It’s Emmy Season, and Emmy voters are currently voting on which shows and which actors get nominated for Emmys. The actual nominations don’t come out until July, so right now is prime hustlin’ time. That’s why the next few weeks are going to be full of TV actors reminding us about their shows and doing lots of interviews. It will be interesting to see which Game of Thrones actors come out for the Hustling Time – Emilia Clarke has been active, and I feel like she would really like to be recognized with a nomination and win for the final season of Game of Thrones. But the rest of the actors? Kit Harington is in rehab, Lena Headey probably doesn’t give a sh-t and Peter Dinklage is (I hope) extremely embarrassed about the way Tyrion gaslighted Daenerys. And for sure, none of the GoT scripts should get any writing nominations. So what are the chances for Game of Thrones across the Emmy board?

Many high-profile TV series came to an end this past season — among them, CBS’ The Big Bang Theory; The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin; Netflix’s House of Cards and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; and Amazon’s Catastrophe and Fleabag. But none left a bigger Emmy footprint during their runs than HBO’s two stalwarts: Game of Thrones, which has scored 128 nominations, more than any other scripted show in history, and 47 wins; and Veep, which saw Julia Louis-Dreyfus win the Emmy for best actress in a comedy in all six of its previous seasons. Most strikingly, both shows won the series Emmys in each of their past three seasons.

Now the question is, will one or both go out with a four-peat? Thrones’ final season — and, in particular, its series finale, which was watched by an HBO record 13.6 million people — was slammed by critics and many viewers, whereas Veep’s ending was met with the opposite reaction. The contrast is starkest when seen through the prism of IMDb user ratings: The last episode of Veep was the highest-rated of its entire run (9.6 of 10), whereas the finale of Thrones was the lowest (4.5 of 10).

What happened? Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss wanted their final two seasons to consist of fewer episodes than the previous six. For character studies like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, which split their last seasons into two, this was not an issue, but for a sprawling epic like Thrones, cutting down the episode count altered the pacing to which viewers had become accustomed, making big moments feel rushed. Furthermore, Thrones boxed itself into a corner by hyping a single question for years: Who will sit on the Iron Throne? The danger was that the audience might not like the answer — and that is precisely what happened.

Only nine shows have won a series Emmy for their final season. Shows with famously satisfying finales have won (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Breaking Bad), lost (Mad Men, The Americans) and not been nominated (Newhart, Justified) — and shows with infamously divisive endings have won (The Sopranos), lost (Seinfeld, Friends) and not been nominated (Lost, Dexter). This is the case because shows do not exist in a bubble — they exist among competition. And, this year, Thrones actually has less of it than Veep.

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

I think Emmy voters simply have their favorites no matter what, and so Julia Louis-Dreyfus will probably be a shoo-in for Best Actress in a Comedy, and maybe the affection for her will extend to the show winning Best Comedy. As for Game of Thrones… I think the best chance for GoT walking away with an Emmy is actually for the show, for Best Drama. Emmy voters have shown time and time again that they’re not interested in giving Emmys to the actors (except maybe Peter Dinklage), but they like the show. Or they did. But yeah, if you’re asking if the crappy final season will damage the show’s Emmy chances, it totally will. People were truly MAD about that bullsh-t ending. The TV Academy should take back a couple of GoT’s Emmys just for Tyrion’s “who has the best story?” monologue.

Photos courtesy of HBO/Game of Thrones.