A Horror Comedy About a Cursed Tourist Town Just Won More Emmys Than Any Comedy in History. The Pitt Got 25 Nominations and Two Trophies.

The 78th Primetime Emmys went out Monday night from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, with Mariska Hargitay hosting on NBC as the first woman to run the show in 15 years. The headline is a comedy that premiered at the end of April. Widow's Bay, Katie Dippold's Apple TV horror comedy about a New England island town with a mayor who wants tourists and a curse that wants otherwise, took 14 Emmys from 19 nominations. That is the most any comedy series has ever won in a single year. The previous record, 13, was set by The Studio twelve months ago. Before that, The Bear held it at 11. The number has now moved three years running, and this is the biggest jump.

What Widow's Bay actually won

Six of the 14 came on the telecast: Outstanding Comedy Series, Lead Actor for Matthew Rhys, Supporting Actress for Kate O'Flynn, Supporting Actor for Stephen Root, Writing for Dippold, and Directing for Hiro Murai. The other eight were Creative Arts wins from the weekend before, including Betty Gilpin's guest actress trophy, casting, production design, cinematography, score, music supervision, sound editing and sound mixing. Apple has already pointed out that Murai is the first Asian director to win the comedy directing category.

The comedy series field it beat was not soft. Abbott Elementary, The Bear, Hacks, Margo's Got Money Troubles, Nobody Wants This, Only Murders in the Building and Shrinking were the other seven. Hacks came in with a record 24 nominations for its final season and left with Jean Smart's fifth consecutive Lead Actress win and not much else. If you had Hacks pencilled in for a farewell sweep, so did most of the predictions.

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Matthew Rhys did something nobody has done

Rhys won Lead Actor in a Comedy for playing Mayor Tom Loftis, then came back later in the night and won Lead Actor in a Limited Series for The Beast in Me, the Netflix thriller where he plays the rich neighbor who may or may not be a murderer opposite Claire Danes. He also took a producer's statue when Widow's Bay won the series award. Three trophies, and the first time any performer has won two lead acting categories in the same year. The two roles could not sit further apart: one is a small-town booster trying to sell a haunted island as a getaway, the other is a menace with a smile. The Academy agreed with itself twice.

The Pitt won the big one and almost nothing else

The Pitt came in as the most nominated program of the year, with 25. It left the telecast with two: Outstanding Drama Series, for the second year in a row, and Noah Wyle's second consecutive Lead Actor in a Drama. Both are real. Repeating in the top category against Pluribus, Slow Horses, The Diplomat, The Gilded Age, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Paradise and Your Friends and Neighbors is not a consolation prize. But a show with that many nominations usually converts more than two on the night, and the supporting categories went elsewhere.

Where they went is the more interesting story. Rhea Seehorn won Lead Actress in a Drama for Pluribus, her first Emmy after two Better Call Saul nominations that never landed. Vince Gilligan took Writing for a Drama for the same show, which means Apple's oddest series went two for two on the telecast. Allison Janney won Supporting Actress for The Diplomat, her eighth acting Emmy, which ties the all-time record shared with Jean Smart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cloris Leachman. Tom Pelphrey won Supporting Actor for Task.

Limited series: HBO's other winner

DTF St. Louis won Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, plus supporting awards for Linda Cardellini and David Harbour, on top of six Creative Arts wins. Steven Conrad's seven-episode series puts Jason Bateman, Harbour and Cardellini in a midlife love triangle that ends with one of them dead, and it beat The Beast in Me, Beef, All Her Fault and Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. Sally Field won Lead Actress in a Limited Series for Remarkably Bright Creatures, which also won Outstanding Television Movie for Netflix. She turns 80 in November and is now the oldest winner in that category.

The rest of the night, quickly

• Apple TV finished with 29 wins across all its shows, the most of any network or streamer this year. Seven of those came on the telecast.
• Michael J. Fox won twice in one evening. Guest Actor in a Comedy for Shrinking, and the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for his Parkinson's research foundation.
• The Traitors won Reality Competition and Alan Cumming won Reality Host, both for Peacock. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert took Scripted Variety Series in its final year. South Park won Animated Program.
• Katie Dippold's writing win was her first Emmy nomination. Before this she was best known for writing The Heat and co-writing the 2016 Ghostbusters for Paul Feig.

Where to watch the winners tonight

Every major winner is streaming, which is the useful part of an Emmys recap. Widow's Bay, Pluribus and The Studio are on Apple TV. The Pitt and DTF St. Louis are on HBO Max, and if you have not started The Pitt, both seasons play as one real-time shift in a Pittsburgh emergency room, an hour per episode. The Beast in Me and Remarkably Bright Creatures are on Netflix. Hacks is on HBO Max, the complete run, now finished. Task is on HBO Max as well.

If you only have one night, the honest pick is the Widow's Bay pilot. It is a half hour, it commits to the horror instead of winking at it, and Rhys plays the mayor completely straight, which is the whole joke. If you bounce off it, the record will still make sense to you. Root and O'Flynn are doing something genuinely strange in the margins of every scene.

Rank them yourself

The Academy just handed you a top eight in comedy and a top eight in drama. The fun part is disagreeing with it. Our TV show tier list guide walks through ranking a season of television the way you would rank a franchise, and the favorite TV shows list maker gets you from a blank slate to a shareable order in a few minutes. Put Widow's Bay against Hacks and The Bear head to head in Shortlist, then do The Pitt against Pluribus and Slow Horses. The Television Academy needed thousands of ballots to reach Monday's result. Your list only needs one.

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