Wyle!<\/p>\n
\n\tMy vote: The Pitt (HBO Max)<\/p>\n
\n\tBEST COMEDY SERIES<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019ve had it with The Bear. It\u2019s not a comedy, it\u2019s never been a comedy, it\u2019s a terrific drama \u2014\u00a0although I didn\u2019t love the way it ended \u2014\u00a0and it should be in the drama category. Only Murders in the Building is a big yawn for me. Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles? I watched one-and-a-half episodes, didn\u2019t get it. I don\u2019t love the stereotypes of Nobody Wants This \u2014\u00a0it leans into a bit of caricature for both Jews and Gentiles, and that makes me uncomfortable in the world that we\u2019re living in now. I\u2019ve loved Abbott Elementary and Shrinking, but these weren\u2019t their best seasons. Enough of Hacks. This was an easy decision: Widow\u2019s Bay is far and away the best. It came out of nowhere, and it had me from the first episode \u2014 it\u2019s funny and clever, and I loved that, like The Pitt, it was put out in the old style of one episode a week, with everyone talking about it the next day and looking forward to the next one. Hiro Murai is probably the best director in television right now.<\/p>\n
\n\tMy vote Widow\u2019s Bay (Apple TV)<\/p>\n
\n\tBEST LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo shows should\u2019ve been nominated in this category that weren\u2019t: I don\u2019t understand how Death by Lightning got overlooked, and I think Task [nominated for best drama series] belongs in this category \u2014\u00a0it was created as a limited series, it aired as a limited series, and then they decided, \u201cWell, maybe we\u2019ll do another season and have it overlap with Mare of Easttown,\u201d but the reality is that this show ended. If Beef is a limited series \u2014 and it is, with a mediocre installment this season\u00a0\u2014 then Task is a limited series. I had a problem with Love Story, just as I did with Winning Time: if you take living people, turn them into characters, and then disparage them, you should be sent to an island and never allowed to make television again. I hated what they did to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jerry West with Winning Time, and what Love Story did to Daryl Hannah was inexcusable. DTF St. Louis should\u2019ve been called WTF St. Louis \u2014 Jason Bateman is lovely, but the show is terrible.\u00a0Who are you supposed to be rooting for? Sarah Snook was great in All Her Fault, but I grew bored with the way the story was told. I voted for The Beast in Me because the performances were all strong and there were some good scares and twists in it.<\/p>\n
\n\tMy vote The Beast in Me (Netflix)<\/p>\n
\n\tBEST MOVIE<\/p>\n
\n\tThis category is not \u201ctelevision movie\u201d anymore, just \u201cmovie,\u201d which is as close as we\u2019re going to get to them acknowledging that it\u2019s no longer about MOWs [Movies of the Week] and, for the most part, is now just filled with movies that weren\u2019t good enough to get a theatrical release \u2014 what a fucking joke. I never heard anything about Miss You, Love You or People We Meet on Vacation, so I didn\u2019t watch them. I refused to watch Tom Clancy\u2019s Jack Ryan \u2014\u00a0first of all, enough of Jack Ryan, and second, I hate Amazon, I don\u2019t buy Amazon products and Jeff Bezos should stay the fuck out of our business. I could only get through half of Heads of State. But Remarkably Bright Creatures is the kind of television movie \u2014\u00a0not movie \u2014\u00a0that used to win: a small, quiet story, told beautifully, with wonderful actors. Sally Field is amazing in it, Lewis Pullman is a star, and the melding of puppetry, live and visual effects with that octopus was pretty amazing.<\/p>\n
\n\tMy vote Remarkably Bright Creatures (Netflix)<\/p>\n
\n\tBEST VARIETY SERIES<\/p>\n
\n\tI think it\u2019s a stupid rule change [to now ask voters to select \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d beside each nominee in this category to indicate if it is worthy of a win, and then award statuettes to any\/all nominees that garner 90 percent \u201cyes\u201d votes; if none do, then the single highest-tallying nominee will be declared the winner]. Colbert and Kimmel are both an easy \u201cyes\u201d for me because I think our industry needs to speak up and defend First Amendment rights \u2014 what happened to Colbert and Kimmel is inexcusable. \u201cYes\u201d also to Oliver \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s a great show and I always vote for him. \u201cYes\u201d to The Daily Show because of Jon Stewart, whose night [Stewart hosts Monday nights] is appointment television. And I\u2019m sorry, but \u201cno\u201d for Saturday Night Live \u2014\u00a0it wasn\u2019t a good season, the new people weren\u2019t great, and the old people are getting a bit stale.<\/p>\n
\n\tMy vote \u201cYes\u201d for The Daily Show (Comedy Central), The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS), Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC) and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Per longstanding annual tradition, The Hollywood Reporter granted anonymity to a member of the TV Academy \u2014\u00a0this year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[352183,88],"class_list":["post-831571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-brutally-honest-emmy-voter-ballot","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831571","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=831571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}