Don Draper gets awards, why shouldn’t Jon Hamm.
Seriously.
Tonight, thousands of people will lean to their friends, either physically or digitally, and say that the Emmys don’t matter. Millions will watch the broadcast with baited breath to see if their favorite shows (this is especially true of the now-finished Parks and Recreation and Mad Men) come out on top.
Awards shouldn’t necessarily be taken seriously — especially the Emmys, which other than the Grammys seems to have the least interest in honoring great work over everyday pulp — but they definitely, unequivocally matter. If they didn’t we wouldn’t see ads boasting that a “X-time Emmy nominee for Best Comedy” is returning, or that a show “stars Emmy-winner” so-and-so. Hell, for movies, the number of Oscars won is sometimes bigger and bolder on the DVD case than the actual title is.
It’s no coincidence that a show like Halt and Catch Fire, which has no inherent appeal as a geeky and low concept drama starring mostly newcomers, had a massive spike in interest and got renewed for a second season immediately after winning the Critics Choice Award as most exciting new series.
It’s no coincidence that Mad Men went from nearly not getting produced and then not getting renewed for a second season until after its first Emmy nomination. It won that year, and its second season viewership more than doubled the first. Still only being granted contracts for one year at a time, it took three top honor Emmys before AMC signed on for four more seasons. This is more than Breaking Bad, whose ratings eclipsed Mad Men‘s by a big margin but whose critical and awards success was slow coming, ever earned. Viewers like those brought in by Breaking Bad are easy to find by aiming for the lowest common denominator, not to mention by having a certain, immensely popular zombie show. The respect and prestige that comes with placing a gold statuette on the mantle is not nearly so common.
(Even Mad Men‘s characters, who over the years became increasingly obsessed with the Cleo’s would agree. Roger’s assertion in season 7 that billings were down because “creative is invisible” since they only got one nomination undoubtedly echos AMC’s disappointment at the show’s Emmy drought.)
But more than for grasping audience’s attentions with boastful slogans, and more than impressing network executives, awards are for posterity. Do you know why anyone ever talks about the 1941 film How Green was my Valley? It defeated Citizen Kane at the Oscars. Award winners are more likely to get remembered because they will remain on a highly exclusive list until the end of time. It adds a sense of legitimacy, its a credential, and it can never be taken away.
The eternal nature of the award also allows it to sit timelessly beside everything that won before it or since. Is Mad Men destined to sit beside other four-time winners Hill Street Blues, LA Law and The West Wing for as long as the record is kept? I think that would be a travesty. Hill Street Blues certainly had the kind of influence Mad Men does, and The West Wing similarly drove critical television attention to the writer, but none of them had the intricacy and thoughtfulness of AMC’s pilot drama, nor its cinematic quality of production. A fifth win would quite literally put it in a class by itself, one it rightly deserves to have.
Every winter when I think about the upcoming Oscar season, I think of the rafters inside the Dolby Theater. As you walk through that magnificent hall, both sides are lined with the names of every Best Picture winner from Wings to Birdman. I don’t necessarily think about which film from this year is the best, but which one deserves to share space with the grandeur of past winners and be the standard for future contestants. And the beauty of that is the very debate it inspires, the volume of films it draws people to, and the endorsement it provides the winner. No voting body is perfect — maybe least of all the TV academy — but make no mistake about it: Awards do matter.
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