Does the Sanctity of a Limited Series Emmy Mean Nothing?

On September 14, Matthew Rhys made Emmys history twice, becoming the first person to win two awards for leading roles during the same ceremony and the first performer to win in all three leading categories. Building on his 2018 win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for The Americans, this year Rhys won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as a deluded mayor in the Apple TV series Widow’s Bay and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for his role as suspected wife killer Nile Jarvis in Netflix’s The Beast in Me. But a mere ten days later, on September 24, Netflix announced The Beast in Me would return for a surprise second season with Rhys’s co-star, Claire Danes, reprising her role as traumatized journalist Aggie Wiggs. Unfortunately, this announcement means The Beast in Me, much like the characters in The Beast in Me, carries a dark guilt at its core. Its Emmy success, and Rhys’s record-setting win along with it, is built on a foundation of deceit.

The Beast in Me won two Emmys in the category of Limited or Anthology Series. Well, guess what? The announcement of its second season means it’s not limited anymore. The Beast in Me now joins a celebrated cohort of series with this same sneaky nonsense buried in their glowing track records, including Downton Abbey, Big Little Lies, and The White Lotus. But this time, it’s gone too far. We must put a stop to this obnoxious pattern, and as with parenting, there’s only one reliable way to intervene when a kid is getting away with some bullshit: consequences. Like the medals stripped from an Olympian found guilty of doping, these Emmys must be taken away.

Does it hurt to imagine a mournful Rhys rolling up to a giant customer-service window at the Television Academy and handing over one of his statues while a bored admin fills out the appropriate paperwork? Yes. It’s a tragic image. It’s so fun when that very nice man is happy, and no one wants to see him sad. But consider how long this has been going on. In 1994, PBS won in the Outstanding Miniseries or Special category for Prime Suspect 3 after winning the same award in 1993 for Prime Suspect 2, which also starred Helen Mirren as lead investigator DCI Jane Tennison — and was itself a follow-up to the original season of Prime Suspect starring Mirren. At the time, it made some sense. It was a different era in television with a bigger divide between a 22-episode broadcast season and a short-run British miniseries. But by the 2010s, the situation was egregious. In 2011, Downton Abbey won a slew of Emmys in the Miniseries or Movie category, including Writing, Cinematography, Directing, Costumes, Outstanding Supporting Actress (for Maggie Smith), and Outstanding Miniseries or Movie. Then, Downton went on to just … continue existing for over five years, and it shifted to the Drama category instead of Miniseries. Any initial claim of being a miniseries was completely forgotten.

In 2015, the award’s name was changed from Miniseries or TV Movie to Limited or Anthology Series, in part to address the gold rush for anthology-style shows like American Horror Story, True Detective, and Fargo. Those shows exist in a blurrier zone where subsequent seasons are narratively unrelated but set in the same world and exploring the same themes. To deal with potential confusion, the Television Academy has an official definition for limited series: a show that “tells a complete, non-recurring story” in which the narrative is “completely resolved within its season with no ongoing storyline and/or main characters in subsequent seasons.” No more Downtons allowed.

No one seems to be reading that rule. In 2017, Big Little Lies won eight Emmys, including Outstanding Limited Series, then made a follow-up season two years later with the same cast and a plotline based on season one’s fallout. The Night Manager won Emmys for directing and score in 2016 and this year returned for a surprise second season featuring its original lead actors in the same roles. Perhaps most infuriatingly, the first season of The White Lotus won ten Emmys as a limited series in 2022. At first, it seemed it might squeak by as a true anthology show, like American Crime Story or True Detective. Each season could be completely separate from what came before with no continuing characters and no plotline bleeding into the next season. But when Jennifer Coolidge returned as Tanya McQuoid in season two — and her character’s arc was entirely influenced by the events of season one — the jig was up. That’s not a limited series. That’s just regular-ass drama.

Some level of punitive cost for this blatant category fraud is long overdue. Shuffling a new series into the Limited Series category to avoid competing against the whole slate of continuing TV dramas is not only unfair; it undermines the sanctity of the entire award. It’s not pleasant to imagine posthumously stripping Dame Maggie Smith of one of her four Emmys, but there is no other reasonable alternative. Procedures must be put in place. Before a press release can be issued with an announcement of a second season, for instance, any producer-level individual or award-eligible cast member in possession of a Limited Series Emmy should present themself at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences offices on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. They should complete required Emmy relinquishment forms and submit a one-page letter of acknowledgment and apology to their fellow Limited Series competitors from the same year. The awards can be collected and preserved for future ceremonies, and the series can be welcomed as a potential future nominee in the Drama category.

Harsh though it may seem, even this small gesture lets these faux limited series off the hook too easily. By the time a second season is announced, they will still have benefited from all the unreturnable media attention and cultural prestige a major Emmy win affords. The winners will have made televised speeches, and the wave of awards campaigning will have long since passed. This won’t serve full justice, but it’s one way to rebalance the scales, to insist there is still sense and consideration in the world. Americans deserve to have some amount of faith in their institutions. One of those institutions — probably not the most important one, but it’s still somewhere on the list — is the Primetime Emmy Awards. It’s not too late to make things right. Sorry, Matthew Rhys.