“It’s been an incredible year for women in television,” Big Little Lies producer Reese Witherspoon declared from the Emmys stage as her show brought home its fifth win of the night. Then she insisted: “Bring women to the front of their own stories!” Her co-producer and the night’s best-actress winner, Nicole Kidman, added that her friendship with Witherspoon created this opportunity which was one born out of frustration over the lack of good roles for two Oscar-winning actresses. But after Big Little Lies won almost every major award it was nominated for (save for the female-fronted episode of Black Mirror, “San Junipero,” which walked away with a writing win), the power of stories by and about women is impossible to ignore.

This particular category has had a bumpy history at the Emmys. At various times, it was dedicated to miniseries, shared space with TV movies, and at one point heavily favored highbrow British imports like Little Dorrit, Elizabeth I, and The Lost Prince. But recently American networks, fully in the throws of Peak TV, started emulating the British model—and limited series and anthologies like Fargo, American Horror Story, etc. injected new life into what was once a musty category. Movie stars are more inclined to participate in the less restrictive schedules of a limited series. That’s how we get a category like this one stuffed with movie stars and award winners like Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Lange, Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, John Turturro, Geoffrey Rush, Laura Dern, and more. All of the sudden, we had a horse race.

And thanks, in large part, to the precedent set by Ryan Murphy way back in 2011, this category has become a particularly friendly place for actresses to thrive. But though Murphy’s The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story easily won this (and many other) categories last year, in 2017, another female-centric show took the crown he was surely hoping would go to Feud. Despite being dismissed early on as a Lifetime–esque beach read for women, starring women (though what’s wrong with that?), Big Little Lies took the cultural conversation by surprise. A relatively straightforward murder-mystery plot took a backseat to a juicy, yes, but complex exploration of female relationships, male power, and, okay, cliffside house porn.

But should we raise the sticky subject of category fraud even as we celebrate Big Little Lies for a much-deserved win? In 2015, when the rules for this category changed once again, the Television Academy defined it as such: “Programs of two or more episodes with a total running time of at least 150 program minutes that tell a complete, non-recurring story, and do not have an ongoing storyline and/or main characters in subsequent seasons.” But unlike anthologies like American Horror Story or Fargo, the proposed (but not initially planned) second season of Big Little Lies will, according to the latest news from star and producer Witherspoon, pick up with the same characters and story in Season 2. That means, thanks to some kind of loophole, that ladies of Big Little Lies have gotten away with yet another crime. But as was the case with the HBO series itself, we can’t help but root for them.