If I Picked the Emmys 2022

Best Limited Series

Winnter: White Lotus*
Nominees:

Dropout*

The Shrink Next Door

Winning Time

MAID

American Crime Story: Impeachment

Actor: Clive Owen, ACS

Nominees:

Will Ferrell, The Shrink Next Door

Quincy Isiah, Winning Time

Paul Rudd, Shrink Next Door

Mike Meyers, Penuverate

Best Actress: Margaret Qualley, Maid*

Nominees:
Beanie Feldstein, ACS

Sarah Paulson, ACS*

Amanda Seyfried, Dropout*

Alexandra Daddario, White Lotus* (Different Category)

Julie Garner, Inventing Anna*

 

Supporting Actor:  Naveen Andrews, Dropout

Jason Segel, Winning Time

Dan Bakkehdal, ACS

Murray Bartlett, White Lotus*

Adrian Brody, Winning Time

Fred Hechinger, White Lotus

Tracey Letts, Winning Time

 

Supporting Actress: Kathryn Hahn, The Shrink Next Door

Nominees: Kaitlyn Dever, The Premise

Annika Noni Rose, Maid

Annaleigh Ashford, ACS

Jenniifer Coolidge, The White Lotus*

Sidney Sweeney, The White Lotus*

Laurie Metcalf, Dropout

 

 
Best Episode: Momento Mori, Winning Time

Nominees: Pilot, Dropout

Toxic Fan, Premise

The President Kissed Me, ACS

Pentagon City Mall Interrogation, ACS

String Cheese, MAID

Bear Hunt, MAID

 

Best Writing: White Lotus

Nominees:  American Crime Story

Winning Time

 

Best Animated Show

Winnter: Central Park

Nominees: Adventure Beast

Star Trek: Lower Decks

Dicktown

Inside Job

Solar Opposites

COMEDY

 

Best Show: Resident Alien

Nominees: 

The Afterparty

What We Do in the Shadows*

Killing It

Ghosts

We Are Lady Parts

Marvelous Mrs Maisel*

 

 

Best Actor: Alan Tyduk, Resident Alien
Nicholas Hoult, The Great*

Craig Robinson, Killing It

Matt Berry, What We Do in the Shadows

Keegan Michael-Key, Schmigadoon

Ben Falcone, God’s Favorite Idiot

Glenn Howerton, AP Bio

 

Actress: Claudia O’Doherty, Killing It

Nominees:

Rachel Brosnaham, Marvelous Mrs Maisel*

Tiffany Haddish, The Afterparty

Cecily Strong, Schmigadoon

Aya Cash, Welcome to Flatch

Elle Fanning, The Great*

Sosie Bacon, As We See It

 

 

 

Supporting Actor: Gwilym Lee, The Great

Mark Prosch, What We Do in the Shadows

Michael Zengen, Marvelous Mrs Maisel

Brandon Scott Jones, Ghosts

Tony Shalhoub, Marvelous Mrs Maisel*

Alan Cumming, Schmigadoon

Sacha Dawson, The Great

 

 

Supporting Actress:  Marin Hinkle, Marvelous Mrs Maisel

Alice Wetterkund, Resident Alien

Belinda Bumilow, The Great

Dana Silver, Space Force

Phoebe Wright, The Great

Alex Borstein, Marvelous Mrs Maisel*

Tifany Haddish, The Afterparty

Guest Actor:  Colm Meany, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Nominees: Matt Walsh, Ghosts

Enrico Colantoni, Ghosts

Owen Wilson, SNL

PJ Byrne, Never Have I Ever

Common, Never Have I Ever

Luke Kirby, Marvelous Mrs Maisel

 

 

 

Guest Actress:  D’Arcy Carden, Killing It
 

Nominees: Kristen Schaal, What We Do in the Shadows

Alex Borstein, Resident Alien

Natasha Lyonne, SNL

Jane Lynch, Marvelous Mrs Maisel

Danica McKeller, Home Economics

Selena Gomes, SNL

 

 

Writing: What We Do in the Shadows

Nominees:

Schmigadoon

AP Bio

The Great

Marvelous Mrs Maisel

Welcome to Flatch

 

Drama

 

 

Winner: Yellow Jackets*

Nominees: The Chair

Orville

The Resort

Severance*

Flight Attendant

Star Trek: Picard

 

Actor: Adam Scott, Severance*

Nominees: Jay Duplass, The Chair

Billy Zabka, Cobra Kai

Patrick Stewart, Star Trek: Picard

Actress: Melanie Lynskey, Yellowjackets*

Britt Lower, Severance

Sandra Oh, The Chair

Annie Murphy, Kevin Can Go F**k Himself

Elizabeth Moss, Shining Faces

Kaley Cuoco, The Flight Attendant

 

