Breaking Bad bows out on a high at Emmy Awards

IT was mainly the familiar shows that won the Emmy gongs.

BREAKING Bad claimed multiple crowns yesterday at the 66th Emmy Awards, marking a final coronation for the influential cable drama that ended its five-season run last year.

For the second year in a row, the series about an unlikely meth mastermind took home the award for outstanding drama series. The show’s Emmy haul also included wins for stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn, along with writer Moira Walley-Beckett. The accumulated trophies vindicated fans and critics who have long described Breaking Bad as one of the best TV dramas ever made.

“Thank you so much for this wonderful farewell to our show,” said series creator Vince Gilligan as he accepted the genre’s top award.

As big changes are buffeting the TV industry, the status quo largely held firm at the Emmys. In many major ­categories, voters in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences ­rewarded repeat winners and ­familiar veterans.

For the fifth year in a row, Modern Family won for outstanding comedy series. In tying the record of Frasier for the most consecutive wins, Modern Family preserved the broadcast networks’ grip on the category and held off strong rivals from cable channels FX (Louie) and HBO (Silicon Valley and Veep).

Modern Family also held Netflix at bay. In only its second year as an Emmy contender, the streaming video service secured 31 nominations, but was shut out of the major races on the night. ­Orange is the New Black was seen as Netflix’s best hope of a win, but Emmy voters might have deemed the hour-long dramedy out of place in the comedy category.

Emmys host Seth Meyers joked about the blurring genres (and some of the resulting category confusion) in his opening monologue, saying, “We had comedies that made you laugh and comedies that made you cry, because they were dramas submitted as ­comedies.”

There were some surprises, including the robust showing for Sherlock: His Last Vow . Competing as a miniseries, Sherlock led the Emmys with seven wins, including for co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

And in some cases, new models of television making were rewarded. Fargo, the FX adaptation of the Coen brothers film, won for best miniseries. The victory underscored the growth of the so-called “anthology” series, which have close-ended seasons and cast new stars every year. Other categories, however, carried an air of deja vu, which did nothing to quieten critics who complain Emmy voters too often go with what they ­already know.

For his role on The Big Bang Theory, Jim Parsons won lead actor in a comedy for a fourth time. Julia Louis-Dreyfus celebrated her third consecutive win for Veep, and drew big laughs as she stopped to exchange faux heated kisses with Cranston. “He went for it and I appreciate it,” Louis-Dreyfus said backstage.

She and Cranston had presented an award earlier in the evening, when she pretended she didn’t ­remember his appearance on ­Seinfeld, during which their ­characters dated and kissed.

And Julianna Margulies collected her second award for lead actress in a drama for The Good Wife. For the second year in a row, The Colbert Report won outstanding variety series. It was both a victory lap for Stephen Colbert (heading to CBS to replace David Letterman) and for Comedy Central, which has won the category for 12 years running, mostly for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

During the telecast, much attention was lavished on the big movie stars in attendance, as when presenter Jimmy Kimmel devoted a routine to Matthew McConaughey. But these A-listers, including Julia Roberts, nominated for the HBO movie The Normal Heart, largely went home empty-handed.

Before Cranston won lead actor in a drama, McConaughey had been seen as a frontrunner for his role as a nihilistic cop in HBO’s True Detective.

The series can be seen as something of an Emmy misfire for HBO, which put the show into competition against Breaking Bad instead of submitting it as a miniseries. The network went into the Emmys with 99 nominations and emerged with 19 awards, including a win for Cary Fukunaga, who directed True Detective. Australian Patrick Clair also won a Creative Emmy award last week for his work on the title design for True Detective.

Buffering the miniseries awards was a parody routine about top nominees by Weird Al Yankovic. The ceremony’s emotional high point came with Billy Crystal’s restrained and graceful remembrance of Robin Williams, who died on August 11.

“He made us laugh. Hard. Every time you saw him,” Crystal said. “Robin Williams, what a ­concept.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, AP