Mr. Reindeer wrote:
That doesn’t mean they have the superpower to change the hearts and minds of Emmy voters whose mission statement has traditionally seemed to be honoring the most pedestrian, populist choices. I haven’t seen the Versace series, so I can’t pass judgment, but it sounds like pure melodrama, and it seems insane to me that schlock king and Glee/AHS creator Ryan Murphy beat DKL out for a directing award.
Well, for what it's worth, Versace is actually quite bold and uniquely compelling. It's as much a thriller with disturbingly real horror elements as a melodrama as a psychological profile as an historical and political document, and the sprawling time hopping narrative is challengingly fragmented, and the lead performance is outstanding and downright fascinating. I liked it way more than I expected, and Matt Zoller Seitz has recently referred to it as being unlike anything he's seen before on TV. Murphy used his clout to make something a bit different, but as far as whether Murphy deserved to win for a single hour of TV, well, the answer is obviously and resoundingly no, for every practical reason you can think of, ranging from Lynch having directed the finest single hour of TV in 2017 to his having directed all 18 hours. But Emmy voters vote for what they're comfortable with or the biggest name they recognize, and they're obviously comfortable with Murphy, regardless of how ambitious and relatively daring Versace is. (Hence why Game of Thrones somehow still won drama this year despite the weaker season.) Such a shame. Expected, of course, but a shame nonetheless.
The two clips they showed for Twin Peaks stood out from the pack, and I wonder who the hell chose them. Were they meant as a joke, or just to further alienate the crowd with their strangeness? For writing, they literally showed the final scene, starting with Kyle asking "what year is this?" followed by Laura's scream and the lights going out, which I found disturbing that they'd spoil the final scene, but also hilarious they'd spring something so abrasive on viewers, and further humorous that they showed that clip for the category of writing, since it includes only four words followed by a loud and intense scream! No other clip was remotely like it, of course. For directing they showed Laura removing her face, which is also unlike any other clips they showed in that it consists of no dialogue and is purely weird.