Shock of 65th Emmy Awards

Award Season has finally kicked off! The Emmy Awards were this weekend and they were quite different from years before. Check it out.

Neil Patrick Harris was the host this year so expectations were high, not only because he has quite the experience with hosting big award shows like the Tonys, but also because he is the main character of the funny sit-com How I Met Your Mother.  However, perhaps my expectations were too high.  The grand entrance of an original musical number, specially choreographed to the Emmys for our excitement and to keep us wanting to watch more was none other than disappointing.  Mostly because there wasn’t one.  Instead it was like most previous openings where other celebrities are in some way trying to tell him how to host a show and what he is doing wrong, as well as him taking a few jabs at other celebrities in the audience.  The opening of the show was quite sad, much like the rest of the show.

 

This year the show seemed more to me as a funeral reception more than anything.  Like Ken Levine, a hollywood comedic writer, put it, “it was one long funeral interspersed with production numbers.” There were individual tributes, musical tributes, presidential tributes, and they even felt it necessary to show Lee Harvey Oswald get shot again. I was very confused by all of this. Especially by Elton Johns tribute to Liberace.  Its been over 25 years, I didn’t get it but maybe im just missing something, I don’t know.  Regardless, I did not see the relevance most of that had to do with the actual Emmy awards.

To kick off one of the big shocks of the night. Merrit Wever, from Nurse Jackie, won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She out-won Anna Chlumsky from Veep, Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock, Jane Lynch from Glee, Mayim Bialik from The Big Bang Theory, Sofia Vergara in Modern Family, and two-time consecutive Emmy winner, Julie Bowen, from Modern Family. I definitely didn’t see that one coming. And perhaps what was even more unexpected was her speech.  A short and humorous “ Thank you so much. I gotta go. Bye” was all she said in response to her new piece of gold.  Maybe she was afraid of the getting cut off by the music cue in the middle of an important acknowledgment like every other winning actor and actress of the night. Either way it was actually pretty fun to watch since it was not at all what I was expecting to happen.

The other major shock of the night was when Jeff Daniels, as Will McAvoy, in the show The Newsroom, was the winner for Outstanding Lead Actor in Drama Series.  He beat out John Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men,  Hugh Bonneville  for Downton Abbey, Damian Lewis for Homeland,   Kevin Spacey for House of Cards, and Bryan Cranston as the infamous Walter White of Breaking Bad.   My mouth dropped to say the least. I definitely would have lost a bet on this one.  All of these actors do tremendous work, however I firmly believe Breaking Bad would not be the show it is without Bryan Cranston.  His performances are incredible and very much worth of the acknowledgement. 

 On a different note, The mid-show performance referencing all of the shows for best TV drama was really cool to watch. The choreography was spectacular in the way that every move correlated to the different themes of the shows and what they represent.  It was by far my favorite part of the entire show.  Besides when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler decided to crawl up the stage. That was priceless.

The Emmy awards are always something I look forward to watching around this time of year.  However this year was a miss in terms of entertainment for me so I hope for the Oscars and Golden Globes to make up for it in the next few months.