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Each season of awards brings its share of blunders and snub, neglecting shows or performances that deserve to be recognized. Here at The Escapist, we’re big fans of The extent. Personally, I have designated him as a worthy successor to Game of thrones and the defining sci-fi spectacle of the past 10 years. The extent absolutely deserves more accolades and the attention that greater recognition would bring to the show. Even with just one season to air, it’s a monumental achievement that deserves to be considered among the pinnacles of the modern television landscape.
Understandably, he didn’t receive any Emmy nominations this year. He has never hasn’t received any Emmy nominations, even in technical categories where shows like The extent tend to perform well. The extent excelled among genre fans, earning several consecutive nominations at Saturn and even winning the coveted Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form in its first season. However, the success of traditional rewards has largely escaped The extent.
It is tempting to pretend that The extent has been overlooked due to a snobbery around genre television, especially science fiction. There is a long-held belief that major award bodies like the Emmys don’t recognize sci-fi and fantasy works as frequently or as regularly as they promote high-profile drama. There has historically been some truth to this observation, with many classic sci-fi television landmarks overlooked by the Emmy Awards.
Patrick Stewart frankly complained that the Emmys never recognized the quality work done on Star Trek: The Next Generation, stating: “There was an albatross around the neck of projects like this where they weren’t taken seriously.” The next generation racked up 58 Emmy nominations, but 57 of them were Creative Arts Emmy Awards. The show’s only Primetime Emmy Award nomination came in its final year, with a nomination for Outstanding Drama Series.
This nomination was a sort of “make-up award”, a concession to the popularity and success of the series. The nomination has become a joke among the editorial staff. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine even built an absurd subplot around Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) nominated for an award he would never win. Writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe remarked about the nomination: “Everyone knew that TNG was not going to win. … This is not the kind of show they usually give awards to.
There were undoubtedly exceptions. X files was a staple of the Outstanding Drama Series run until the launch of The Sopranos, but it presented its gender elements in a reliable procedural framework that likely made it more accessible to voters. Lost won an Outstanding Drama Series in its first year, becoming the first sci-fi or fantasy show to win the award and give genre television “sudden and massive exposure,” but it was also a program difficult to classify or classify.
The success of Lost may have paved the way for more sci-fi series to enter the Emmy race. Battlestar Galactica has won rave reviews that have highlighted its timeliness as “a fierce parable on the war on terror”, and it has garnered several outstanding writing and directing nominations during its run. However, the show remained completely excluded from standout drama series and performance categories.
Things have changed in recent years. The fantastic series Game of thrones was an Emmy favorite. Its final season racked up 32 nominations, becoming the most nominated season in awards history. Winning 59 statues in its run, it’s the most award-winning storytelling series in Emmy history. It’s not just about technical categories. With four wins in the Outstanding Drama Series, he’s tied with West wing, Mad Men, LA law, and The blues of the hill street for most wins in the category.
Even beyond Game of thrones, the last few years have seen the Emmys embrace genre television more and more. By 2017, genre shows like Westworld and Strange things dominated the field. Perhaps this reflects the evolution of the television landscape. After all, the much-vaunted high-profile dramas of the golden age of television as The Sopranos or Mad Men have long been replaced by higher, populist tariffs.
The shield creator Shawn Ryan highlights launch of The walking dead as a turning point in the evolution of prestige television, as Jaws and Star wars were in the New Hollywood movement. Critic Andy Greenwald suggests that the emergence of generic “prestige shams” has also played its part. Whatever the reason, the change is clear. The Emmys noticed it. Reviewing this year’s nominees, reviewer John Jurgensen noted the dominance of “spillovers from fantastic franchises and other escape fares.”
However, this widening of the field does not consist simply in recognizing genres that have been excluded for a long time. It’s a more cynical exercise. After all, the awards show hemorrhaged viewers. It created an existential crisis. The Oscars toyed with (then withdrew) the idea of creating a “Best Popular Picture” category to include films that people had actually seen, which would have created a silo of things audiences enjoyed away from the award. “real” rewards.
The Emmys Just Did What The Awards Show should do, including popular shows in major categories to give the ceremony a “populist sizzle”. This year’s nominees are dominated by buzzing and accessible hits. Outstanding Drama Series nominees include a superhero show (The boys), a period horror series (Lovecraft Country), a scorching drama from the streamer era (Bridgerton), and even a Star wars spin off (The Mandalorian). It is impossible to imagine a comparable Best Picture range.
As such, The extent is not necessarily excluded on the basis of gender bias. Instead, her exclusion may speak of another systemic issue with the Emmy Awards and a challenge facing awards shows in general. This is a popularity contest, where success is often defined in terms of pre-existing reach. A little show like The extent would always be at a disadvantage, especially in a climate where the Emmys seem to eagerly assert their relevance to the culture at large.
In 2003, before the explosion of streaming services and networks, television critic Aaron Barnhart argued that there was “clearly a bias towards Nielsen Top 30 programs and always has been.” among the main nominees. While the measures of popularity and success have changed in an era when streaming ratings are oblique and obscure, the logic still holds. The Emmys tend towards particular shows, often from particular suppliers, and with a particular pedigree.
The Emmys tend to be dominated by the same brands year after year. For example, this year marked the 19th time in history that the “HBO brand” had “received the most nominations of any network / platform in a single year”. Netflix was close behind, receiving 129 nominations compared to 130 for HBO. This is a drop from Netflix’s record 160 nominations in 2020, which in turn broke the record of 137 set the previous year by HBO. It’s a unbelievable run by HBO and Netflix – an awards season arms race.
As such, The extent has one downside starting as an Amazon streaming series, with Amazon garnering just 20 nominations – including five for The boys. The extent is further hampered by the fact that this is a show that only arrived on Amazon at dusk, and therefore receives less impetus from the streamer – any incentive for rewards this year seemed to come from the fans or the writers. The extent is also undoubtedly hampered by the fact that it is not from Amazon, but from SyFy.
SyFy is hardly an Emmy favorite, and it’s an awards body that has given three nominations to Facebook and five to YouTube. When the channel has received major awards or nominations, it rarely seems to be on its own merits. To take an example, the Sci-Fi chain won its first Major Emmy in 2003 when the kidnapping drama Taken won the Outstanding Miniseries. However, the official title of the miniseries of Steven Spielberg presents caught suggests a key influencing factor.
To find a major SyFy nominee, you have to go back over a decade to 2010. Oscar winner Kathy Bates received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Film for her job as Queen of Hearts in the miniseries. Alice. However, the nomination probably appears to have been recognition of Bates rather than the show. Bates was an Emmy favorite, winning back-to-back nominations for her work on Harry’s Law the next two years.
Of course, rewards mean nothing and rarely correlate directly with quality. The extent doesn’t need Emmy nominations to validate its status as one of the best TV shows. Still, it would be nice to see good work recognized regardless of genre or point of origin.
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