With Pluribus wrapping up its superlative first season on Apple TV, featuring a commanding central performance by Rhea Seehorn as the curmudgeonly Carol Sturka, one thing is abundantly clear: those absolute losers in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences better give Seehorn an Emmy for her role on the show, or else, I swear to god, I honestly don’t know what I’ll do *stamps on ground and throws hat like Yosemite Sam*.
Is that a bit extreme? Maybe. Pretty much anything Yosemite Sam does is extreme. But the Academy has a long history of ignoring the superlative work Seehorn has done on TV. For her role as Kim Wexler on AMC’s Better Call Saul, which was — even beyond Bob Odenkirk — the backbone of the whole show, she was nominated exactly twice over the course of six seasons: once in 2022, and once in 2024. Seehorn lost the Emmy both times, and even lost for her nomination for the web series Cooper’s Bar in 2022, as well. Nothing against any of the other nominees, but particularly for the final season of Better Call Saul, where Seehorn gave one of the most outstanding TV performances of all time, not handing her a statue is the sort of thing citizen’s arrests were made for.
Part of the problem is likely that Seehorn’s acting is incredibly subtle, and particularly when it came to Kim Wexler, a large part of the character was that she was bottling up all of her emotions at all time. There were none of the histrionics or tearful monologues that make great Emmy submission tape, yet she still commanded the screen in every single frame.
For Pluribus, Carol Sturka is a vastly different character, but is still mostly internal, which leads to a fear that the Academy still won’t know what to do with her. Add in that Seehorn will inevitably be competing in the Lead Actress category instead of Supporting, and you have a recipe for potential disaster.
So I’m thinking, why don’t we neg them? Maybe if we explain to the Academy that they’re a bunch of numb-nuts who wouldn’t know a good performance if it smacked them in the face, they’ll feel ashamed enough to give Pluribus — and more importantly Seehorn — a better chance to actually take home the top prize.
There’s another fear here, which is that the Vince Gilligan-led show has faced some backlash for it’s slow pace, with even some critics calling it boring. I’d personally argue that the correct word is “deliberate,” not “slow.” TV is more than a plot delivery machine, and every frame and beat of Pluribus, particularly as seen through Seehorn’s performance, offers up additional information not just about the surprising sci-fi concept of the series, but far more importantly ekes out what we learn about Carol’s character. The purpose of a TV series is not to just spoon-feed you the answers to mysteries, that’s what Wikipedia pages are for. And if you don’t know the difference between slow and deliberate you should probably hand in your critic gun and critic badge to your criticism chief. But we’re hear to shame the Academy, not fellow TV critics.
Hey Emmys, when you fell out of the dumb tree, did you hit every branch on the way down? Because if not, maybe you should nominate Rhea Seehorn for an Emmy for Pluribus. And if you really want to prove the dumb truck didn’t pick you up and take you to the dumb dump this morning because you’re a piece of human garbage, you’ll let her win.
How about some more fears? There’s also a fair amount of misogyny at play when it comes to this show. To be 100% clear, you’re allowed to not like a show or not vibe with it, and it doesn’t make you a misogynist. But some of the same people who were over-the-moon for the deliberate pace of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have suddenly felt it’s a step too far if a woman is spending an episode slowly breaking into a million pieces while singing popular songs to herself, versus Bryan Cranston or Bob Odenkirk engaging in similar activities. Men slowly building crimes? Good. Women holding in their emotions in order to figure out how to save the world? Bad. If only there was some real-world equivalent for these dual reactions viewers are having to TV shows, but alas, there is not.
But again, I am veering from my point, which is to make the Academy feel bad. Hey Academy, your mom called. She said: you suck. Unless you give Rhea Seehorn an Emmy for Pluribus. In which case, you don’t suck.
Look, I am (you could probably figure this out based on the tone of this piece) not a great Emmy prognosticator. Nobody is going to call me to offer commentary for their awards podcast or anything. But one note in Seehorn’s favor is that she was nominated for a Golden Globe for the first time ever for Pluribus. Perhaps it’s easier to see the work she’s doing when she’s in nearly every frame of the nine episodes of a season, versus the understated way Seehorn portrayed Kim Wexler as always allowing herself to be second to someone else. So it’s possible the Emmys could take a tip from the Globes and actually give Seehorn the kudos she deserves for Pluribus.
One note against? The timing of the whole thing. The entire first season of Pluribus is safely in the Emmy nomination timeline. But nominations don’t close until May 7, 2026, and voting doesn’t begin until June 11, 2026. That’s a long time from now, with usually a lot of awards-bait TV packed into March through May to get in under the wire for nominations. There’s every chance that Pluribus, which likely won’t come back until 2027 at the earliest for Season 2, will have been mostly forgotten by the nominators in the Academy by then.
So it’s our job to make them not forget… To call them a bunch of troglodyte morons who probably eat paste for dinner every night.
Are awards the be all end all? No, of course not. Even if Seehorn doesn’t win, or beyond all explicable reason isn’t nominated for an Emmy, her dazzling work on the series won’t be forgotten by viewers. But if the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences wants to get invited to our birthday parties this year, they better give Rhea Seehorn an Emmy for Pluribus. You dweebs.
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