A Dose of REALITY

The Emmys would be less—what's the word?—boring if they stopped snubbing the grand circus of reality TV By John Ross

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GOD BLESS JEAN SMART, but I don’t know if I can watch her win another Emmy. She’s already collected three for her delicious work on Hacks—she’s never been nominated for the series without winning—and this September she will likely be called to the stage for her fourth. John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, meanwhile, has won 30 awards in 11 years, and I can recite from memory his perennial speech thanking staff members in Brooklyn. Some 140 years ago, when Nietzsche advanced the concept of eternal return, he was talking about how boring the Emmys are.

All this is not entirely the voters’ fault—television is built on multiseason series—but they’ll clearly vote for the same people over and over until they get carpal tunnel. The result is that the industry’s most respected awards show has been stagnant and zeitgeist-adjacent a long time. Even as a teen, I remember watching Frasier win best comedy series five years in a row and thinking, Is that all there is? The Emmys need more electricity and drama, by which I mean they need reality stars.