Emmy Awards 2010

HBO, as usual, ruled in the movies categories, with multiple wins for Temple Grandin and the miniseries The Pacific. Al Pacino also won for You Don’t Know Jack.

Wins for ABC’s freshman comedy began early with trophies for creators Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd for writing, and co-star Eric Stonestreet (Cameron Tucker), who accepted the prize for supporting actor by saying “all I wanted to be was a clown in the circus when I was a kid growing up.” When accepting the Emmy for best comedy, Levitan gave a shout-out to all the show’s fans, big and small. “We are so thrilled that families are sitting down together to watch a television show, and we just wanted to say we are so happy that you have let us into your families,” he said on stage, with the full cast behind him.

In contrast, the creator of Mad Men behaved as if he never left the stage when accepting the Emmy for best drama. Having already won the gold earlier in the night for writing, Matthew Weiner took the stage at ceremony’s end by saying ”So where was I?” Remarkably, the actors on the drama have never won an Emmy, though castmembers like Jon Hamm, John Slattery and Elisabeth Moss have received multiple nominations.

Though Glee was a huge favorite going into tonight’s Emmys, the only prizes given to the Fox dramedy went to co-star Jane Lynch (Sue Sylvester) and creator Ryan Murphy, who won for directing the pilot that first aired last May but ran again — as a director’s cut — at the start of the 2009-10 season.

Edie Falco, an Emmy favorite because of her work on The Sopranos, won for starring in Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. Falco was a critic pick but clearly, she wasn’t expecting to take home another statue and as a result, is now the first woman in Emmy history to post wins for a comedy and a drama. “Oh, this is the most ridiculous thing that has ever, ever happened in the history of this lovely award show,” she said on stage. “I’m not funny.”
Modern Family” joins a long line of classic TV shows to win top comedy series for their first seasons. Among them: “All in the Family” (1971, the first of four wins), “Taxi” (1979, the first of three in a row), “Cheers” (1983, the first of four), “The Cosby Show” (1985), “The Golden Girls” (1986, the first of two in a row), “The Wonder Years” (1988) and “Frasier” (1994, the first of a record five in a row). “Modern Family” co-creator Lloyd shared in all of those wins for “Frasier” and also won a writing Emmy for that show in 1996.

The most recent laffer to win for its inaugural season was “30 Rock.” It took home the Emmy in 2007 and again in 2008 and last year. However, show creator and star Tina Fey must have been reading our pundits predictions, which were fool-proof on the comedy front. When drama actress winner Kyra Sedgwick asked Fey, who was presenting, to keep her Emmy while she read off her speech, she quipped it would be the only one she held that night.

Falco made Emmy history by beating Fey and the other funny ladies, thus becoming the first woman to have won the top awards for both comedy and drama series. Previously, she had prevailed in three of her six Emmy bids for the series “The Sopranos” (1999, 2001, 2003). Carroll O’Connor (“All in the Family,” “In the Heat of the Night”) and Robert Young (“Father Knows Best,” “Marcus Welby, MD”) are the only other double-sided champs.