Emmy Awards (2013) Ruled by Death,Dancing and Drugs

This year's awards were filled with some pretty big surprises (more about those below), but the ceremony seemed to ruled by three things: death, dancing, and drugs.

Dancing

Let's tackle these alphabetically, dancing obviously comes first.  Neil Patrick Harris puts on a great show, he is a song and dance man, but I can't help but think that the pressure to do a lavish dance number took over the fact that he did not want to for monologue, but put a dance number in the middle of the show?

Harris is hilarious; he has great puns, but he felt out of his element tonight, the opening with the past hosts fell flat until Amy Poehler and Tina Fey chimed in to being on the laughs for the the first award of the night.

In the middle of the show Neil put together a pointless dance number with Nathan Fillion and Sarah Silverman, I am still baffled at why this happened and why these two stars.  This was put in, and people's speeches were cut off for this?

Props to the show for doing the Best Choreography Award on the show, and the number by the nominees was great, and connected to the different series, I was entertained by this, and glad cutie Derek Hough won.

At the end of the night the lackluster monologue and the attempt to be too showy made this a bummer of a show"

Death 

Speaking of ultimate bummers, or downers, I get that Jame Gandolfini, Cory Monteith, and Jonathan Winters were all "bigger" names who passed away this year, but having the formula of award death tribute brought down this show in a big way.  Yes Carl Reiner, and Edie Falco made me cry, and their tributes were beautiful, but this was too much.  I get the sincerity was there, but couldn't they have played clips from the actors shows?  This would have made much more sense.

Drugs

On to things that do not make, sense and that was many of the winners came from out of left field, although none of them were exactly.  I have to wonder if people were high while voting, or if voters finally stopped rubber stamping winners?  Breaking Bad applause also dominated the applause of the evening.

I have to applaud the voters for breaking the mold, in fact none of the winners should have been "surprising" the real surprise is that voters did not follow the trend they typically follow.

Awards

The first surprise of the night came with the Outstanding Comedy Supporting Actress winner Merrit Wever; she was a massive surprise she had 100/1 odd on most sites, and most people predicted her last, or not at all.  Wever's shocked speech proves this with a simple "Thank You."

While some may be surprised Tony Hale won Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, I had him ranked second.  I knew he was a true spoiler, but I thought they would go with a Modern Family guy for sure.  Modern Family only took home two trophies tonight no acting winners for the first time in the shows history which shows its vulnerability for next year, watch out for Veep!  Even though it was an expected win I have to say that Julia Louis Dreyfuss bringing Tony Hale onto the stage was the best inside joke within an acceptance speech, ever!

Another surprise came when they announced Bobby Cannavale the winner in the Outstanding Supporting Actor Drama category.  In my predictions I talked about my hunch he would win, and placed him second in my predictions as well.  Boardwalk in the Drama Series category but won the most Emmy Awards with 6 wins.  Cannavale is a truly respected actor, and had a previous win, I had a hunch, but for some reason bet against him.

Jeff Daniels was the next big surprise winning Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, if there was going to be a spoiler I thought it was going to be Spacey, but my guess is that voters were over the moon with Daniel's speech at the beginning of the Pilot for Newsroom, which was a great soliloquy on the problem with our society.

The Colbert Report finally toppled The Daily Show in Variety Show Writing, and Outstanding Variety Show.  The Amazing Race was taken down for only the second time in the history of Outstanding Reality Show/Competition by The Voice.  The Voice has done what American Idol could never do, which was interesting.

Will these wins signify new patterns, or were people expecting voters to be as predictable as they have been in the past few years?  I think that many of the winners were the right choices especially Breaking Bad for Outstanding Drama Series.  I would just caution the people behind this ceremony to let winners talk a little longer, and avoid the terrible "middle" dance numbers.