Mean Emmy Tweets: Game of Thrones Edition. Also, did the show deserve all its awards?
Game of Thrones dominated the 67th Annual Emmy Awards Sunday night. HBO’s flagship program shattered the previous record of nine Emmys in one night (held by The West Wing) on its way to picking up 12 trophies. Emmys, as it turns out, weren’t the only thing Game of Thrones was gathering during last night’s ceremonies, as angry fans of Mad Men, House of Cards, and other shows took to Twitter to express their anger over Thrones sweeping the show. And, thanks to some inspiration from Uproxx, I scoured the Twitterverse for some of the more insane and hilariously awful tweets from last night.
Warning: some of these tweets are definitely NSFW, but they are absolutely hilarious, as these people are taking an awards show that means nothing very, very seriously. First up, we have a very succinct tweet from @Optigrab. Mr. Grab feels that Mad Men was a show that had nothing at all to do with “boners and boobs,” because Don Draper was a saint that never strayed from his marriage marriages. Also, I would like to take this time to point out that Game of Thrones has dragons, as well.
This is Ayana. Ayana feels the more question marks one uses, the better chance one has of getting one’s point across. Plus, this is the internet, so proper punctuation be damned! I’m sorry Ayana, but you lost me at “recalling the wisdom of ron swanson.” Your argument is now forever invalid, good day.
I wouldn’t call any episode in either half of that last season of Mad Men “amazing.” However, Lindsay is probably right, Cersei is more than likely drunk, somewhere.
Ah yes, the conspiracy theorists were out in full force, Sunday night.
Hello Mr. Van, the last two seasons of Mad Men would like to have a word with you. (Dan’s note: also, let’s not forget that two Game of Thrones actresses were nominated for Best Supporting Actress but still lost to Uzo Aduba—it happens.)
I like this next tweet because Mrs. Van used a meme to express her dissatisfaction.
And here we have the Social Justice Internet Warrior Club reuniting for one night only, to help bring awareness to the world wide web that Game of Thrones is evil. You may remember the SJIWC— they’re the ones who swore off watching the show ever again after Sansa’s wedding night. Josh seems to be the only voice of reason here.
Whoa, so it’s now transphobic to like Game of Thrones? Really? Is there even a Transgender person on Game of Thrones? Or is Anne B just upset that Orange is the New Black lost, and considers that loss to be an act of Transphobia?
Let’s see, Natasha: House of Cards Season 3 was awful. Mad Men‘s final season was weak, and Orange is the New Black Season 3 became all about how much the producers could shock the audience. “Oh, you think cunnilingus in a shower while snorting crack off of a hair clog in the drain is shocking? Wait till you see what we have in store for you!”
Hi Oscar, the last 2 seasons of Mad Men are on the phone, they want to have a talk with you. They can’t do anything about the dragons, but…
And finally, we come to Deion. You see, Deion is my most favorite person on the internet, and here’s why. Because f@*k books, that’s why. Deion doesn’t have time for your fancy letters and book learnin’ because Deion is a straight badass. Although, I’m not so sure Deion has a fixed grasp in reality, if he thinks watching Game of Thrones is like reading books.
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Now it is Dan Selcke writing things. I was going to do a separate post on this, but thought it would go well with David’s collection of hate above. Basically, I want to pose a question: did Game of Thrones deserve its record number of Emmy wins?
It’s great that Game of Thrones was so handsomely rewarded last night, but it hasn’t been lost on people that the show is finally winning Emmys for a season many thought was the weakest in its history. We don’t need to go over the reasons Game of Thrones Season 5 has been criticized, but we will: not enough context for the Faith Militant, rushing through Stannis’ downfall, altering Sansa’s story in distressing ways, telegraphing Jon Snow’s death, and pretty much everything that happened in Dorne. It was a bit of a bumpy ride.
So why the pile of rewards? Is Season 5 better than we thought? Is this an apology for passing Game of Thrones over in earlier seasons? Did the absence of a strong competitor like Breaking Bad leave the field open?
There’s probably no one right answer, but Game of Thrones’ sweep very likely had something to do with a change in the Emmy voting rules. This year, voting was open to a much larger portion of the Academy membership, and there were no controls put in place to ensure that voters watched all of the submitted episodes. If this were an ordinary year, the win for Best Drama might have gone to Mad Men, a critical darling finishing up its final year—Emmy voters have a history of giving awards to beloved shows after their final seasons have wrapped, regardless of whether those seasons were the shows’ best. This year, however, the vastly increased voter base worked in Game of Thrones’ favor, as far more voters were likely to have been fans of Thrones than were fans of Mad Men—however popular Mad Men was, far more people watch Game of Thrones.
In short, Game of Thrones may have beaten out the competition because Game of Thrones was more popular than the competition, not necessarily better. If that is indeed what happened, it kind of devalues the whole notion of awards, but as Ron Swanson says (and shame on David for questioning the wisdom of Ron Swanson), “Awards are stupid.”
On the other hand, The Walking Dead is more popular than Game of Thrones and Mad Men combined, and it didn’t even get nominated for a primetime Emmy this year. Clearly, popularity isn’t the only thing at work here, and the fact that Game of Thrones received awards on the back of a rule change that put more emphasis on the popularity shouldn’t diminish the winners’ accomplishments. David Benioff, Dan Weiss, David Nutter, and Peter Dinklage put on a fine show, warts and all, and have earned the acknowledgement of their peers.
This is still a big moment for both Game of Thrones and fantasy programming in general (fantasy show Lost won the Best Drama award in 2005, but it didn’t sweep the awards like this). The television elite have well and truly accepted Game of Thrones, an aggressively fantastical series, as prestige programming, which can only bode well for the genre.
H/T HitFix
Next: Game of Thrones at the Emmys: Fashion Rundown (Also, Kit Harington’s absence)