The 77th Emmy Awards will be held September 14 and broadcast on CBS and Paramount +. Chances are, you haven’t seen all of the nominated productions, so think of me as your friendly neighborhood guide to 2025 television achievement. Or in some cases, underachievement.
On August 14, I began the gradual release of my ranked choices of the nominees, from my least favorite to my most favorite, in four marquee categories: Outstanding Television Movie; Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series; Outstanding Comedy Series; and Outstanding Drama Series.
These choices are not predictions of what will win, nor am I trying to tell you what is the objectively “best” television film or series; just my personal favorites. I hope that reading these mini reviews will simply help you be a more informed and discerning viewer.
This week: Outstanding Comedy Series
Of all the categories I’m covering, Outstanding Comedy Series is arguably the most competitive, most subjective, and trickiest to rate. There is not one clunker among these eight nominees, but one of them is an apple (“The Bear”) compared to seven oranges. Except for the drama-centered “The Bear,” all of them are also stuffed with smart and uproarious gags that hit every 10 seconds or so. As a result, instead of rating them based on how funny they are, I considered other factors, like poignancy; plot playoffs; and well-developed, unforgettable characters.
7. ”Only Murders in the Building”
“Only Murders in the Building” follows neighbors Mabel (Selena Gomez), Charles (Steve Martin), and Oliver (Martin Short) as they create a podcast that chronicles their own amateur sleuthing of murder cases in their Upper West Side apartment building. The first season of “Only Murders” dropped in 2021 and felt relatively closer to the moment’s post-pandemic zeitgeist: At the time, it seemed like everyone and their grandmother was hooked on true crime or trying to produce a podcast in their closet.
Now, with the show in its fourth season (with a fifth season ready to begin later this month), true crime podcasts are old hat. In addition, after so many residents getting consistently offed at the Arconia, one has to wonder why anyone would continue to live there or why the FBI hasn’t raided the joint.
By 2024, our crime-fighting trio are no longer simply a group of lonely neighbors awkwardly searching for companionship and a sense of purpose, but were chosen family to one another. Charitably, Oliver is given a love interest who is not a serial killer, but the excitement that drives the action this season is the production of a feature film based on the “Only Murders” podcast. Along the way, we predictably chase down false flags and red herrings before arriving at the door of a murderer whose motives would have left Agatha Christie rolling her eyes.
The weakest acting link continues to be a humorless Selena Gomez, who takes her straightman role too seriously and infects her character with a case of Chronic Dullness Syndrome. On the other hand, the “Only Murder” producers infused this season with enough star power to choke a Hollywood freeway, which suggests that they may have deemed that Martin and Short’s comic magic was insufficient to carry the season on its own.
Not only does the incomparable Meryl Streep reprise a role from Season 3, but Eva Longoria, Eugene Levey, Zach Galifianakis, Molly Shannon, Melissa McCarthy, and Ron Howard are tossed in for added giggles. Which reminds me: Look for McCarthy and her square-off with Streep. It’s a classic. Unfortunately, the parts of the series are more enjoyable than the sum of them.
Much of the attention this series has received focuses on Jean Smart and her character, the hard-charging diva Deborah Vance, both of whom are raging exquisitely against the sunset of their celebrated Hollywood careers. The series, though, is really about the tortured business partnership, complicated friendship, and co-dependency between Vance and her young writer mentee, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder).
Season four highlights Vance and Daniels landing their dream jobs on the “Late Night” television stage. The first half of the season is a particularly toxic brew of a Deborah vs. Ava power struggle, but the second half extends some relief to this sparring long enough to provide some entertaining insights into La La Land’s (mostly white) patriarchal, ageist entertainment gauntlet. “Hacks” would not be my natural go-to and I don’t share the fetish that many critics seem to have for Jean Smart, but the chemistry between Smart and Einbinder is undeniable and alone worth the watch.
5. “The Studio”
If there was a popular, if not common, thread among this year’s nominees, it’s a nervous tick around the future of big- and small-screen entertainment. It shows up as an overarching or subtextual theme in “Only Murders in the Building,” “Hacks,” and even “What We Do in the Shadows,” but in “The Studio,” this anxiety is the guiding spirit and raison d’être.
