The nominations are out for the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards, presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Campaigning this year has been disrupted by the pandemic, but that doesn’t seem to have affected the academy’s tastes.
The voters have filled the outstanding animated program category with usual suspects, disregarding this year’s unusually rich offering of new shows. Of the five nominees, four were in the running last year. The fifth, Rick and Morty, won the previous year. Netflix’s two contenders here, Big Mouth and Bojack Horseman, have never won the award; the latter, whose final season came out this year to great critical acclaim, is in with a real chance.
The short form category also holds few surprises. Two nominees, Robot Chicken and Steven Universe Future, are here almost by right. At least one of the two has been nominated every year since 2010 (if we count Steven Universe, to which Future serves as an epilogue). The third, Forky Asks a Question, is one of the flagship short-form series of newcomer Disney+; it is a Pixar-produced spin-off from Toy Story 4.
