How many episodes makes a "series"?

Folks, we are at a crossroads.  A decision must be made.  As Woody Allen put it, two paths lie before us: one leads to utter destruction, the other to total annihilation.  Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

I am, of course, talking about the Emmy Awards.  The Emmys have always been the most problematic if the major entertainment awards, largely because of the repetitive nature of television.  When Forest Whittaker wins an Oscar for playing Idi Amin one year, we don’t expect him to be nominated again the next year for the same performance just because Last King of Scotland was still in theaters after January 1^st.  With Oscars, Grammys, Tonys and Golden Globes, you only get one bite at the apple, but with Emmys you can chew on and on and on.

TV shows can last for years, and performers essentially give the same performance year after year after year.  So if you get a nomination one year, the odds are you’ll get a nomination the next year if your show is still on the air.  Quality performers like David Hyde Pierce can virtually own a Best Supporting Actor nomination as long as Frasier keeps making episodes.

There have been other problems with the Emmys, like the distinction between comedy and drama.  It was fine once upon a time, then someone invented the “dramedy” and things got confusing.  The first acknowledgment of the problem was when the off-beat program Northern Exposure won the Emmy for Best Dramatic Presentation, and the creators admitted in their acceptance speech that the show was a comedy.  For years the standard was 30 minutes was a comedy, one hour was a drama (there were occasional exceptions like The Twilight Zone, which was a half-hour drama during most of its run).

That standard has pretty much been shattered, but not entirely.  Ally McBeal was the first hour long show to win Best Comedy, and since then all bets are off.  However there are still some high-brow 30 minute shows like Nurse Jackie that are about as funny as a car wreck but they still call themselves comedies, maybe because the competition in the acting categorizes is less stiff.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about, the distinction between a series and a mini-series.  Once upon a time TV shows produced over 30 episodes a season.  For example, Have Gun Will Travel (a half hour show that wasn't a comedy because back in the 1950’s the “western” was still a genre) produced 39 episodes from 1957 to 1960 and 38 episodes per year the nest two seasons.  Eventually stars got fed up and demanded more time off and the number of episodes produced per season fell to the mid-20s in the late 1960’s.  At some point the convention became 22 episodes per season, which lasted for many years until the advent of the cable TV series.

Cable channels didn't rely on advertising revenue and could afford to repeat shows over and over, meaning they needed less product.  So 13 episodes of a show like The Sopranos could be commissioned, which meant that the quality could be kept a lot higher.  This is the primary reason why the last broadcast show to win the Emmy for Best Drama was 24 back in 2006.

An aside: look, I love The Wire.  But when you want to talk about the best dramatic show on TV ever, Hill Street Blues did what The Wire did, but with network content controls and 22 time a year for seven years, not 13 times a year for five.  I’m just sayin.’

In recent years an unsettling trend has occurred.  TV series decided to position themselves as a Dramatic Series or Mini-series as they jockey for Emmy nominations in weaker categories.  American Horror Story produces 13 episodes a season and calls itself a mini-series, while Downton Abbey produces seven episodes and calls itself a Dramatic series. This makes no sense.

This trend reached its apex this season when Mad Men cynically decided to split its final season in half, airing seven episodes in 2014 and the final seven in 2015.  Not only does this give them two bites at the Emmy apple for essentially one season, but it means they can position themselves, their stars, and their production team for Emmys in the Dramatic Series category despite producing less than 1/3 of the episodes of, say, The Good Wife.  (I am assuming Mad Men will continue to place itself in the Best Drama category; if they opt for mini-series then never mind, but I think that unlikely given they've won in the dramatic category before).

I know quantity shouldn't necessarily trump quality; but to cite Woody Allen again, it is the quality of your lovemaking that matters, not the quantity, although if the quantity falls below a certain point you might want to see somebody.  Mad Men has put out “for your consideration” ads for the cast; should January Jones be taken seriously as a potential best supporting actress nominee for having a significant number of lines in only two episodes?

The Emmy Awards need to lay down some rules.  What is the minimum number of episodes that constitutes a dramatic series instead of a mini-series?  Actors may submit “Emmy reels” from single episodes but should be required to have a certain amount of screen time over the course of the season to be eligible as a regular instead of a guest star.  And voting guideline should state that when voting for someone after a show’s first season, they should be evaluated on how much they improved over the prior season.  Michael Richards was very funny on Seinfeld, but he did the same shtick for nine years and won three Emmys.

There is no perfect way to run an awards show; the idea of giving awards for acting is ludicrous unless all of the nominees play the same role for comparison.  But if the Emmys continue to reduce the number of episodes a TV series can produce and be eligible in the best drama category, at some point a Hallmark made-for-TV movie will win Best Dramatic Series.

Note: when I wrote that last sentence I was being as factious as possible, but my research has discovered that a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Macbeth did win the Emmy for “Outstanding Program achievement in the Field of Drama,” the equivalent of what is now called Best Dramatic series, in 1961.  I assume this was one program and not a series about the bickering Macbeths.  My clairvoyance never ceases to amaze me.