Where to Binge the 2016 Emmy Nominees
With Emmy night only a week away — Sunday, Sept. 18 to be exact — it’s time to start rooting for your favorites in earnest. But how can you truly know which show is the most deserving if you haven’t seen all of them? That’s why Yahoo TV has assembled this handy guide to where you can binge each of the nominees in the Outstanding Drama, Comedy and Limited Series categories, along with our picks for the must-stream episode.
Drama Series
Better Call Saul
Binge-able On: Amazon for $2.99 an episode or $22.99 for the full season.
Don’t Miss: Season 2’s fifth episode, “Rebecca,” not only provides valuable backstory about Jimmy’s brother, Chuck (Michael McKean), but also features arguably the best of the show’s many brilliant musical montages. Fighting for her professional life, Kim (Rhea Seehorn) works her Post-It Rolodex, cold-calling potential clients until she gets a nibble. In a perfect tough, the entire sequence is scored to a Spanish-language version of the Frank Sinatra standard, “My Way.” Remind us again why McKean and Seehorn aren’t nominated?
Downton Abbey
Binge-able On: Amazon Prime
Don’t Miss: Even if you took a temporary leave from Downton during the show’s later, lesser seasons, you’ll want to be there for the series finale to see how everything shakes out for the Crawleys and their devoted manor staff. No spoilers, but let’s just say that, for once, even #PoorEdith has something to smile about.
Game of Thrones
Binge-able On: HBO Go and HBO Now
Don’t Miss: “The Door” bids farewell to one of Westeros’ most beloved monosyllabic characters, but gives him a send-off worthy of a king. (And we all know what happens to kings on this show.) Plus, there are zombies! Lots and lots of zombies.
Homeland
Binge-able On: Hulu and Amazon Prime with a Showtime subscription, as well as Showtime Anytime
Don’t Miss: Yahoo TV’s Ken Tucker called Homeland’s fifth season its most scary and disciplined since its legendarily great freshman year. The fourth episode, “Why Is This Night Different,” aptly demonstrated the scary part, with a killer shoot-out that left fan favorite Quinn (Rupert Friend) seriously injured and a final scene that’s best described as explosive.
Related: Yahoo TV’s Complete Emmy Coverage
House of Cards
Binge-able On: Netflix
Don’t Miss: “Chapter 44,” where Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is momentarily silenced due to forces beyond his control, and we get to see how the characters cope without his constant scheming. Perhaps not surprisingly, Claire (Robin Wright) ends up scheming enough for the two of them.
Mr. Robot
Binge-able On: Amazon Prime
Don’t Miss: The feature-length Mr. Robot pilot is a satisfying movie in its own right, immediately placing viewers inside the paranoid mind of unstable hacker Elliot (Rami Malek) with mesmerizing imagery and compelling storytelling. You can and should keep watching from there, but it’s rare to see a show that arrives with its ultra-specific vision fully intact in the first episode.
The Americans
Binge-able On: FXNow or Amazon for $2.99 per episode, $24.99 for the full season
Don’t Miss: The sad, strange story of Martha (Alison Wright), unwitting accomplice of Russian spy couple Philip and Elizabeth (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), reaches its suitably tragic denouement in Season 4’s seventh episode, “Travel Agents.” While the episode is affecting on its own terms, the full impact is best felt by experiencing the three previous seasons of The Americans… which, conveniently enough, are streaming on Amazon Prime. So get caught up already — it’s your patriotic duty.
Comedy Series
Black-ish
Binge-able On: Yahoo View andHulu
Don’t Miss: No less a personage than Norman Lear counts Black-ish as one of the most socially relevant (and hilarious) comedy series on the air right now. See why in the standout Season 2 episode, “Hope,” where the Johnson family address the hot button issue of police brutality with plenty of sensitivity, heart and humor. Even Archie Bunker would find something to agree with.
Master of None
Binge-able On: Netflix
Don’t Miss: “Parents” is an important episode to co-creators Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, as they told us in their Emmy Talk. Drawing on their own experiences as second generation immigrants, and starring Ansari’s own mother and father, the writers tell a universal story about their specific families in a mere half-hour. It’s masterful stuff all around.
Modern Family
Binge-able On: Yahoo View andHulu
Don’t Miss: The Season 7 premiere, “Summer Lovin’” throws another wrench into the long running almost-love story of Haley (Sarah Hyland) and Andy (Adam DeVine), the most GIF-able couple this side of Outlander. Don’t worry… they get together eventually, but it’s almost more fun when they’re apart.
Silicon Valley
Binge-able On: HBO Go and HBO Now
Don’t Miss: “Two In the Box” a.k.a. “The One with the Horse Sex” is Silicon Valley at its most shockingly hilarious. Even series star, Thomas Middleditch — who deservedly received his first nomination or Outstanding Actor this season — thought it was crazy.
Transparent
Binge-able On: Amazon Prime
Don’t Miss: With the Pfefferman clan off in their own individual worlds for so much for Season 2, the seventh episode, “The Book of Life,” is a good opportunity to see them all together at the Yom Kippur post-fasting table. But if you think it’s one big happy family gathering, you clearly don’t know the Pfeffermans.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Binge-able On: Netflix
Don’t Miss: It was a long time coming, but the first date between Titus (Titss Burgess) and affable construction worker Mikey (Mike Carlsen) in “Kimmy Kidnaps Gretchen!” is well worth the wait. And are we crazy to consider joining Gretchen’s self-made cult? She seems like she’d keep our lives interesting at any rate.
Veep
Binge-able On: HBO Go and HBO Now
Don’t Miss: A sequel of sorts to Season 4’s standout format-breaker, “Testimony,” Season 5’s penultimate half-hour was mocked up to resemble the documentary that First Daughter Catherine (Sarah Sutherland) had been making all year long. And much like a real documentary, the episode captured fly on the wall moments that showed us new sides of characters we’ve come to know so well.
Limited Series
American Crime
Binge-able On: Netflix
Don’t Miss: “Episode 4” kicks Season 2’s central case up a couple of notches, with the Leyland Academy’s basketball team becoming the subject of intense police speculation following some damning lab tests.
Fargo
Binge-able On: FXNow or Amazon for $2.99 per episode, $19.99 for the full season
Don’t Miss: “Loplop,” in which doomed married couple Peggy (Kirsten Dunst) and Ed (Jesse Plemons) stash an important hostage in a remote hunting cabin. The duo’s utter inexperience at being jailers adds an extra layer of tension to an already gripping episode.
Roots
Binge-able On: Amazon for $5.99 per episode, $14.99 for the full season
Don’t Miss: Both the original 1977 miniseries and the 2016 remake are most famous for the inaugural episodes, when young African tribesman Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby) is forcibly put in bondage and shipped across the ocean to an unfamiliar land.
The Night Manager
Binge-able On: Amazon for $2.99 per episode, $14.99 for the full season
Don’t Miss: Our one word review of the fourth episode: #Hiddlesbum. But there’s so much more to this particular hour than Tom Hiddleston’s backside, including Angela (Olivia Coleman) recounting how she first encountered arms dealer Richard (Hugh Laurie), which should single-handedly earn Coleman the Supporting Actress Emmy she’s been nominated for.
The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Binge-able On: FXNow and Amazon for $2.99 per episode, $19.99 for the full season
Don’t Miss: Honestly, once you start watching, you’re not going to stop anytime soon. But pay special attention to the private dance that Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson) and Chris Darden (Sterling K. Brown) in Episode 6, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.” It’s one of Brown’s favorite sequences from the series as well.
The 68th Primetime Emmy Awards will air on Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ABC.
