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Emmys 2012, or ‘Boy, Do These Folks Love Homeland & Modern Family’

TV’s backslappingest night took place on Sunday, and the Emmys were filled with as few surprises as you might imagine. Perhaps most gratingly, MODERN FAMILY continued its puzzling dominance of the comedy categories, most puzzlingly beating Louis CK for Comedy Directing (for the episode in which he shot a beautiful mini-movie in Afghanistan. Not enough, apparently). Eric Stonestreet also beat out NEW GIRL’s Max Greenfield for supporting actor, his second win in three years. Even hot new HBO critical darlings GIRLS and VEEP couldn’t stop MODERN FAMILY’s winning streak for best Comedy Series.

The drama categories were similarly dominated, though in a manner less annoying than just frustrating. Showtime’s big new hit HOMELAND scooped Actor, Actress and Series. The show is quite the critical smash and it’s better to see something new take the prize than a ludicrously safe choice. However. HOMELAND has taken the prize away from season four of BREAKING BAD, a show for the ages and arguably the best season of television since THE WIRE’s own fourth. Obviously awards only mean so much and so forth, but it would have been nice to see such an exceptional set of episodes rewarded accordingly.

In other BREAKING BAD news, one of the nicer pieces of news was AARON PAUL winning a second Emmy for his consistently brilliant performance. He beat out worthy competition like Gus Fring himself, and MAD MEN’s Jared Harris. This was just one of MAD MEN’s many snubs, as the once-favourite of the Emmys went 0-17.

The other awards went off without much of a hitch. Jon Cryer somehow won Best Comedy Actor for his continued presence in TWO AND A HALF MEN in a pretty low end category. Perhaps his closest competition (save for the equally tedious Jim Parsons of THE BIG BANG THEORY) was Louis CK, who managed to win two Emmys of his own, in another piece of good Emmy news. Amy Poehler managed to be snubbed yet again for her career defining performance in PARKS AND RECREATION, though having lost to VEEP’s Julia Louis-Dreyfuss softens the blow a little.

Another less than inspiring year for TV’s grandest night, then, but as usual, it must be remembered how little these things really mean. For every MODERN FAMILY line-towing, there’s a nice surprise like CK or a deserving winner like Paul or Louis-Dreyfus. With HOMELAND premiering its second season soon, it has potential as a future awards dominator, but there’s still one year of Walter White and his machine gun left to come. 

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. John

    Sep 26, 2012 at 9:40 am

    No way was the fourth season of Breaking Bad the best season of any drama since The Wire’s fourth year. It’s not even as good as Breaking Bad’s second season.

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