When It Comes to Animation, the Emmys Play Things Too Safe — Opinion

This story originally ran in the newsletter Sketch to Screen. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox.

The Emmys have always been a notoriously static awards body. When a show gets its laurels via a nomination early in its run, it’ll typically keep getting its laurels regardless of all but the most dramatic of quality dips. This tendency is part of why series like “Modern Family” kept winning major awards long past their most culturally relevant peaks, why the Best Comedy Series category has been dominated by the same three or four shows for the last five years, why there’s often no space for a series that grew into itself over time — see “Industry” — in favor of the ones that make a splash immediately. In the political field that is Emmy awards politicking, the easiest way to get a nomination or even a win is mostly to have already gotten a nomination before.

The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards and the Creative Arts Emmys, announced this Wednesday, aren’t a complete departure from this trend, but many categories have a remarkably fresher lineup than the past few iterations. Some great new shows like “Widow’s Bay” and “Pluribus” broke through and became some of the most nominated programs of the season. Old stalwarts like “The Bear” still showed up, but their nominations shrank notably in response to divisive recent installments. Still, many categories saw the same familiar faces show up, and there’s perhaps nowhere where that’s more apparent than the Animated Series lineup. The past few years have seen the category get a bit more interesting, with wins for shows like “Blue Eyed Samurai” and “Arcane.” This current year, though, feels like a regression, with a lineup that, bar one or two interesting choices, mostly feels like it could have been plucked straight out of 2015.

Of the six nominees in the category, zero are freshman series, and four are previous (at least) two-time winners. Most notably, the lineup includes “Bob’s Burgers” and “The Simpsons,” which have been nominated 15 and 35 times, respectively, and have each made the lineup since 2015. The classic Fox animated series definitely have received their flowers over their decades-long runs for a reason — they’re both among the best sitcoms of all time — but its difficult to call their current output the peak of their powers, or particularly central to the conversation of where animated television is right now. Their continued presence in the category, at this point, doesn’t register as reflective of their quality but rather voting inertia and a nomination body liable to box-check rather than seriously consider all the candidates. When a show is nominated every year for 10+ years, does the nomination even feel like an achievement?

“Smiling Friends”

Then there’s “South Park,” a five-time winner in the category, receiving its first nomination since 2021. The resurgence of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s long-running shock comedy and cultural satire is, at the very least, reflective of the actual show’s cultural footprint in the past year. After a few seasons that mostly made a splash within the show’s core devoted fanbase but failed to attract the attention or controversy the series used to in the days of, say, their 200th episode special getting censored and banned for depicting the Prophet Mohammad, the show’s 27th season went viral on social media for taking pot shots at the Trump administration; the premiere “Sermon on the Mount,” which was submitted for consideration, bites the hand that feeds it to directly criticize Paramount Skydance’s capitulations to MAGA and its cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” It’s likely the favorite to win from an Emmys body eager to make a statement, on the strength of its “speaking truth to power” bonafides.

Again, though: this is “South Park,” a show that’s most creatively inspired and culturally relevant days have largely passed it. Look past the catharsis of how directly it skewers Trump as an impish buffoon literally in bed with Satan, and “Sermon of the Mount” is a relatively limp, uninspired episode of TV that mostly sticks to the formula the series has followed for decades, with lazy gags and obvious criticisms that really only skim the surface of the current administration. As a nominee and as a potential winner, its recognition is more about what it represents as a way to piss of Trump rather than a creative achievement in and of itself.

Of all the repeat nominees, perhaps the most surprising and, frankly, unwelcome is “Rick & Morty,” nominated for the fifth time, its first since 2023, after winning twice. The darkly nihilistic sci-fi comedy series, which was once one of the buzziest series on TV, has in recent years largely faded into irrelevancy, never really recovering from the dismissal of co-creator — and former voice of both title characters — Justin Roiland after allegations of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

The series’ signature blasé outlook on its duo’s various misdeeds perhaps read a bit darker after those revelations, but it also didn’t help that the series almost immediately faced a fairly severe quality downturn, where the cast largely stagnated and the writing became broader and cheaper. The currently airing Season 9, which received a nomination for its season premiere, hasn’t really seen a notable uptick in quality or in buzz, making its return to the Emmys stage a little baffling. Perhaps voters saw the nomination pool as weak, but in the 37 series on the category’s ballot, there were plenty of more interesting options from Adult Swim alone. “The Elephant” was a wildly ambitious and one-of-a-kind experiment only animation could accomplish, while “Haha, You Clowns” was the funniest and sweetest animated comedy of the year.

The only first-time nominee in the pack — the category is rounded out by the great Disney+ anthology “Star Wars: Visions,” which received a nomination in the now-retired Outstanding Short Form Animated Program category in 2022 — is “Smiling Friends,” nominated for its third and unexpectedly final season. It’s a choice that I quite frankly am a little shocked the Emmys went with, because the show is so weird and out there that it doesn’t feel like the type of series to get much awards attention, but it probably helped that Season 3 was where the show seemed to evolve from cult hit to more mainstream phenomenon. I was never the biggest fan of the show, which had some edgelord tendencies I didn’t quite respond to well, but it’s a great nominee nonetheless — the submitted episode “Le Voyage Incroyable De Monsieur Grenouille” exemplifies the type of surrealist comedy the show does best, and it’s certainly a pick that feels representative of the year in animation.

But “Smiling Friends” doesn’t make an interesting field on its own, although it’d be a pleasant surprise if it won over “South Park,” and I suspect the race will come between the two. This was a strong year for animation, and the Emmys didn’t actually need to even look outside prior nominees to reflect that. Previous winner “Primal,” Genndy Tartakovsky’s experimental action horror series, returned for a weirder, even more gnarly third season that deserved some consideration, while the Hulu reboot of “King of the Hill” — a show that won twice during its long original run — successfully made an old show feel new. Instead, “King of the Hill” only managed a nomination for Pamela Adlon’s wonderful work as Bobby Hill in the voiceover category.

Then there are the first-nominees that could have been, like “Haha You Clowns,” which had a successful, fully formed first season worth recognizing. Amazon’s violent superhero epic “Invincible” has remained consistently strong and popular with audiences for four seasons, but has only received nominations for Steven Yeun’s vocal performance as the lead character. But the best animated series of the year was completely new, Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s Netflix dramedy “Long Story Short” a kaleidoscopic portrait of a Jewish family across decades that proved warm, original, and beautifully animated. The series admittedly never seemed to permeate or catch on with broader audiences — even if IndieWire named it the best new series of 2025 — but it’s the exact type of smart, well-drawn series the Emmys should be recognizing.

That’s not to say the shows nominated this year are bad. But except for maybe “Smiling Friends,” would anyone be particularly excited to see them win? Part of the appeal of a long-running animated sitcom like “The Simpsons” is the comfort it provides, how it can run for decades without changing too much from how you first encountered it. But these nominees suggest that Emmy voters should learn to let go of comfort every once and awhile, and try something new.

The Creative Arts Emmys will take place on September 5 and 6.