I had every intention of live blogging the 60th Annual Emmy Awards, but I got distracted by Sunday Night Football and the final game in Yankee Stadium. Ok, I had no intention whatsoever of live blogging the Emmys, but we aim to please, so we wanted to provide a list of the winners even though I personally couldn't care less, and Bill may even care less than I do...
Truthfully, living on the west coast where the awards run tape delayed, I couldn't have live blogged without actually attending the event. Not that we were invited, but I'd much prefer to watch NFL and MLB - but the Emmy Awards are a fine tradition.
John Adams may have been watched by few, but between the "lesser awards" given last week and tonight, it raked in the Emmy Awards and likely set Emmy records for a miniseries.
Tina Fey won big too - not for her portrayal of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, but for best actress in a comedy on 30 Rock, and also as a writer for 30 Rock. Alec Baldwin also won the best supporting actor in a comedy for his role in 30 Rock. He is sooooo good in the role of Jack Donaghy - it makes the show for me.) And 30 Rock also got the nod for best comedy series.
Glen Close won for the good, but nonetheless somewhat overrated Damages. Despite not sharing as much of the elitist love that some critics had for Damages, Close was absolutely outstanding in the role of Patty Hewes and the award is well deserved. My beef with the show is mostly that it ran 13 episodes and probably only needed about nine. Still, I recommend it and I'll certainly check it out when it returns for season two in January. Zelkiko Ivanek also scored a best supporting actor in a drama series for his role in Damages.
Jeremy Piven won another supporting actor in a comedy award for his portrayal of Ari Gold on Entourage.
Mad Men took top honors for the best drama series! Although it didn't get the Bill Gorman seal of approval, I wound up being extremely enamored with it - which may mean I am more in line with the award judges than the masses. Not a good thing really, but I'm very happy for Mad Men! It also took the best writing award for a drama series for its season one pilot, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes"
Though I've never seen it, Bryan Cranston took home the best actor in a drama series for his role in Breaking Bad - AMC's "other show". Hugh Laurie, Michael C. Hall and Jon Hamm were snubbed! Ok, I have no idea if that's true -- I definitely need to check out Breaking Bad.
Here's a table of winners in major categories:
| Category | Winner | Network |
| Comedy Series | 30 Rock | NBC |
| Drama Series | Mad Men | AMN |
| Miniseries | John Adams | HBO |
| Actor in a Comedy | Alec Baldwin - 30 Rock | NBC |
| Actor in a Drama | Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad | AMC |
| Actor in a Miniseries | Paul Giamatti - John Adams | HBO |
| Actress in a Comedy | Tina Fey - 30 Rock | NBC |
| Actress in a Drama | Glenn Close - Damages | FX |
| Actress in a Miniseries | Laura Linney - John Adams | HBO |
| Supporting Actor Comedy | Jeremy Piven - Entourage | HBO |
| Supporting Actor Drama | Zeljko Ivanek - Damages | FX |
| Supporting Actor Miniseries | Tom Wilkinson - John Adams | HBO |
| Supporting Actress Comedy | Jean Smart - Samantha Who | ABC |
| Supporting Actress Drama | Dianne West, In Treatment | HBO |
| Supporting Actress Miniseries | Eileen Atkins, Cranford | PBS |
| Television Movie | Recount | HBO |
| Variety, Music or Comedy | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Comedy Central |
| Reality Competition | The Amazing Race | CBS |
| Reality Host | Jeff Probst - Survivor | CBS |
| Directing Drama | Greg Yaitanes - House | FOX |
| Directing Comedy | Barry Sonnenfeld - Pushing Daisies | ABC |
| Dircting Miniseries, Movie or Special | Jay Roach - Recount | HBO |
| Writing for a Comedy | Tina Fey - 30 Rock | NBC |
| Writing Miniseries, Movie or Special | Kirk Ellis - John Adams | HBO |
It was a very bad show. While slightly better than last year because it wasn’t “in the round,” the hosts thing didn’t work, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert weren’t even that funny. Apparently the best part was when Ricky Gervais was referring to how incredibly awesome Colbert and Stewart were in giving Carell the Emmy last year when Gervais failed to show. But I missed that part anyway.
Oh, and ABC cut off the John Adams writer for saying that Bush is dumb, but they didn’t cut off Paul Giamatti for saying the same thing.
But the 30 Rock love made up for it.
I’d rather [insert the most unpleasant situation that comes to mind] than watch an awards show.
Looking at the list of winners, what jumps out at me is that broadcast TV got its clock cleaned by cable.
Assuming Robert’s list of 24 are the “major” awards, broadcast received only 10 (and four of those were 30 Rock).
