TV’s new 15 minutes: Why the Emmys tweaked its short-form categories

Although I could not care less who does or doesn’t get an Emmy, I note with approval the academy’s remodeling and expansion of its “short-form” categories for works lasting less than 15 minutes an episode, including nods to outstanding actor and actress in a comedy or drama. Six episodes make a series, by their reckoning, though there seems to be no minimum duration for what makes an episode — and rightly so.

For a variety of practical reasons, television has mostly come in multiples of 30 minutes; we casually accept that an episode of drama lasts an hour, a comedy half an hour. (It’s an illusion, of course — a network comedy actually lasts about 22 minutes nowadays, a drama twice that.) But the Internet, where the short form lives almost exclusively, evolved differently; it doesn’t punch a clock.

This expansion acknowledges that old walls are falling; YouTube and its cousins are getting their undeniable due. And while this may not affect who gets nominated – nods in the past have tended to go to established networks’ online presences – it does open the field.

Ileanna Douglas’ “Easy to Assemble,” set at an IKEA store, is just one example of a web series that functions as a fully realized sitcom.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times )

There was a time, I admit, I had my doubts. But series like Felicia Day’s “The Guild,” Ileanna Douglas’ “Easy to Assemble” and Amanda Lund and Maria Blasucci’s “Ghost Ghirls,” which work not as segmented movies or collected sketches but full-on, fully realized sitcoms, convinced me otherwise. Amy York Rubin’s “Boxed In,” Melissa Hunter’s “Adult Wednesday Addams” and Paula Pell and James Anderson’s “Hudson Valley Ballers” have redoubled that conviction. Benjamin Apple, who has put up many online series – “Terrible Auditions” is his latest – typically gets out of an episode in under two minutes; it’s some of the best TV around. Do I expect him to be nominated? No, but it’s nice to know he could be.

It’s true that Web drama hasn’t worked as well as comedy or native-to-the-medium nonfiction inventions like Hank and John Green’s “Vlogbrothers” and Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal’s “Good Mythical Morning.” This may be in part because viewers don’t go looking for a hit of tragedy to fill time between office tasks or while waiting for Uber. (There is the news for that.) But it also means that we don’t know what successful short-form drama looks like yet.

A haiku tells a story no less than a saga does; a cameo can be as powerful as a mural, an etude as deep as a symphony. Do you judge a meal by its weight? (I hope not.)

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