Emmy Nominations 2018: Twin Peaks Was Robbed

My blog has something to tell you.
This image may contain Kyle MacLachlan Tie Accessories Accessory Suit Coat Clothing Overcoat Apparel and Human
Suzanne Tenner/Showtime/Everett Collection

The Emmy nominations dropped this morning, and I vowed to myself I wouldn’t get mad when Twin Peaks got snubbed in the big categories. But as soon as the list was up, what did I do? Ctrl-F "twin peaks" and get super annoyed.

Look, it’s not so bad. Twin Peaks is up for a handful of below-the-line nominations: Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Production Design and Outstanding Hairstyling, which should really be a lock. That crazy Episode 8, which blew everybody’s minds wide open, was specifically singled out for Cinematography and Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. It deserves all of them, and maybe it will get them.

David Lynch is even up for Best Director! And I bet David Lynch doesn’t even know the Emmy nominations are dropping today. Whenever his assistant gets around to telling him, I’m sure he’ll just be like, "YES, VERY NICE. NOW WILL YOU COME LOOK AT THIS BOOK OF UNUSUAL WOODPECKERS WITH ME???"

But come on—not a single performer in this sprawling ensemble cast was worth singling out for praise? Kyle MacLachlan was tasked with playing both a terrifying, dead-eyed psychopath and a lovably brainless man-child and pulled off both—often within the same episode!—with utter credibility. Over the course of the series, he also played a skeevy Nevada businessman who gets turned into a little golden ball, and the triumphant return of the Dale Cooper from the original series, and finally, a weird and unsettling blend of all of those characters, setting the new Twin Peaks up for its transcendently haunting ending.

What I’m saying is he’s got range. More than actors I otherwise admire, like Jeff Daniels (for Cussing in Boardrooms) and Benedict Cumberbatch (for Being a Sad Rich Boy) and Antonio Banderas (for Being Pretty Good in a Pretty Bad Show). And I could make a similar case for Laura Dern, who was given the task of embodying a character fans had only imagined for 27 years, and who turned out to be absolutely nothing like anyone had expected, and who still basically ran away with the whole dang show. (At least Dern is nominated, in the same category, for HBO’s The Tale—a performance that’s equally deserving.)

I know, I know. This is pointless and dumb. Getting personally invested in whether a stranger you admire wins an award from a bunch of other strangers… it’s weird! And every time it happens, I swear I’m never gonna get all invested in a stupid awards show again. And then a Twin Peaks comes along and knocks me back in my chair and I want the whole world to shovel piles of gold statuettes in its direction until everyone knows how special and singular and great it is.

None of this matters, of course. Twin Peaks has owned a spot in the pantheon of great, influential TV shows for a long time, and the new season only confirmed it. It doesn’t need a shelf of gold trophies. But damn it, it deserves them—and it bums me out that Showtime, which gambled on giving David Lynch full creative control for 18 hours of television, didn’t see the return-on-investment that might inspire them to make a similar gamble in the future. To paraphrase another great show that was perennially under-appreciated at the Emmys: Awards are stupid. But they’d be less stupid if they went to the right people.