To tell the story of how Hacks performed at last night’s Emmys, you have to acknowledge both its incredible success and its terrible failure. The first is undeniable. Last night, Jean Smart won lead actress in a comedy series yet again. This meant that every time Hacks brought out a new season, Smart won the same award for it. This makes her the first woman to ever win an Emmy for every season of a programme’s run. It’s a history-making achievement, and thoroughly well earned.
The flipside of that, however, is that this is all Hacks won last night. One Emmy is better than many shows can even hope to dream of, but the reality is that Hacks swaggered into the Emmys with a record 24 nominations – the most ever for a comedy in a single year – and had the momentum of a huge farewell narrative behind it. But it only ended up winning one for Jean Smart and a Creative Arts Emmy for picture editing. In other words, last night Hacks lost 22 Emmys.
