Emmy 2018: The Outstanding Drama Series Category

Emmy is in a few weeks. Not that I’m staring at my calendar waiting for it, but I'll probably watch it to root for The Americans winning the Outstanding Drama Series. Past winners still nominated this year are The Handmaid’s Tale (2017) and Game of Thrones (2015, 2016). And other nominees rounding out the category are The Crown, Stranger Things, This Is Us and Westworld.

I’ve never seen The Crown, there is nothing particularly exciting about Stranger Things S2, This Is Us shouldn’t be dragged into a second season, and Westworld S2 should just burn itself to ashes. Seriously.

So that leaves us with three.

In my perfect world where TV shows are made specifically to please me, The Handmaid's Tale would move along. Thirteen episodes in season 2, three more than its first season, and June is still f-ing living with the Waterfords!

I’ll give it credit, though, for still being able to traumatize us and make us sick — the child bride episode left me speechless, Omar’s fate was cruel, and The Colony seriously needs soap and water, you evil Gilead! — but if its selling point continues to be just blood and torture, and not stories, we seriously don’t need another The Walking Dead.

Much discussed this season, however, is the effort to “humanize” Serena and maybe Aunt Lydia. And the only thing that I can say to the both of them is lol bitch, no. Sure, disobedience means death in Gilead, but there were times when it was within both of the women’s options to not be mean or stupid, yet they still chose to be mean and stupid. So I think I’ll reserve my sympathy for Janine instead, thank you.

Game of Thrones was fine, albeit annoyingly short and shouldn’t be pushed to another season in 2019. But another win would feel like this is being decided by a machine, like it’s just going through a line in a factory. The season isn’t bad at all, but nothing jumps out of the screen either. While we are cheering for Sansa being a badass and for the huge, exciting scenes of Viserion in the hands of the Night King, Littlefinger’s death was kind of underwhelming. And none of the season’s battle scenes tops the one at Hardhome. The result of watching too many shocking, breath-holding scenes on the show: it requires a lot now.

And finally, we have The Americans, which I write about here.

Image: Hulu, HBO, FX