The 78th Emmy Awards produced one genuinely useful lesson, and it is not about television.
‘Widow’s Bay’ — a horror-comedy about a cursed seaside New England town, created by Katie Dippold, who won for writing — swept every category it was nominated for and finished with 14 awards, including outstanding comedy series. That breaks the single-season record for a comedy of 13, which was set last year by ‘The Studio.’ Both are Apple TV shows. It is the streamer’s fourth win in six years for outstanding comedy.
The show took inspiration from ‘Jaws’ and Stephen King and won people over, John Jurgensen and Esther Zuckerman write, on the strength of a lovably odd ensemble. Stephen Root won supporting actor as a wary fisherman; Kate O’Flynn won supporting actress as the mayor’s quirky, loner assistant.
The part that is really about portfolios
‘The Pitt,’ the medical drama that won outstanding drama last year as the upstart, repeated — along with a repeat for lead actor Noah Wyle, the first back-to-back winner in that category since Bryan Cranston. But the piece notes that the show “seemed to suffer some side effects of its own success.”
Four of the seven nominees for supporting actress in a drama came from ‘The Pitt.’ The award went to Allison Janney of ‘The Diplomat,’ who seemed genuinely shocked. Three of the seven supporting-actor nominees were ‘Pitt’ men. The award went to Tom Pelphrey of ‘Task.’
Having multiple nominations in the same category may have cancelled out the votes for the show.
That is a concentration problem wearing a tuxedo. Four entries in one category feels like four chances. It is one prize and a divided electorate — and the outsider with a single entry collects.
The same arithmetic runs quietly inside a lot of portfolios. Four holdings that all win under the same conditions are not four bets. They are one bet placed four times, and the diversification is cosmetic.
The rest, for the record
Jean Smart won her fifth Emmy for ‘Hacks,’ giving her a win for every season of the show, her eighth career Emmy, and a tie with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cloris Leachman.
Matthew Rhys did something nobody had managed: two lead-actor Emmys in a single night. One for the limited series ‘The Beast In Me,’ playing a real-estate developer suspected of murdering his wife; the other in ‘Widow’s Bay’ as a frazzled mayor trying to turn a cursed island into the next Martha’s Vineyard.
Mariska Hargitay hosted — the first woman to do so in fifteen years — and opened by singing “I love TV screens” to the tune of “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.” She noted it was reassuring to see so many familiar faces, “and I’m just talking about how many of you I’ve arrested on ‘SVU.’” She came in already a winner this year, with two trophies for ‘My Mom Jayne,’ her documentary about her mother Jayne Mansfield, who died in a car accident when Hargitay was three.
Noah Wyle’s acceptance speech was the most working-class line of the night: “We’re going to be back there hitting it hard tomorrow morning really early.”