If the cable nets start developing comedies like they have dramas, they could lay an even worse beat down on broadcast in the very near future.
Oh yeah, and as Robert mentioned, with the Cowboys/Packers & the final game in Yankee Stadium on at the same time, count on zero 18-49 men having watched, and likely the lowest rated show we have data for (going back to 1986).
Well, to be fair to broadcast, 7 of those cable wins were for miniseries or movie, which broadcast really hasn’t done much of at all in years.
True enough, but one of those broadcast awards went to PBS, which while technically broadcast is definitely in a different category.
I wonder how many viewers this will get this year.
The ceremony itself is a total crock of s— so far. The writing and the 5 hosts just don’t gel at all. Even the ‘glossy’ look reminded me of an (or every) episode of Dancing With the Stars. Set design was good though, heh.
Oh and yes, looks like Gervais is the best presenter so far (he also presented memorable speech moments). When it froze to the shot of Carrell taking his award, Gervais said ‘look at his stupid face.’ He then proceeded to harass Carrell (in his seat), resorting to tickling him just to get his Emmy back.
And this list seems to be missing best writing for a drama, which went to Mad Men.
sadly, the list was hardly comprehensive, plus I was hurrying so I could hang on Derek Jeter’s every final word to Yankees fans. I did reference the Mad Men writing award in the prose but somehow didn’t get it in the table…oops.
Wikipedia has a very nice list of all the winners and noms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60th_Primetime_Emmy_Awards
The breakdown by network (including the less significant Emmys) is:
HBO: 12
NBC: 6 (5 for 30 Rock)
ABC: 4 (3 for Pushing Daisies)
AMC: 3 (2 for Mad Men)
CBS: 2
Comedy Central: 2
FX: 2
BBC: 1
FOX: 1
PBS: 1
So, really, it’s just HBO that’s killing everyone, not so much cable killing broadcast.
from what I gather there were 27 major awards so I missed two others in the table in addition to the Mad Men writing award. I believe the missing two were in the “Variety/Musical/Comedy” category. Don Rickles won one of them. Of the top 27 awards, Cable took 17 out of the 27 (but as Julia notes, many were HBO, and not basic cable). But Mad Men’s victory as top drama was a first for basic cable.
Speaking of Rickles… he was good.
The other one you missed was The Colbert Report’s writing win. But I’m not sure what that category is called.
Oh, and never mind my 3 out of 4 of ABC’s are for Pushing Daisies. That count doesn’t include all of the Creative Arts awards, just the guest stars.
“So, really, it’s just HBO that’s killing everyone, not so much cable killing broadcast.”
HBO has been killing broadcast TV for a while, but now FX and AMC (A movie channel!) are getting in on the fun, while TNT and USA are also making strong scripted dramas and comedies.
It’ll be interesting to see how Mad Men does next week with the Emmy buzz but also broadcast competition. I think it can still top 2 million viewers once again. And Breaking Bad should be interesting to see next winter, when it returns January 20. With the shocker Emmy win that could also top 2 million. All in all, AMC is off to one hell of a start.
As for the Emmy show, it was terrible. It’s frustrating how all the great talents are forced to do such short speeches and get cut off to make room for that…thing of a performance from Josh Groban, or those…things of a hosting group. And yet tomorrow morning the blame for the terrible ratings will rpboably go to the winners, making the producers try some more desperate ratings ploy next season that never work. Sigh.
I wholeheartedly agree with the above comment. The presentation per se is to blame, not the nominated line-ups.
The highlight of the evening (well, the twenty minutes that I saw anyway) was Tom Bergeron being hit in the crotch with a bat. I did see Josh Groban who was marginal and that Laugh-In skit looked like they had never rehearsed it. Terrible, just terrible.
The show was simply boring. The hosts were terrible. The best part of the entire evening was Bryan Cranston winning. Not only did he deserve to win, but he was the biggest underdog in that category in many years. ‘Breaking Bad’ (all 7 episodes) is a great show and I can’t wait for it to return on January 20.
‘Mad Men’ won for last year and I dare say that new viewers might not get what all the rage is for the show as Season 2 has been lackluster. The real test of the ratings will be in two weeks when the hype has died down and we’ll see if the “new” audience” comes back for a second look.
Does anybody think that the Emmys are now biased against network TV? I’m not necessarily saying that the networks air better shows than cable, but the Emmys seemed to go out of their way to completely ignore network television. Given the ratings, I doubt the networks will even continue to air the awards.
Besides The Amazing Race has there ever been another series to win 6 consecutive emmys, in the same category?
Thanks
Richard, unfortunately we don’t really follow those kinds of stats here, so we don’t have any idea. Sorry.