Discover the real winners of TV with the Film Daily alternative Emmys
It’s one of the TV industry’s biggest events, full of glitz, glamour, and an awful lot of drugs – it’s the Film Daily alternative Emmys of course, a night where the real winners of the TV world are lauded for their triumphs. The red carpet is full of stars and we even managed to get a few words with some of them as they entered. “It’s a great event and it really is an honor just to get nominated,” said one of the dragons from Game of Thrones before engulfing our interviewer in flames. “I didn’t hit her, it’s bullshit. I did not,” added Tommy Wiseau* who wasn’t even nominated but turned up anyway. “Can I put my shirt back on now?” added Riverdales’s Archie Andrews.
As you might imagine, we’re of the belief that award ceremonies are just an exercise in back slapping and a glitzy way for industry politics to be played out with some shiny accolades. Which is exactly why we knew we had to provide our own alternative for all the bullshit awards that won’t be part of the “official” night. So without further ado, let’s take look at the big winners and even bigger losers from the night.
Most Depressing Show of the Year – The Handmaid's Tale
Nothing gets the people down like twelve solid hours of cattle prod torture and savage sexual assault. We would’ve attended the celebratory after party but, you know, we wanted have fun.
Saddest Face on TV – Phillip Jennings (The Americans)
Congratulations to The Americans’s Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) for flexing those face muscles and beating off competition from Melania Trump.
Best Sexy-Yet-Educational Workout Session in a Young Adult Series – Archie Andrews (Riverdale)
Taking multitasking to the next level, Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) learned his “Carrie: The Musical” lines while working on his rockin’ body without a shirt. It was probably the greatest TV moment of our time.
Best Sassy-Yet-Respectful Funeral Attire – The River Vixens’s funeral cheerleading costumes (Riverdale)
Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) and her girls basically have alternative cheerleading colors at the ready for the not-so-unusual occasion that one of them might be savagely murdered. It didn’t surprise us but it did make us want to add some new dress code demands to our own funeral plans.
Most Excruciating Musical Episode of the Year – “Carrie: The Musical” (Riverdale)
Of course there were elements of this episode that we were crazy for – we’re only human. But at least 40% of the episode made us wish the OG Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) would arrive to blow up the high school PA with her mind and make the musical element of it all stop.
Best Horse / Human Lead Character – BoJack Horseman
BoJack (Will Arnett) took home the award which was presented to him by an 108-year-old Mr Ed. Mr Ed did sadly drop the award on the floor when handing it to BoJack due to his lack of opposable thumbs.
Best Mumbler in TV History: Rami Malek (Mr. Robot)
S3 of Mr. Robot gave us some of the best thrills of the show so far, but we wouldn’t have made it through without the miraculous support of closed captioning. Naturally, no-one quite understood what Rami said in his acceptance speech, but we’re assuming he thanked his agent, the producers, and the fans.
Best Poetry Recital Cum Murder Spree: The Woodsman (Twin Peaks: The Return)
Nothing screams “I’m an aspiring beat poet” quite like bumming about for a light and crushing people’s skulls with your bare hands so you can spit your latest masterpiece live on the radio. The Woodsman is one of David Lynch’s most terrifying creations, but deep down he was just a super passionate poet.
Best Depiction of Shovel Painting – Twin Peaks: The Return
We’ll likely never know exactly why crazy ole Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) was painting those shovels gold for much of the The Return, but we can all agree that they look great.
Best Depiction of an LA Actress – Sally Reed (Barry)
As Sally, Sarah Goldberg portrays a certain type of LA woman that we’ve likely all come across at some point in our lives. She’s monstrous, vacuous, completely self-serving, and into the weirdest shit possible like goat yoga or whatever is supposed to make you the shiniest, skinniest, and most enlightened person.
Special Award For a Show That Made You Scream “What White People Nonsense Is This?!” – Sweetbitter
A pretty white girl moves to New York with absolutely no money, no skills, no experience, and no job prospects. But a kid that great doesn’t need any of that because she manages to land the first job she applies for after proving herself to be the blandest, most useless young woman a restaurant could possible hire. God bless America!
