There are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and dreams in which you’re wearing no pants. Well I think it’s time to add a fourth thing: Game of Thrones winning the Best Drama Emmy.
After sitting out the 2017 Emmys due to the longer-than-expected wait for season 7, the mega-popular fantasy series returned with a bang at the 2018 Emmys by winning its third consecutive Best Drama Emmy.
Good for them, I guess.
Look, we get it, Game of Thrones is a good show and deserving of almost all of the acclaim and accolades it gets. But when comparing the last Thrones season to its competitors in the Best Drama category, there were other, more deserving shows.
Season seven of GoT was pretty good, but no amount of Jon and Daenarys interactions can make up for the lapses in plot logic, questionable jumps in the time line, and bizarre character decisions, all of which prevented the show from reaching the heights of, say, season three to five.
Now let’s compare that to all the other Best Drama Emmy nominees:
- The Americans – Epic final season and arguably the best drama series in recent memory that’s not Breaking Bad.
- The Crown – Proves that you don’t need dragons or a medieval aesthetic for a show to look great. Plus the stories about the various royals were super-interesting and surprisingly educational.
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Sure there was a sophomore slump, but when the initial bar was a critically-acclaimed first season, season two of this show is still way better than most other things on TV.
- Stranger Things – Huge pop-culture phenomenon, maintained its high bar of storytelling and tension despite some wobbles, putting it at least on par to season seven of Thrones.
- This Is Us – Yeah, this one can’t hold a candle to Thrones.
- Westworld – Some out-of-the-game wobbles, but deserves praise for its ambition, heady themes, and the way it ramped up towards the end.
So by going through the nominees using my extremely accurate and precise comparison method, Thrones is only about the third best nominated show at best, and The Americans or The Crown were far more deserving.
But what’s been awarded has been awarded so there’s no going back now. At least Thrones won’t be back until 2019 at the earliest so next year’s Emmy’s will at least be competitive and free of any HBO dragons.