Three takeaways from Sunday's Emmy Awards

So, Sunday's 77th annual Primetime Emmys are a wrap. A mostly brisk show with some nice surprises and some upsets as well, here are three takeaways:

Stephen Colbert is star of the night

In 2023, the Emmys changed the "Outstanding Variety Talk Series" to just "Outstanding Talk Series." Why that happened isn't especially interesting but what happened Sunday was. The "Late Show with Stephen Colbert" at long last won for best talk show, ending a drought (33 nods, and also one win last week at the Creative Emmy Awards) that was exceeded only by "Better Call Saul." (53 nods before finally winning.) Changing the category helped this year because there were only three nominees, but what went down  with Colbert on July 18 made this win inevitable. That's when CBS canceled both "Late Show" and its late-night franchise. Emmy voters had until Aug. 27 to cast their votes, and it was immediately clear Sunday who their talk show winner would be. Colbert got two standing ovations Sunday — the first when he presented an award early in the evening, and the second when he finally got his own. He was gracious in victory, thanking CBS for the decade-long run, along with the (apparently vain) hope that the "great late-night tradition ... continues long after we're no longer doing this show." He added, "Sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it." Colbert meant the country — a rare political drive-by message Sunday — but he also meant the show he'll leave behind next May.

Newbies take the night

A pair of first-year series won best drama and sitcom Sunday — "The Pitt" and "The Studio" — and you've got to go back a long (long) way to the last time that last happened, to 1971, when "The Bold Ones: The Senator" (NBC) won for best drama and "All in the Family" (CBS) for comedy. The Emmys, or at least the voters, have tended to be conservative most years — a let's-wait-and-see crowd, or more inclined to just keep rewarding the same show (or actor/actress) over and over again. "The Pitt" and "The Studio" were not exactly huge upsets — they had their supporters too (me) — but they were upsets nonetheless. Both Noah Wyle ("The Pitt") and Seth Rogen ("The Studio") won too — hardly Hollywood unknowns but first-time winners nonetheless. And let's not forget Cristin Milioti who got both her first nomination and win (outstanding lead actress/anthology, "The Penguin"). She closed her rousing ("I love acting so much") acceptance speech with a whoop that rattled the chandeliers in the Peacock. Joy is good for the Emmys, and nice surprises are too, especially for a telecast that too often drags predictably along until the closing credits.

Nate Bargatze out of his element

This Nashville, Tennessee, native is arguably one of the most popular stand-ups in the U.S. right now — a genuinely funny comic who works clean and avoids politics, while his specials on Netflix (and Prime) are reliable hits. But man, oh man, was Bargatze off his game Sunday, and out of his element. Constrained by a gimmick that he couldn't break away from — that $100,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Club of America that increased or decreased every time someone went too long (or went short) on their acceptance speech — the ongoing bit wasn't a complete disaster, but it was a tiresome distraction. People need to thank people — that's how it works at the Emmys. A better plan would have been to constrain some of the presenters; Jennifer Coolidge, I'm talking about you. Even the bit Bargatze opened the show with — playing TV inventor Philo T. Farnsworth with three "Saturday Night Live" cast members — didn't come close to matching the semiclassics it was meant to evoke, his two appearances on "SNL" as George Washington. All in all, not a good night for this first-time host.