Emmy Awards Recap: Winners and Losers
Mad Men and Modern Family came out tops on TV's most glamorous night—with Glee, despite the hype, nabbing just two awards. Choire Sicha on the show's new cool quotient, plus see red-carpet fashions.
Mad Men and Modern Family came out tops on TV's most glamorous night—with Glee, despite the hype, nabbing just two awards. Choire Sicha on the show's new cool quotient, plus see red-carpet fashions. Plus, watch the 14 best moments from the show.
The opening number, the jazzy, semi-ironic production and graphics, and Jimmy Fallon's once-spiky hair all screamed, "This is just like MTV! Really! We're cool, and we're young! Look, we've got the kids from Glee and that funny old lady that we don't understand why you like her, but we know you do, because we see it on the social networks!" (And—sidebar!—just like in real life, in the Emmys there's also always a black girl in the back who's the one who can actually sing—but she's still in the back.)
Ah well, TV awards. They always begin begging for young eyeballs and end in Tom Selleck and Ted Danson.
Gallery: Emmy Awards Red Carpet and Ceremony
It's fair to say that the 2010 Emmys were pleasant, amusing, full of very talented people and not upsetting! And yet, two hours in, one was ready for a nap. This is a major victory for a TV awards show. Everyone in Hollywood should go take his and her mistresses and concubines out for some celebratory Champagne and ketamine.
• View Our Complete Emmy CoverageObviously, they could have cut the unintelligible jokes about Twitter, but this is a harsh and very real world in which we live, so what we got will do. There's also definitely something wonderful about the "liberal Hollywood out of touch with real TV in real America!" component of the evening. For starters, how long can it possibly be until reality TV gets broken into separate categories for competition and docu-soap and self-improvement?
And, hello, Friday Night Lights? So many nominations, apparently so few watching among the voters. Apart from the much-watched Modern Family, the cumulative ratings for all of these winners is basically Cleveland.
Breaking Bad won awards for lead actor Bryan Cranston and supporting actor Aaron Paul (as expertly predicted, along with most other big awards, by The Daily Beast’s Jace Lacob), but its most recent finale grabbed a mere 1.6 million viewers. That’s fewer people than the population of Dallas. (The Tonys broadcast? That gets 7 million! Which is equivalent to the number of gays in New York City with TVs, obviously.)
But first, let us remember some Very Important Moments.
Greatest Fashion Moment: Ryan Murphy's gorgeous blue evening jacket. Tom Ford! Is there anything he can't do? (Answer: Win an Emmy. Or an Oscar. So far.)
Worst Fashion Judgment Moment: The last-second lead-in to the show proper was this terrible woman reviewing red-carpet fashion who trashed Anna Paquin's stupendous Alexander McQueen dress. Listen, missy, whoever you are. First, the man is dead. Also, he is a genius and that is a great dress. If I knew the names of the sort of people who do fashion commentary on red carpets, I'd write a nasty letter about you! Or at least write a nasty tweet. OK maybe at most I'd badmouth you around the house for a while. Americans are really lazy.
Secretly Most Influential: Did you notice during the comedy montages how much joke-dancing goes on as shtick now? Ellen DeGeneres has infected all of TV with dancing. No doubt she's sitting in her sapphic palace cackling on her money.
Most Enjoyable Crowd Moment: There was a one-second shot in which one could see Matthew Perry turning down a beer during Ricky Gervais' (terrific) segment that ended in beer deliveries. Matthew Perry! He's OK, everyone!
Most Teasing Moments: Every glimpse of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Can't we just have a three-hour Amy and Tina festival on TV sometime? It can air right after the three-hour Tina Fey-Jon Hamm variety hour. Variety! If you know what I mean!
In the end, absolutely we must look back on this as yet another very golden year for television. Love for Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Modern Family—these are good things.
The future just doesn't look as bright. You saw those ads for upcoming shows! They include a comedy about outsourcing, called, inventively, Outsourced. It stars Ryan Reynolds-John Krasinski lab-created offspring Ben Rappaport. He seems like he should be on one of our many wonderful and under-Emmy-awarded vampire shows—in the role of Buff and Adorable Yet Unremarkable Victim #43, with eight seconds on screen whilst drained by a fun pair of bisexual swingers. Go Method with it, Ben!
Also there is a thriller crime show that is apparently about how cool it is to catch Mexicans on the border or something. And good grief, they're driving that Community cast around in that sponsored car like they were a bunch of contracted America Idol contestants.
So that's not all sounding so great. Get ready for Emmys 2011: Breaking Bad v. Friday Night Lights v. Mad Men, the rematch.
Choire Sicha is co-proprietor of The Awl and is at work on a nonfiction book for HarperStudio.
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