We’re all familiar with major awards shows not being big on geek content, and the Emmys have been no different… Unless HBO is involved, apparently. This year, Game of Thrones has nabbed not just one, nit just two, but three acting nods. One-time winner Peter Dinklage is up again with his third supporting actor nomination for playing Tyrion Lannister, and this time he’s joined by actresses Emilia Clarke (supporting) and Dame Diana Rigg (guest.)
Alas, not nominated was Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany, who’s been getting tons of buzz for her impressive work as a mind-boggling seven clones. Better luck next year?
American Horror Story: Asylum is up for miniseries, as well as a nice spread in the acting categories, with nods for Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, James Cromwell and Zachary Quinto. Of course, the big story this year? Netflix.
HBO makes everything geeky forgiven. I watch a lot of vampire shows… you really can’t convince me that Vampire Diaries, particularly in the second and fourth seasons, were better than True Blood has been at any point in its entire run. But guess which one has won Emmies? ugh.
That said, I do love Game of Thrones.
I’ve never thought of “Game of Thrones” as all that geeky. It’s a lot of naked women, sex, soap opera drama, and violence, with a light sprinkling of dragons and ice zombies. It’s not really a “smart” show. There’s no part of the plot that demands much thinking. Several of the geeks I know refuse to watch it because of the casual attitude towards rape.
It’s a secondary world fantasy with heaps and heaps of involved backstory. Each episode literally starts with a map. Magic or no magic, nudity or no nudity, that’s still pretty damn geeky. The lack of magic – or rather, the returning nature of magic – is actually a fairly important plot point.
Yeah, there’s objectionable stuff, both added for TV and in the original books, I won’t deny that, or that not everything is handled as well as it could be. But they aren’t just that, either. The story is by no means a white knight Tolkienesque fantasy, and it may not appeal to everyone, but it isn’t supposed to and doesn’t have to.
The plot is complex. But your average soap opera has heaps of complex backstory. I think that’s different than being “smart”.
Clearly, I’m not a fan, and it’s not worth going into an involved debate over the shows merit.
What I was trying to get at is it has a lot of the same sort of mainstream appeal that you would find in most soap operas. So I tend to see it as a soap with better acting and cinematography.
If that’s all it took, True Blood would be raking in more Emmy noms.
I don’t expect to convince you of anything, and I certainly don’t think you’d like it… But it does feel a bit disingenuous to take something with a large, established and very vocal geeky following and claim it’s not geeky at all just because there’s R-rated pandering.