This year’s Primetime Emmy nominations have been revealed, which means my blood pressure is way up. I understand that award shows are bound to make somebody, somewhere angry – everybody will feel like someone or other got snubbed, shows were incorrectly categorised, and some nominations were completely undeserved. I’m feeling all of that today.
I’ll get to the most obvious snub in a little bit, but I have things to get off my chest.The Last of Usshouldn’t have been nominated for this season, becauseit was very bad. Neither shouldThe Bear, which is inexplicably still in the Comedy category despite, at this point in its lifespan, being less funny than The White Lotus.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story? The one where Ryan Murphy gleefully alluded that two real-life survivors of child abuse were secretly in an incestuous relationship? Sure. No Genevieve O’Reilly forAndor? After that wedding episode? Criminal. The White Lotus ate up a bunch of Best Supporting Actor and Actress nominations, andI say this as a White Lotus lover– not all of those nominations were deserved. Sam Rockwell was barely in the show!
Okay, thanks for sticking around. Now, we get to the choice that got me the angriest: Pedro Pascal was nominated for an Emmy in the Lead Actor in a Drama Series category, while Diego Luna was overlooked. It’s a disgrace, andI’m not the only one who thinks so.
There are a lot of valid reasons for this to be deeply annoying. For one, as I’ve already said,this was a very bad season of The Last of Us. The fact that it’s gotten this many nominations at all is just another example of Academy members often nominating shows that have already been nominated in previous years, even when later seasons suffer from a drop in quality.
Another reason is that, as viewers of the show very well know, Pedro Pascal was barely in season two. He got killed off in the second episode, after all, and while we all know the man is a great actor with plenty of pathos, this shouldn’t qualify him for a lead actor nomination, and it’s bizarre that his team decided to submit him as one. We’ve seen this happen before, like when Brian Cox was nominated for best lead actor for Succession’s final season, in which he only appeared in three episodes. The Emmys don’t make a ton of sense, and it allows for clear bias in the nominations.
Pedro Pascal does appear in a number of flashbacks following his character’s death, but I still don’t think this should qualify as a lead performance.
Andor’s Cast Will Never Get The Awards Recognition They Deserved
Andor’s actors were snubbed in 2023 as well, with absolutely none of them getting nods for their outstanding performances – strange, considering the show was nominated for a number of major awards that year. It lost all of them to Succession, but, well,it’s Succession. Only Alan Tudyk and Forest Whitaker were nominated for their performances, and for the smaller voice-over performance and guest actor categories, respectively.
Andor isn’t justthe best Star Wars media ever made, it’s one of the best television shows being made right now. It’s perplexing, even frustrating, that a show that’s being recognised for its excellence isn’t being recognised for the incredible acting that buoys it. Andor has a stellar cast, and its story is as intimate as it is broad – without its actors, it could not pull off what it did. It’s a snub if there ever was one, and a wholly undeserved one, at that.
Andor will not have a third season, and it will not get another chance at giving its cast the recognition they deserved. Meanwhile, Pedro Pascal is nominated for a show that he was barely in this season. I know award shows are nonsense and there are more important things to be angry about, but man, this really is a travesty.
