How the Hell Did The Emmys Snub ‘The Americans’? Again?

Following yesterday’s announcement of the 2015 Emmy nominees, entertainment media — as we do every awards season for every award show — spiraled into snub frenzy. Among those left out of the 67th Emmy Awards race for Outstanding Drama Series were Empire (save for Taraji P. Henson’s well-deserved nom), The Walking Dead, and The Affair (which snagged a Golden Globe earlier this year for Best Drama), along with FX’s Sons of Anarchy, Justified, and last but not least, but certainly most baffling, The Americans.

Joseph Weisberg’s suburban spy series had its most intricate and thrilling season yet, featuring subtly brilliant performances and superbly complex writing, only to be ignored, once again, by the Television Academy. Yesterday’s announcement threw a measly guest-star nod at Margo Martindale (her third despite her near season-long absence) for her role as KGB coordinator Claudia, plus one writing nod for the harrowing episode “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?” — a slow-burn character analysis that should have earned Keri Russell her own long overdue nomination as Mother Russia matriarch Elizabeth Jennings.

The episode follows Elizabeth and husband Philip (Matthew Rhys) on a seemingly simple, late-night task: bug the FBI’s ever-doomed mail robot while it’s under construction before it ships back to headquarters. The fly in the ointment, however, is Betty (Lois Smith), a widowed government pencil-pusher who enjoys working nights in for the peace and quiet. Elizabeth is tasked with confining Betty to her family photo-littered office and then — not to spoil for those who have yet to see — carry out her duty as a KGB agent. The episode doesn’t rely on anyone’s death, nor any kind of violence for that matter, but instead offers tensely teased-out analyses of two women as wives and mothers who have both lost so much and are about to lose even more over a war that has no regard for either of them. It’s an episode that stays with you long after the credits roll, as reiterated by Vulture’s Margaret Lyons, who, in a podcast with critic Matt Zoller Seitz, admitted to nearly falling apart at her desk after viewing the episode at work. Yet, the most astonishing part about this phenomenal hour of television? It’s not even the season’s best episode.

“Stingers,” the chapter immediately following the dark tale of the mail robot, offers a long-awaited moment in the show’s three seasons that proves through 17-year-old Holly Taylor’s performance, that, yes, this youngster could very well carry a larger chunk of the series if one or both of her onscreen parents were to fall victim to their dangerous work. Incredibly acted and deeply nuanced, the saga of the Jennings must have fallen so far under the radar — their undercover work completely undetectable — that the Emmys missed them altogether; because there is no rhyme or reason as to how anyone watching The Americans could actively choose Homeland or Better Call Saul instead.

This is not to shun these aforementioned shows (except for Homeland, maybe), but The Americans is simply on another level altogether: the performances, the writing, the terse direction, and the larger narrative elements that challenge us as audience members. It’s a crime series but also a war drama, yet it’s really about the grey area of marriage and the complicated ideals behind what it means to be a family. The series also, of course, delves into religious and political ideologies (it is set within the height of the Cold War, after all), yet Weisberg and his writing team expertly pen these themes without forcing them upon their audience or using them merely as filler: a finesse that Homeland and even House of Cards seemed to have forgotten along the way.

Perhaps therein lies the problem: The Americans doesn’t force itself on its audience. It doesn’t beg to be watched. And when you do finally decide to sit down to try and understand the intricacies of these deeply developed characters, the series doesn’t rush or take the opposite route and spell things out: it paces itself in a way that’s unique to other shows on television right now. It’s not a showy-show either, one that will litter billboards or websites with interactive ads — not to mention Weisberg and his executive producer Joel Fields, don’t seem like the type of showrunners who are willing to kiss-ass or change their formula to get the attention of the Television Academy.

Never the less, the fact that for three consecutive seasons The Americans has been ignored by the Emmys is a pity. Not only for the showrunners or the actors, but also for viewers who are looking for a wholly different drama from what else is on TV and may not have been invoked enough by mainstream conversation — something of which the Emmys has plenty of sway. Though The Americans earned a Peabody and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Drama this year, it’s worthy of much, much more. Hopefully, next year, the Emmys — who are capable of nominating fantastic series, like Transparent, the honors they deserve — will have woken up a bit more to finally grant this series a long overdue Best Drama nod.

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Photos: FX/Everett Collection