TV’s biggest night, the Emmy Awards, is a celebration of the television shows we spend crucial hours of our lives anticipating, watching, and discussing. It seems U.S. viewers love getting to know a group of characters telling a serialized story, and, these days, there are plenty of shows to choose from. But not everyone is as optimistic about the current state of TV as the Emmy’s host Anthony Anderson was during the ceremony.
In a recent interview with The Times U.K., David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, says the 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking HBO show feels less like a celebration and more like a “funeral” for the modern Golden Age of TV. But looking at the big winners in the writing categories, it seems Chase might be wrong. Turns out that Chase has left an important legacy that lives on in the best TV shows of today.
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The Big Emmy-Winning Scripts
Netflix’s Beef won five Emmys while Hulu’s The Bear and HBO’s Succession each took home six statues. One thing all three shows have in common is that they take the viewer into a rarefied world of high stress, and big personal stakes while presenting the protagonists as complicated and often unlikable people who find themselves in ethically questionable situations.
These types of characters are often referred to as “morally gray” and have no doubt been inspired by TV’s most morally gray character of all time, Tony Soprano (the late James Gandolfini). Tony was a devoted family man, but also a cold-blooded killer. The more he looked out for his family, the more he was able to justify killing. While none of the protagonists in the Emmy-winning scripts, which include, The Bear, Succession, or Beef, are actual killers, they can also be classified as morally gray.
Let’s take a look at what that means for each show and how it brings out the best writing.
The Whiplash of Love and Insults
“Connor’s Wedding,” written by Succession creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong, earned the coveted prize for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series at the Emmys. Whether you loved or hated the last season of the prickly, darkly comedic show, each character in the show can be considered morally gray, starting with patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) down to all four of his self-absorbed, idiotic kids. The Roys are people you likely wouldn’t want to work for or date, but they sure are entertaining to watch as they ruin other people’s lives or self-destruct their own.
There is a great quote from Logan in a scene where he’s talking to his kids and he says, “I love you, but you are not serious people.” This line is emblematic of a morally gray character and penned by a writer who understands the whiplash caused when your father tells you he loves you while insulting your very existence. It’s this kind of complexity and uncomfortable truth in the writing that is found in Emmy-winning scripts. The relationships in Succession are painful and funny but also familiar in surprising ways.
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‘Succession’
Rooting for Self-Control
“The Birds Don’t Sing They Screech in Pain,” written by Beef creator Lee Sung Jin, is the episode that won a writing Emmy for Outstanding writing for a limited or anthology series or movie. This angst-ridden Netflix show caught everyone by surprise. Who knew a real-life road rage incident could spark an Emmy-winning show?
Many of us have a lot of pent-up anger these days, and watching a show where the characters explore their rage is cathartic. The characters of Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) both start as morally gray characters who soon devolve into plain old bad people. Is it their fault? Perhaps. Is there fantasy fulfillment in watching them take out their existential misery on each other? Hell, yeah! After all, aren’t we all just a small step away from losing our minds?
Perhaps the line that best sums up the feeling in the show is from Danny when he’s speaking to his brother Paul (Young Mazino): “That’s what’s wrong with the world today, man. They want you to feel like you have no control.” “They” can be interpreted to mean your family, the government, the other moms at your kid’s school–any group where you feel like an outsider. But control and autonomy are fleeting at best and this is the lesson both Danny and Amy can’t seem to learn: control is an illusion.
As cruel and underhanded as both lead characters get, we can’t help but root for them to find some control, if only for a moment, because we are looking for the same thing. Writing from this terrifying yet highly relatable perspective is what makes Emmy-winning scripts because it touches a nerve deep inside us.
‘Beef’
Life and People Are Oxymorons
“System,” the pilot episode written by the show’s creator Christopher Storer, is what earned The Bear the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. The show is largely about a group of characters creating a found family as they wade through the murky waters of the American Dream: owning your own business. Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) has a vision for his life in the form of a restaurant while trying to overcome his deep grief after his brother’s suicide. The show is intense and visceral, and food becomes a metaphor for everything good and bad in the world.
One of the best quotes from the show is when Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), says to Carmy, “You’re a great chef. You’re also a piece of s—.” This is comedy writing at its finest because it’s the truth and it’s soul-crushing at the same time. A damaged character like Carmy draws us in and we invest in the stress, the beauty and the fully relatable crisis that running a restaurant can bring.
Understanding that life and people are oxymorons, that love and hate are two sides of the same coin, and that we are all hilarious–especially when we don’t mean to be. These characters toe the line between pain and absurdity while also giving us hope. That is what makes Emmy-winning scripts.
‘The Bear’
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Congratulations to all the Emmy-winning scripts, and to Chase for creating a prestigious show that continues to inspire great TV writers today. Chase says television is all going to hell, and there’s something both funny and tragic in his perspective. Though I hope he’s not correct, it’s clear his legacy of complex characters lives on in shows like Succession, Beef, and The Bear. And that’s worth celebrating.
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The post What Sets the 2024 Emmy-Winning Scripts Apart? appeared first on ScreenCraft.
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Author: Shanee Edwards
