The Best And Worst Of The 65th Annual Emmy Awards

As an Australian living in America, I got the chance to watch the Emmy Awards live. Television’s night of nights, where audiences get to see the biggest stars of the small screen rub shoulders with… the smaller stars of the small screen. Well, you take what you can get.

With television apparently enjoying a new golden age, the Emmy Awards should be a whole lot of fun, right? They should be so fun and filled with so many memorable moments that they’ll be playing them for years to come on clip shows like 20 to 1. Guys, I just can’t contain my excitement. I’m like Jamie Lee Curtis in those commercials for Activia.

The host for tonight’s festivities is Neil Patrick Harris. After the huge success he’s had hosting the Tony Awards, there’s a lot of promise for his return to the Emmy stage. The night begins with a mildly amusing sketch about binge-watching an entire season of TV sees him sparring with Don Draper and Hannah Horvath, mediating a kerfuffle between reality competition judges, and facing off with Breaking Bad’s Walter White.

Sadly, he had a bit of an off night all ’round.

After walking out on stage, he reels off a few limp jokes that signal he left behind the writers of his acclaimed Tony stints. He’s joined by former hosts Jimmy Kimmel, then Jane Lynch, then Jimmy Fallon — whose microphone falls off during a tap routine — and then Conan O’Brien, who makes a joke about “Honey Bee Boo.” These people are millionaire comedians, folks.

And yet let’s all feel awkward at the moment when, funny or no funny, we realise we’d still hit Dougie Houser 20 years later.

Hey, look! It’s Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler eating popcorn and wearing 3D glasses and asking Harris to twerk!

“It may be degrading, but we would be de-grateful.” Touché, Amy.

As much fun as it is to note that ‘90s icons Blossom (Mayim Bialik, Big Bang Theory) and My Girl (Anna Chlumsky, Veep) are nominated side-by-side in the same category — Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series — let’s all have a moment of silence for one of televisions greatest creations: Jenna Maroney. With one of the most bravura scene-stealing characters in TV history, actress Jane Krakowski never won a single Emmy!

The only upside to knowing Krakowski lost once again this year is knowing that she lost to Nurse Jackie’s Merritt Wever, who gives one of the best and most concise acceptance speeches I can recall.

My first glass of wine for the evening finishes just as Tina Fey and her 30 Rock writing partner Tracy Wigfield win for writing. Coincidence? I think not! Wigfield gets a nice joke in about her parents preferring Louis. Tina continues to be amazing.

New Girl and Bones stars Zooey and Emily Deschanel – yes, they’re sisters – wage a fierce war against the teleprompter to present Outstanding Supporting Actor In Comedy to Tony Hale from Veep. Can you believe he wasn’t nominated once for playing Buster on Arrested Development? Not even for this:

Jon Hamm walks out alongside Alec Baldwin and the handsome police suddenly don’t know where to look. Hamm clearly wins because, hi, he’s Jon Hamm, but also because he’s wearing a white tuxedo jacket and his face is covered in a beard that resembles something akin to the 18th century American president.

Momentary loss of attention right there, folks.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus accepts her award for Lead Comedy Actress in character, as Selena Meyer from Veep. Co-star Tony Hall stands behind her whispering the speech into her ear, and Anne Chlumsky stays on her phone as per usual. They absolutely kill it.

Meanwhile, fellow nominee Laura Dern is all:

Melissa Leo is announced as a winner for her guest role on Louis, and walks out on stage looking like an extra from an all-circus revue of Cabaret. That there are no pictures of this online means the internet has failed. Instead, lets watch Claire Danes photobomb Lena Dunham!

Anna Gunn from Breaking Bad won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, and this is as good a time as any to bring up her fantastic article about the misogynistic hate that’s been flung on her depiction of Skylar White. It’s excellent and you should read it.

Finally a Neil Patrick Harris song and dance number: ‘The Number in the Middle of the Show‘. He gets in a joke about Hugh Jackman and some inventive acrobatics, but it’s got nothing on his Tony Awards routines.

And then we have this, the greatest moment of the entire Emmy telecast. The mysterious side-stepper who popped out behind NPH, and then slowly, excruciatingly, made his way out of shot.

The awkward mystery man has since been revealed to be comedian Paul Greenberg of Reno 911 and not just a stunned backstage worker like originally thought. Still. Great moment.

“MORE DEAD PEOPLE!” screamed a viewing friend. Seriously, this entire award show was obsessed with death: Edie Falco’s tribute to her Sopranos co-star James Gandolfini and Jane Lynch for Glee‘s Cory Monteith deserve special mention, but yanking American Idol winner Carrie Underwood up onstage to sing The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ in a tribute to the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination was a little bit much.

Here. Have a TV-themed interpretive dance segment.

Meanwhile, I’m up to my fourth wine of the night and it is not making it any easier to get through this show.

Was anybody else cheering for Vera Farmiga as Outstanding Lead Actress for a Drama Series for her batshit crazy performance in Bates Motel? But naturally, they went with Claire Danes for Homeland.

This seems an appropriate time to remember the most memorable moment from last year’s Emmys.

Holla indeed.

We love Ellen Burstyn, but what we love even more is that somewhere along the way to tonight’s Emmy win for Political Animals she morphed into Dorothy Zbornak from The Golden Girls. She thanked the Emmy committee for rewarding “a woman over 65 who still had a lot of juice.” Ain’t that something?

By now, I’m basically typing notes on grape fumes. I know people complain about the Oscars every year, but they have nowhere near as many categories as the Emmys. They could pull make-believe categories out of thin air and nobody would notice.

Oh look, Michael Douglas wins for Behind the Candelabra (it won three all up), and makes a joke about the project being — ahem — a “two-hander” with co-star Matt Damon.

Twitter went into a spin over this, but my favourite response came from @lt_obrien:

For some reason, Will Ferrel was given the honour of announcing the Best Drama and Best Comedy Emmys. Can somebody explain this? Modern Family wins best comedy series for the fourth year in a row beating Louie and Girls, and this one-litre bottle of wine can’t even help with the BLAH. Thankfully, Breaking Bad wins for Best Drama Series. I’ve never watched an episode of that show in my life, but at least now the internet can finally shut up about Bryan Cranston not winning Best Actor.

And with that: it’s finally over!

Still, at only a blissful eleven minutes over-schedule, we can’t complain too much. I’m disappointed that my beloved Mad Men won zero prizes (neither did Game of Thrones, for that matter) — but in the end, we’ll always have this.

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65th Annual Emmy Awards: The Full Winners List