Another year at the Emmys, another last-minute surprise. Last year, it was “Hacks” beating defending champion “The Bear” after the FX show had set a new record for most wins in a single year by a comedy series.
This year, it was “The Pitt” sneaking in and winning the last two awards of the night to upset “Severance,” which had gone into the show with 27 nominations, more than double the total of its rival.
The two series had squared off at the beginning of the night, with “Severance” seemingly having the upper hand. “The Pitt” co-star Katherine LaNasa’s win over four different nominees from “The White Lotus” early in the show was the first sign of how strong “The Pitt” was with Emmy voters (though it may also have been a reminder of the perils of vote-splitting), and the enthusiasm in the room for her win was another good sign for the medical drama.
But a few minutes later, “Severance” star Tramell Tillman got an equally rapturous reception. And when Britt Lower followed by beating the heavily favored Kathy Bates (“Matlock”) for Best Actress in a Drama Series, it seemed that “Severance” was on a roll.
But that thorny sci-fi show, the subject of an on-stage joke about how impenetrable it can sometimes be, didn’t win again after those two acting awards. And “The Pitt” may have overcome the big lead “Severance” had in nominations by simply being more emotional and timelier, given its release in early 2025 as the Trump administration was making changes that would imperil healthcare for many people.
“The Pitt” always felt like more of an Emmy show in spite of the statistics that favored “Severance,” and it turned out to be more of an Emmy show.
Its win was part of an Emmy ceremony that felt different than other recent years, when Television Academy voters tended to dump a lot of awards on a few shows. They did that again this year to a degree, particularly in the limited series categories, but in the midst of showering a lot on a little, they also threw in some pretty big changes of pace. Even in the areas where you pretty much knew where you were going to end up – with “The Studio” and “Adolescence” winning the big comedy and limited series awards – you didn’t know exactly how you were going to get there or what detours you were going to take along the way.
That was a change from the last few Emmy programs, when it wasn’t unusual for all seven awards in a specific area to be divvied up between only two programs. Last year, “Hacks” and “The Bear” were the only comedy series to win on Emmy night; the year before, “Succession” and “The White Lotus” were the only two drama series to be honored.
If recent years have seen voters surgically targeting specific shows and showering them with awards, their spray pattern was much wider this year – and for the most part, it was very satisfying.
When the first five drama awards went to four different shows, with “Slow Horses” scoring a surprise win in the directing category and “Andor” following with a screenwriting victory, it almost seemed as if Emmy voters were actively trying to spread the love, which they seemed to have forgotten to do in the last five to 10 years.
On the comedy side, Jeff Hiller’s win for “Somebody Somewhere” was more of the same, with Harrison Ford or Ike Barinholtz seemingly poised to take that honor over the guy from a show that had been completely shut out by Emmy voters until its final season.
But that only slightly derailed the victory march of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s “The Studio,” which went into the night having won nine awards at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys ceremonies. Within the first hour of Sunday’s show, it had won two Emmys to tie the record set by “The Bear” last year for the most wins for a comedy show in a single year; 40 minutes later, it won a third to own the record outright.
In many ways, “The Studio” was made for the Emmys. It was funny but also visually bold with its use of long shots; and for people in the business, it was an insider’s delight, with a murderer’s row of luminaries playing themselves: Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Sarah Polley, Olivia Wilde… In a year in which 2023 winner “The Bear” seemed to have lost its mojo with voters, and 2024 winner “Hacks” didn’t have the heat it did when it upset “The Bear” last year, it was a clear favorite, even after “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder finally won the supporting actress award after losing for the show’s first three seasons.
“Adolescence” was, if possible, even more of a lock. Released by Netflix in the same window as Emmy winner “Baby Reindeer” was last year, its story of a teenage boy accused of killing a female classmate was urgent and moving in a way that made it a frontrunner from the start. It won six of the seven limited-series awards handed out on Sunday – everything except Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, a category in which “Adolescence” did not enter anyone, which was won by Cristin Milioti for “The Penguin.”
The fact that Milioti’s co-star, Colin Farrell, lost the best-actor category to Stephen Graham was the ultimate sign of just how dominant “Adolescence” was.
Until “The Pitt” pulled off its eleventh-hour upset, the biggest suspense wasn’t what would win, it was whether host Nate Bargatze would have to donate any of the promised $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, or whether speeches running past 45 seconds would wipe out the entire donation. (And then they did just that with a half hour to go, but there wasn’t even much suspense over whether Bargatze and the Television Academy would step in at the end of the night and make good on the entire $100,000 and then some.)
At first, that gimmick of Bargatze’s actually succeeded in cutting down on acceptance speeches in a way that other awards show’s constant reminders and occasional gimmicks haven’t, though it also hijacked that aspect of the show and robbed some of the speeches of some emotion.
But the final stretch of the show regained some of that heart, mostly because of the popularity of the big winners: first “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” then “Adolescence,” then “The Studio,” then Noah Wyle and “The Pitt.”
That’s a roster of Emmy recipients that was enormously popular inside the Peacock Theatre, and played well on TV, too. And at an Emmys that was notable for being different from recent shows, the flash of deja vu at the very end was a welcome capper to a good night.