In the premier season, Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) takes charge of Continental Studios, a transaction that quickly reveals itself to be a case of the dog catching the car. As Matt struggles to keep the studio alive against the backdrop of a film industry facing down extinction, each episode turns into a manic, stress-laden, stupendously incompetent attempt by Matt and his staff to stave off professional oblivion. Reminiscent of “Entourage,” “The Studio” is written with an inside-Hollywood, self-parodying style that makes you question how cinematic brilliance ever makes it to the screen.
Rogen is his usual semi-adorable, desperately vulnerable self, but his co-stars — Catherine O’Hara, Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders, Kathryn Hahn, and Keyla Monterroso Mejia — hilariously hold their own as a breathless crew of bumblers. The frenetic pace is an acquired taste and is not easy on the viewer’s nervous system, but as the film industry continues to implode in plain sight, “The Studio” just might be the corrective lens and coping mechanism we need to process the industry’s heartbreaking demise.
4. “What We Do In the Shadows”
The title of “What We Do in the Shadows” may as well describe the production description of this quirky, niche comedy whose sensibility feels like it is directed at an underground goth audience. “What We Do” is shot from the perspective of a documentary crew filming a Staten Island household of vampires and their monster mash community (Think “The Office” meets “The Munsters”). This intentional family of vampires (which includes an “energy” vampire who sucks your life force through boring conversation) is haplessly trying to take over the United States, but can’t seem to get their stuff together beyond their front door.
In its fourth season, the show’s most important plot development is that the sole mortal in the household, the lovable, but emotionally handicapped Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), finally comes into his own and declares his independence from his voluntary slavery to his vampire masters. However, the central delight of the show’s potty-mouthed, death-casual comedy romp remains its bottomless font of inventiveness and irreverence. Even in an Emmy category defined by broadly mined yucks, “What We Do” is unhinged silliness.
Because this is its final season, “What We Do” goes for broke and can’t help but share its love of film-making. In this season’s flourish of cinematic citations that stick the landing, “What We Do” includes references to “The Warriors,” “Batman,” and “Frankenstein,” while sampling endings from the “Usual Suspects,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and even “The Bob Newhart Show.”
“What We Do” is not for everyone, but if it happens to appeal to your graveyard tastes, you will be sorry to see the coffin close on it.
After the first few minutes of the premier season of “Nobody Wants This,” you might speculate that the title refers not only to the two starry-eyed lovers at the heart of this romantic comedy, but also to the subject matter of the show itself. The idea of a culture clash put in motion when a Jewish rabbi and a “shiksa” (Gentile woman) fall in love may have seemed like a good idea when it was first greenlit, but in this decidedly post-October 7 environment, it feels fraught and disorienting.
To that point, as a Black person who has watched in horror when Black tropes and stereotypes have made their way into otherwise smart and successful treatments, I can only imagine that some Jewish viewers may not be able to get past all the over-the-top performative Jewishness played for laughs and ridiculousness.
In this case, the Jewish schtick happens to come attached to some flawless comic acting and an extremely successful romantic comedy that features what is otherwise sorely lacking these days: actual chemistry between two heterosexual leads; in this case, Noah (Adam Brody) and Joanne (Kristen Bell). Yes, the podcast that Joanne and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) host is a case study in white mediocrity and a media universe rife with amateur frivolity. That aside, Morgan and Noah’s brother Sasha (Timothy Simons) provide a priceless sibling subplot that makes for a screenplay that has multiple effective laugh points and characters.
“Nobody Wants This” doesn’t just make you laugh. It makes you swoon and cheer for the possibility of love in a world fractured by ignorance, meanness, and compulsive othering. I can’t speak for the other “nobodies,” but I, for one, definitely wanted this.
2. “Shrinking”
It’s obvious that “Shrinking” and “Ted Lasso” share DNA in the form of “Shrinking” co-creator, Bred Goldstein, who portrays Roy Kent in “Ted Lasso.” Now in its second season, “Shrinking” is “Ted Lasso’s” heir apparent. In other words, “Shrinking” is a “nice” comedy that transforms the genre by providing low-intensity, yet sensitive, drama that never fails to highlight the best in human beings.
“Shrinking” gets its title from its setting in the office of a therapist collective made up of Jimmy (Jason Segal), Gaby (Jessical Wlliams), and the office O.G., Paul (Harrison Ford). Jimmy’s unorthodox style of therapy not only involves becoming personally involved in the lives of his patients, but he also motivates his patients to help him through his own issues, namely recovering from the death of his wife and raising his embittered teenage daughter.