 

Supporting Actor: Luis Gerardo Mendez, The Resort

Bob Balaban, The Chair

Skyler Gismodo, The Resort

Kevin Bigley, Upload

Daniel Dae Kim, Kevin Can Go F*** Himself

John Turturro, Severance*

Supporting Actress: Christina Ricci, Yellow Jackets*

Allegra Edwards, Upload

Holland Taylor, The Chair

Juliette Lewis, YellowJackets

Peyton List, Cobra Kai

Rosie Perez, The Flight Attendant

Allison Pill, Star Trek: Picard

 

Guest Actor:

Paolo Costanzo, Upload

Michael  Chernus, Severance

PJ Byrne, Cobra Kai

Guest Actress:
Leighton Meister, The Orville

Mackenzie Carroll, Upload

Whoopi Goldberg, Star Trek: Picard

 

 

Episode:  The Chair, The Chair
Dinner Party, Upload

Pilot, Yellowjacket

F Sharp, Yellowjackets

Twice in a Lifetime Graves-Orville

From Unknown Graves-Orville

Review of The Chair Season 1

The Chair (Netflix)-Many dramas are so complex these days in their serialized world-building that they have a slow burn where you have to be patient for a bit until you're actually enjoying the show. The Chair's greatest asset is how it can be enjoyed almost immediately because its characters are very provocative and contrast well with one another right out of the gate.

Sandra Oh stars as Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim who begins the series with a pep in her step as she has  been appointed chair of a prestigious college’s English department. The show might have the veneer of a “Downtown Abbey” or a “Crown” in its stateliness but it presents academia as a brutal game of dog-eat-dog in “Ozark” or “Breaking Bad” territory where everyone is incentivized to deliver Dr. Kim’s head on a platter.

Of course, anyone with a cursory familiarity with the current state of academia knows that it is ripe for this kind of high stakes drama. There's declining revenues for brick and mortar institutions, the struggle for liberal arts to compete with STEM disciplines for funding, vastly changing political and social mores (AKA the rise of cancel culture, more on that later), and the wasteful spending for athletics and extravagant architecture. These issues are interwoven into the drama as well as can be within a criminally short six-episode arc.

Like an Aaron Sorkin drama, everyone is articulate and well-poised because, hey, they’re English teachers. But there’s a clear exception out of the gate in the slovenly mess Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass). Dobson holds the distinction of being a popular author though he's still reeling from the death of his wife and he's barely holding it together. Think Robin Williams’ “Dead Poets Society” character if that character was drunkedly reciting odes while urinating into a trash can.

We also have a trio of old fogies who are in danger of being put to pasture by the Dean for drawing big salaries and not having high enrollments. None of them come off looking particularly capable and it's probably not coincidental that they are all white (believe me, there are plenty of boring old dinosaurs of all ages in academia). The ring master of this trio, Elliot Rentz (Bob Balaban) talks at three miles an hour and wears a bow tie and basically has a sign that says “I was last seen as cool 70 years ago.” He’s joined by a professor, Joan Hambling (Holland Taylor), whose flighty schemes and inability to connect to the internet bring a lot of comic mileage.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a young black professor who caters to student wokeness and short-attention spans, Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah). If you want your Moby Dick analysis filled with raps about the patriarchy, this is the class for you.

To some like me, “The Chair” might be guilty of perpetuating the oversimplification of portraying all white people as being deterrents to progress, and black people being breaths of fresh air. The pervading fear of death by cancel culture is also something that is dealt with in full force here among other issues. One scene, portraying a town hall between Dobson and several students to whom he accidentally caused offense, escalates into a full-on nightmare reminiscent of a twitter mob. That the discourse in that scene eventually becomes governed be whoever yells loudest is pretty brutal to watch.  

Similarly, others who place heavy emphasis on hierarchies of privilege as definitive of how to decipher society might be equally unsettled by seeing a protagonist defending the careers of the failing white side characters. If nothing else, there is plenty of merit to that argument from a capitalist perspective.

In other words, “The Chair” is an equal opportunity provoker and shows that are this intelligently provocative are rare. Whether the show paints one side of this divide with too broad of a stroke or not, the overriding takeaway of Dr. Kim fighting for everyone in her flock has a unifying quality that’s enough to get past any queasy scene.

If there’s one major shortfall in the series, it’s the running time. I’ve rarely seen it as my role to critique the length of a series but the running time of just six half-hour episodes simply undercooks nearly every major storyline.