'Glee,' 'Modern Family' take five Emmys

Fox's Glee and ABC's Modern Family brought popular mainstream series back to the Emmys Sunday night at the 62d annual prime-time prize party at L.A.'s Nokia Theatre. Between them, they snagged five Emmys, and Modern Family was named best comedy series.

AMC's Mad Men won its third consecutive Emmy as television's best drama series.

Counting the so-called Creative Arts Emmys handed out Aug. 21, Family took six Emmys and Glee, four.

Still, there was no denying HBO, which received 24 Emmys overall. HBO's Temple Grandin gobbled up five awards, including best made-for-TV movie. David Strathairn and Julia Ormond were named best supporting actor and actress in a movie or mini, and Claire Danes received the Emmy for lead actress.

She played Grandin, a livestock expert who has autism - a Ph.D. who travels constantly to bring dignity and understanding to those with the condition. Grandin herself stood up and waved to the rest of the audience as Danes and Strathairn accepted their Emmys. Then she hugged executive producer Emily Gerson Saines onstage when the film won the best-movie prize and got her mother to stand up in the audience.

Mick Jackson, the movie's director, also got an Emmy.

In the network sweepstakes, ABC was second with 18. Fox had 11, CBS had 10, and NBC had eight.

For the first time, the Emmy show was divided into five segments - comedy, reality, drama, variety, and movies and miniseries - with clips from each genre summarizing the past TV season's highlights. The structure allowed lots of the big Emmys to come out much earlier in the evening than usual and was one factor making the show itself unusually entertaining.

Comedy came first. Jim Parsons, geek of the week from CBS's The Big Bang Theory, and Edie Falco (Showtime's Nurse Jackie) won as best lead actor and actress in a comedy series. They were the only two to break the perfecta of Glee and Modern Family.

Family executive producers Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd won for best comedy writing, and Eric Stonestreet, who plays the show's outgoing gay father, won for supporting actor in a comedy series.

Glee's Jane Lynch was probably the surest winner among all the nominees. "Outlandish," she said, accepting the Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy series. Glee executive producer Ryan Murphy (best comedy director) said he created the show to stress the importance of arts education: "I would like to dedicate this to all my teachers who taught me how to sing and finger paint."

Kyra Sedgwick, a completely illogical choice in a strong category, was named best actress in a drama for TNT's The Closer. On the other hand, Bryan Cranston won his third straight well-deserved Emmy as best lead actor in a drama for his work as chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-dealer Walter White in AMC's Breaking Bad. It is a character and a performance for the ages.

Aaron Paul, as deserving as Cranston or any actor who has ever won an Emmy, surprisingly took the statuette as best supporting actor in a drama, playing White's low-wattage young accomplice.

Archie Panjabi, who plays the mysterious and hard-driving private eye in CBS's The Good Wife, was quite a shock herself, besting a field of even worthier winners, as best supporting actress in a drama.

HBO's The Pacific was named best miniseries. Producer Tom Hanks accepted the award. Al Pacino was named best lead actor in a movie or mini for his portrayal of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in HBO's You Don't Know Jack. Kevorkian, also in the audience, waved to one and all.

Matthew Weiner and Erin Levy won as best writers in a drama series for AMC's Mad Men. Dexter's Steve Shill took the Emmy for best drama director for his work on the Showtime series.

The Emmy show opened as fun and exciting as it ever has, with a taped package featuring host Jimmy Fallon rounding up some of the kids from Glee and setting out to form a show choir.

By the time they were through and the tape had morphed into live performance, stars from all across television, including Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Lost's Jorge Garcia, and 30 Rock's Tina Fey had helped Fallon channel Bruce Springsteen singing "Born to Run."

Even Project Runway's Tim Gunn (styling) and American Idol's Randy Jackson (guitar) got in on the action.

Taped packages throughout the show kept the entertainment rolling. The highlight: actors and actresses from Modern Family fighting over who would get to do the smoochies with George Clooney.

He won the special Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for his work producing charity TV shows supporting, among others, victims of the Haiti earthquake and the Indonesian tsunami.

Of course, Betty White was everywhere, as Hamm's dancing teacher in the opening, acknowledged as best guest actress in a comedy for hosting Saturday Night Live and doing promos for her coming TV appearance, in Community, and feature film, You Again.

Fallon was an energetic host, mimicking rock stars, singing his own little ditties, telling jokes, although his efforts to include comments from the public via Twitter fell flat.

"NBC asked the host of a late night show in New York to come to Los Angeles to host a different show," he said after the opening. "What could possibly go wrong?"

And the camera turned to Conan O'Brien, bumped from the big network after Jay Leno's prime-time show bombed. O'Brien's defunct late-night show was up for best comedy, musical or variety program, but Jon Stewart's Daily Show won for the eighth year in a row.

Shock of shocks: The Amazing Race did not win its eighth straight Emmy as best reality competition show. Bravo's Top Chef won the prize.

Much of the pre-Emmy talk centered on Glee, Modern Family, and The Good Wife, freshman broadcast series that were successes with wide audiences, compared with the niche cable series, such as Mad Men or FX's Damages, that have been dominating the awards in recent years.

Among them, Glee led in nominations with 19, but picked up only two Emmys (for sound mixing and for Neil Patrick Harris as guest actor in a comedy) at the Creative Arts Awards Aug. 21. Family had 14 nominations but cashed in on three Creative Arts Emmys (casting, picture editing, and another for sound mixing).

With nine noms, The Good Wife was shut out at the earlier ceremony, where The Pacific, as HBO miniseries usually do, led the pack in the early going with seven Emmys among its 24 total nominations. (John Adams, which won a record 13 statuettes in 2008, had only 23 nominations.)

Decked out in the usual glorious garb, the troops started to arrive at the Nokia Theatre near downtown L.A. about two hours before the show began at 5 p.m. (8 p.m. EDT).

"I feel like a peacock," said Mad Men's January Jones, who looked more like a mermaid in a sea-blue dress complete with a train, and figured she'd be ahead even if she didn't win the best dramatic actress Emmy. "As little as I need to walk in this dress will be fine," she said.

Most of the gals also sported major baubles, on loan from jewelers looking for some on-air plugs. Danes said her ring was worth a cool $2 million.