‘Orange is the New Black’ submitting for the Emmys, Golden Globes as … a Drama?
Somehow, someway, awards season is starting to become more and more complicated when it comes to what category a show chooses to submit itself as. With that in mind, you don’t have to look any further than Netflix and “Orange is the New Black.”
According to TVLine, the popular Netflix series is currently planning to enter itself at the Golden Globes and the upcoming Primetime Emmys as a Drama, rather than in the expected Comedy field. There are a couple of east reasons as to why this may come as a surprise to many of you.
1. “Orange is the New Black” is funny – While it may not be a full-fledged comedy a la “Modern Family,” “Nurse Jackie” is a great example of a show with dramatic tendencies that can also be considered a comedy in its own right. While these shows often have a hard time winning the prize, they are able to score nominations.
2. Competition – In a comedy race, we think the show would do vey well. Name one show right now that is a favorite to win the Comedy Series prize. We can’t. In the drama race it has to compete against not only “Breaking Bad,” “Homeland,” and “Game of Thrones,” but also some young upstarts like Showtime’s “Masters of Sex,” FX’s “The Americans,” and even a sleeper like “The Blacklist” on NBC.
3. Competition on its own network – Do you really want to have “Orange is the New Black” competing against “House of Cards“? We don’t understand the move to actually make it harder on yourself to get some more trophies heading back in your own direction.
Ultimately, the real reasoning that we can think of behind this move is that either somehow affiliated with the show really wanted it in this race, or Netflix is going for the jugular. They knew that as a comedy, something more traditional would probably win some of the big prizes; it’s more of a gamble to go into drama, but it could pull off an upset against one of the big shows. We just saw it happen earlier this year, when Jeff Daniels defeated Bryan Cranston and Jon Hamm at the Emmys.
Photo: Netflix