The No, it is Good, it’s Just, We Don’t Know Award – Arrested Development
The remix of S4 was a lot better and the first part of S5 was good too, but we don’t know – it was just, we’re not going to say not funny because it was good in parts. It’s just, we’re not sure . . . give it a watch and see what you think.
Most Creative (Over)use of the Word “Woke” Award: Dear White People
The word woke was used more times in Dear White People S2 than Archie practiced his topless pushups. FACT!
Most Irritating Songs: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Rachel Bloom’s irritatingly quirky musical takes on the world and this thing called life make us want to rip our ears off. They’re the epitome of “musical theater kid” and we just can’t grin and bear it anymore. The songs of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend seriously wound us up.
Best Use of Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Summer Vacation in a TV Show – Atlanta
Not only did nobody anticipate that Donald Glover would be basing S2 of Atlanta on an obscure 90s animated movie, but nobody expected S2 to actually resemble the anarchic cartoon comedy. Just like Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Summer Vacation, S2 of Atlanta followed fractured narratives, featured various uncomfortable car journeys, and delved into some of the wildest celebrity parodies seen on recent television. This wasn’t a throwaway interview quote – Glover came through with the goods.
Strongest Hawaiian Shirt – The End of the F***ing World
Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game) picked up the award while wearing the shirt and consequently deafened the crowd.
Outstanding Ability to Cram a Screenplay With One-Liners – Lost in Space
So much sarcasm it had its own gravitational pull.
Best Full Frontal Nudity in a TV Show – Altered Carbon
The Netflix Originals sci-fi series was a visual treat on many levels. But it should also be celebrated for showcasing an equal amount of tits, dicks, pussy, and ass. We particularly salute Joel Kinnaman for his tight contributions to futuristic sexiness.
Best Murder of An Annoying Child Character – The Walking Dead
We’d been eagerly anticipating the death of Carl “Coral” Grimes (Chandler Riggs) since about S2 when his “I’m wearing my Papa’s Sheriff hat but can’t do shit for anyone” schtick got real old, real quick.
Best Bad Guy We’d Probably Still Fuck – Negan (The Walking Dead)
We were barely even keeping up with the past season of this shuffling corpse of a show, but we do know that we’re still hot for Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) no matter how “evil” his actions are or whose brain he smashes with Lucille.
Most Amount of Screen Time With the Least Amount of Effort: Antoni Porowski (Queer Eye)
Each member of the Fab Five brings their own unique skill set to the Netflix Originals makeover series. Jonathan Van Ness brings his sassy personality and grooming knowledge while Bobby Berk usually builds an entire house with his bare hands. However, Antoni brings his good looks, a wardrobe of slogan tees, and his wisdom concerning how to make a variety of snack foods using greek yoghurt. We aren’t.
Most Unnecessarily Long Episodes in a TV Show – Westworld
When the average episode length of your overly convoluted TV show is anything between 60 and 90 minutes, it might be time to hire an editor to tighten up that unwieldy narrative and trim some of the fat. Especially when the 90-minute season finale officially proves the show has jumped the shark.
Most Awkward Resurrection of a Dead Character – 13 Reasons Why
We understand that everyone wanted to see Katherine Langford back as Hannah Baker – she’s great. But not only did the flashbacks of the character in S2 provide weird plot holes, but Hannah’s mawkish haunting of Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) also made absolutely no sense to the story either. Who did everyone think he was speaking to in public?
Special Award for Contributions to Making an Audience Feel Old – 13 Reasons Why
S2 of the borderline misery porn teen show caused a ruckus of controversy after ending the season with a harrowing depiction of male rape and for continuing to portray teenagers as dealing with some fucked up problems. Many adults clutched their pearls and complained the show was defiling innocents while others tuned in and realized they’re officially too old for this shit anymore before fixing up a calming pot of tea.
*Film Daily didn’t actually speak to Tommy Wiseau and just pulled a quote from The Room for comic effect. So sue us!**
**Please don’t actually sue us.