The second season spends a considerable amount of time on Jimmy and his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell) as they process their shared grief and demonstrate the power of forgiveness. What truly makes “Shrinking” special, though, is how deftly it explores relationships, not just between the main characters, but multi-laterally between the secondary characters as well. Oh, yeah — Harrison Ford has never been more delightfully grumpier.
“Shrinking” strikes a balance between providing feel-good television and diving headlong into the messiness that is everyone’s emotional survival. It’s smart, deeply empathetic and celebrates the healing power of human tenderness.
One of the few nominees that lives on linear network television, “Abbot Elementary” is all the more impressive because it is a veritable workhorse of a series, producing anywhere from 13 to 22 episodes per season. Because it is set in a public school in a low-income, Black section of Philadelphia, every day of class is another opportunity to poke fun at the earnest educators, struggling parents, cynical administrators, and nonsensical levers of bureaucracy that somehow keep the gears of public education turning. “Abbott Elementary” has its fun with the students, but they are mostly the backdrop and inspirations for the adult characters.
Maintaining a high level of storyline quality and character development has doomed many a sitcom in the past. While I was concerned that some of the freshness was beginning to wane, the second half of the season of “Abbott Elementary” picked up the momentum and, once again, delivered one of the most finely tuned ensembles on television.
Although “Abbott Elementary” gives us characters that are predictable and drawn consistently to type, Janine (Qunta Brunson), Gregory (Tyler James Williams), Ava (Janelle James), Schemmenti (Lisa An Walter), Jacob (Chris Perfetti), Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), and Mr. Johonson (William Stanford Davis) are still given room to grow and evolve. As with most workplace sitcoms, the tenure of some of the main characters, like principal Ava, is inevitably put at risk in Season 4, but in the end, we have little doubt that they will emerge unscathed. Janine and Gregory finally settle into a relationship, but the screenwriters manage to keep the romantic tensions intact.
What’s perhaps most triumphant about “Abbott Elementary” is that it is the only predominantly Black cast among the nominees, and the leadership up and down the on-screen school is that of Black women. They don’t just “happen” to be Black, but are celebratory in their identity while demonstrating a humanity that runs as deep as any other show on television. May its school bell keep ringing.
Doesn’t Belong on this List: The Bear
It’s already been said many times, by many critics, but “The Bear” doesn’t belong on a list with comedy series nominees. Comedy is, at best, a side-hustle technique in “The Bear.” Yes, there are times when “The Bear” is trying to make you laugh or employ dark humor, but the predominant goal is to make you keep all of your emotional responses on high alert — to empathize, to cry, to be anxious, to feel.
It’s been a whirlwind tour of ups and downs over the past four seasons as we have watched Carmy (Jeremy White), Sidney (Ayo Eedebiri), and their band of beleaguered restauranteurs try to keep their beloved Chicago restaurant, the Bear, alive while sweating and bleeding over every dish. At first blush, “The Bear” is a high-intensity, behind-the-scenes look at the art of food preparation and the human cost of getting that plate of bucatini in front of you — but it’s also an examination of sacrificial perfectionism; dysfunctional, yet loving, family; and the processing of trauma. While the center of attraction is the celebrity white male chef in the form of Carmy, his young Black protégée, Sydney, is the straw that stirs the drink. Meanwhile, the soul of the Bear is decentralized and distributed among the ensemble members of the restaurant, most of whom get their own backstories at some point.
This season is literally on a timer because the staff members of the Bear have a matter of weeks before its source of capital is withdrawn, which propels the show along another high-anxiety, high-stakes ride. All of the neuroses that the staff and members of the Berzatto family have been holding and beating each other with in the past three seasons finally (phew!) come to a head and get confronted this season. Hang-ups are confessed, apologies are issued, and tears are summoned, particularly in the last trimester of the season, which seems calculated to bring you to your emotional knees.
It becomes apparent in the final moments of the season that, given the trajectory of the story arch, the next season of “The Bear” should be its last. As far as the Emmys are concerned, “The Bear” belongs in the “drama series” category, where it would be a strong contender in an already strong field. It ain’t the funniest, but it’s arguably the best written, best acted, and most exhausting hour of television you will find today.