The 65th Annual Emmy Awards took place last Sunday, September 22nd, and were full of ups and downs. It reached it’s highest amount of viewers since 2005 with approximately 17.3 million people tuning in and waiting to be entertained by host Neil Patrick Harris. It was also a time to honor our favorite television shows and, every twenty minutes or so, be reminded to remember those we lost in the past year as well.
The Emmy’s were full of unpredictable winners, or as NPH put it himself – “No one in America is winning their Emmy office pool” – and feelings we couldn’t get a hold of.
The big winner of the night was AMC’s hit drama, Breaking Bad, which took home the award for Best Drama Series despite it’s loses for both Best Actor in a Drama Series – which went to The Newsroom’s Jeff Daniels – and Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – which was awarded to Boardwalk Empire’s Bobby Cannavale.
However, Breaking Bad did take home Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series with Anna Gunn – beating out favorite Maggie Smith for Downton Abbey.
For it’s second consecutive year Best Actress is a Drama Series went to Homeland’s Claire Danes despite hope it might go to this year’s crowd favorite Kerry Washington for Scandal.
As for the comedic categories, Modern Family took home Best Comedy Series for it’s fourth year in a row. This win came out of no where after the hit show was beaten out by Veep’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and Tony Hale for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series went to Nurse Jackie’s Merritt Weaver who made a name for herself with the most memorable speech of the night – “Thank you so much. Uh, I gotta go. Bye.” Followed by fan favorite, Jim Parsons, going home with Best Actor in a Comedy Series for The Big Bang Theory.
As far as the Outstanding Miniseries or Movie awards go, HBO’s Behind the Candelabra dominated by winning the top prize in the category along with Outstanding Directing and Michael Douglas taking home Best Actor.
More shocks included The Colbert Report winning for both Outstanding Variety Series and Outstanding Writing in a Variety Series, House of Cards making history as the Netflix original took home the award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series, and The Voice beating out The Amazing Race for Outstanding Reality Competition.
As promised, the night included tributes to a select few who passed within this past year – including Glee’s Cory Monteith and The Sopranos star, and Rutgers Alumni, James
Gandolfini. The sad monologues provided for a select few finally came to a close with an “In Memoriam” segment towards the end of the night.
There was also a surprise musical number half way through the show provided by NPH himself – since he’s best known for his phenomenal musical numbers from this year’s Tony Awards – that didn’t quite wow the audience as expected. The musical number that did steal the show, however, was the dance number put together by the Best Choreographer nominees a little bit later.
Other performances included Elton John’s tribute to Liberace in honor of Behind the Candelabra and Carrie Underwood’s tribute to television with The Beatles’ hit song “Yesterday”.
It was a night full of mixed reviews and a roller-coaster of emotions. Now let the rest of award season begin!