Last week, millions of people tuned in to watch television’s biggest night with viewership of the 77th primetime Emmy awards seeing a four year high of 7.4 million viewers. Hosted by comedian Nate Bargatze, this year’s awards featured several firsts in Emmy’s awards history, memorable (and surprisingly succinct) speeches from winners, and emotional acceptances from longtime and departing TV personalities despite having its fair share of controversy.

The most important of any awards show is obviously the awards themselves, and this year’s awards showed a couple of clear cut winners – and few snubs as well- with some shows turning most of their nominations into wins and other shows failing to get their hands on an Emmy. Below are some of the most unprecedented and biggest wins of the night.

Outstanding drama series

• “Andor”
• “The Diplomat”
• “The Last of Us”
• “Paradise”
• “The Pitt” — WINNER
• “Severance”
• “Slow Horses”
• “The White Lotus”

Lead actor in a drama series

• Sterling K. Brown, “Paradise”
• Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”
• Pedro Pascal, “The Last of Us”
• Adam Scott, “Severance”
• Noah Wyle, “The Pitt” — WINNER

Outstanding Comedy series

• “Abbott Elementary”
• “The Bear”
• “Hacks”
• “Nobody Wants This”
• “Only Murders in the Building”
• “Shrinking”
• “The Studio” — WINNER
• “What We Do in the Shadows”

Limited or anthology series

• “Adolescence” — WINNER
• “Black Mirror”
• “Dying for Sex”
• “The Penguin”
• “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”

Outstanding talk series

• “The Daily Show”
• “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
• “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” — WINNER

Lead actress in a limited or anthology series or movie

• Cristin Milioti, “The Penguin” — WINNER
• Cate Blanchett, “Disclaimer”
• Meghann Fahy, “Sirens”
• Rashida Jones, “Black Mirror”
• Michelle Williams, “Dying for Sex”

Outstanding supporting actor in a drama series

• Zach Cherry, “Severance”
• Walton Goggins, “The White Lotus”
• Jason Isaacs, “The White Lotus”
• James Marsden, “Paradise”
• Sam Rockwell, “The White Lotus”
• Tramell Tillman, “Severance” — WINNER
• John Turturro, “Severance”

Outstanding supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or movie

• Javier Bardem, “Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story”
• Bill Camp, “Presumed Innocent”
• Owen Cooper, “Adolescence” — WINNER
• Rob Delaney, “Dying For Sex”
• Peter Sarsgaard, “Presumed Innocent”
• Ashley Walters, “Adolescence”

In the realm of big firsts, the night featured Owen Cooper taking home Outstanding Actor in a Limited or Anthology series as the youngest ever male actor to win an Emmy and Tramell Tillman as the first openly gay black man to win supporting actor in a drama series. Despite not breaking as much ground as these historic firsts, this year’s Emmys also included big first time wins for Seth Rogen who directed, produced and co-created the night’s biggest winner, The Studio which ended up snatching the greatest amount of awards at 13 wins out of its 23 nominations. Despite not achieving the massive success of The Studio another big winner was, The Penguin which took home 9 total awards with one of these being for Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology series won by Cristin Milioti in her first ever Emmy win. These wins are a great achievement for the producers, actors and contributors to the shows that made it big this awards season, but for every Emmy win, there’s even more shows which spent the night batting zero. Despite spending the last 3 years as a big shot in the realm of TV, The Bear failed to keep up its streak this year with the show failing to swap any of its 13 nominations into wins. Every awards show has to have its losers, but this shut out came as a surprise for many due to the high status of the show in the past and the continued positive coverage of the show. 

This year’s Emmys featured a fair share of huge wins, but courtesy of the host Nate Bargatze viewers found themselves treated to abnormally short acceptance speeches. In the past few years, the Emmys and other awards shows such as the Oscars have been plagued by exceedingly long speeches such as Adrien Brody’s record breaking 5 minute and 40 second speech last year, and to try and make light of this trend, Bargatze tried to start up a running bit where he would start the ceremony with a promised donation of $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of America but would bump his donation down by $1,000 every time someone went over the limit. Despite having good intentions behind his challenge. Bargatze eventually wound up regretting his bit when he faced criticism for supposedly leveraging donations over nominees and at the end of ceremony ended up giving an increased donation of $350,000 with CBS. The general consensus amongst attendees and even critics was that Bargatze’s challenge was a well intended but poorly planned bit but this same lenience wasn’t applied to Hannah Einbinder who wrapped up her acceptance speech with a controversial statement of “Go Birds, f— ICE and free Palestine.” Einbinder later explained her parting words as an expression of her Jewish identity and of her opposal to Israeli state policies being associated with Judaism.

Although the night did feature a few bumps, it still finished off as a great show full of firsts and humor and a fantastic celebration of the incredible TV shows that have graced the screen in the last year hosted by a humorous and charismatic host.