As we kind of sit around and twiddle our thumbs waiting for Season 17 information, I'm as brainrotted as ever on everything that's come before it. And as I was getting high and watching baseball Monday night, giffing scenes from this show as I tend to do, I once again questioned how Glenn Howerton has never been nominated for an Emmy, which got me thinking...the Emmys are actually kinda soon. The 2023 Emmys happening just in January, TV schedules being shortened and Summer shows being shifted due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strikes has thrown off my sense of timing, but the Emmys always are, and will be, in September—which means nominations are in a month or so.
And despite the fact that we just saw the Gang at the Emmys, it wasn't as nominees, because it was one of the few years FX didn't submit Sunny, because it was one of the few years they weren't eligible. Season 16 premiered June 7, 2023, and the cut off for the 2023 Emmys was May 31, 2023, which means Sunny is instead eligible for the 2024 Emmys. So as I'm staring at Glenn Howerton's acting choices on a loop, I realize how soon nominations really are, and that means submissions have already come and gone and I haven't heard a single thing and... did they submit Sunny?
In the past, Studios used to send For Your Consideration packages to Emmys voters with a DVD and a list of submissions. In fact, I have a few on my wall:
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Since the Pandemic, however, everything has been strictly digital. This change blows if you're in love with physical media like I am (or really just see the value in physical preservation of media), but it does have its advantages in that things are submitted online, where it's obviously much easier to find information.
So I set out on a little hunt to see if I could find FX's submissions to confirm Season 16 was listed and be able to spend a nice month daydreaming about Sunny finally getting its nomination before my dreams are ultimately crushed. And thanks to the Disney buyout (I say with a grain of salt, because the monopolization of studios is growing insanely concerning), it was pretty easy for me to navigate their sites to quickly, and happily, confirm Season Sixteen of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been submitted for consideration of an Emmys nomination.
What does that mean for us? Not really anything at all. They've submitted every year for sixteen seasons and been snubbed every time... (not to say my eye won't be on nominations) But continue on with my story, because as I was going back to my gifs (which I still haven't posted as of writing posting this), I realized the one other advantage of everything being moved to fully-digital is that it all has to be online-accessible. But, okay, so if there's no cool physical DVD then it's just episodes that you can watch on Hulu or Cable or your personal harddrive, how's that an advantage? Well, there's one category of the Emmys that isn't dependent on voters watching any of the episodes to consider, and that's Best Screenplay. So if FX has digitally submitted the episodes to voters, they've also digitally submitted any considerations for Best Screenplay...
Yep, that's where this is leading: Season 16 scripts are out there. Well, some are. I found only three were submitted for Best Screenplay: both RCG-written episodes and the Rob Rosell-written episode (which makes sense, I guess), but I also found Disney doesn't care enough to password protect them. So I downloaded them. And now I am sharing them with you:
Script: Celebrity Booze: The Ultimate Cash Grab
Script: Risk E. Rats. Pizza & Amusement Center
Script: The Gang Goes Bowling
Have fun, enjoy the changes (there's some good ones) and thrash a little at the deleted scenes and lines ('cause holy shit why delete THAT). Maybe link the blog as your source if you post snippets of any of the scripts.. I can't make you, cos I didn't really do anything other than find and inform... but I can offer you an egg:
Is it too late to campaign for Frank Vs. Russia to be submitted for Best Screenplay?
-Seth