Looking for Emmy winners on video? Here's some help
10/4/2012The Emmy Awards have come and gone for another year and, as is often the case, you might be wondering about some of the winners.
Television, after all, is fragmented and not everyone embraces all the fragments. So an Emmy darling that aired on, say, Showtime might not have been available in your daily viewing.
Enter DVD and Blu-ray to fill the gap. And a good number of winners can be found, as the following list indicates.
Homeland, the Showtime drama about a seemingly heroic Marine suspected of being an undercover terrorist, was the biggest winner on Emmy night, with six awards in all. Game of Thrones also won six Emmys, but they were in relatively minor categories, like costumes and sound editing. Homeland's wins included best drama series, best drama actor (Damien Lewis), drama actress (Claire Danes), and drama writing (Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, and Gideon Raff, for the series pilot). Homeland: The Complete First Season is on DVD ($59.98) and Blu-ray ($69.98). (The second season began Sunday night.)
Also among the drama winners on DVD and Blu-ray are Aaron Paul, best supporting actor for his work in the fourth season of AMC's Breaking Bad ($55.99 DVD, $65.99 Blu-ray), while Maggie Smith won the drama supporting actress prize for Downton Abbey's second season ($44.99 DVD, $49.99 Blu-ray, in the original British versions of the episodes).
Turning to comedy, Modern Family: The Complete Third Season ($49.98 DVD, $59.99 Blu-ray) contains the episodes that led to that ABC show's five most recent Emmy wins, including best comedy series, comedy supporting actor (Eric Stonestreet), supporting actress (Julie Bowen), and directing (Steven Levitan, for the Baby on Board episode).
That said, Modern Family did not win for writing; that prize went to Louis C.K. for the Pregnant episode in the second season of FX's Louie, which is available on DVD ($29.98) and Blu-ray ($39.99). Jon Cryer won for best lead actor in a comedy, for the ninth season of Two and a Half Men ($44.98, standard DVD only). Julia Louis-Dreyfus won best comedy actress for HBO's Veep, which does not yet have a video release date.
Neither does Game Change, the HBO movie about the 2008 presidential campaign and Sarah Palin (played by Julianne Moore), but it's worth keeping watch for. It took five Emmys, including best movie or miniseries; writing for a movie, miniseries or drama special (Danny Strong); lead actress in a movie or mini (Moore); and movie/miniseries directing (Jay Roach). Another big winner in movies and miniseries was Hatfields & McCoys, which is available ($45.99 DVD, $55.99 Blu-ray), and won the movies/mini lead actor prize (Kevin Costner) and supporting actor (Tom Berenger).
Jessica Lange, by the way, won for best supporting actress in a movie or miniseries, for her work in FX's American Horror Story, a drama series that the Emmys allowed as a miniseries because it had an ending -- and despite it having a second season coming; in fact, the DVD ($49.98) and Blu-ray ($59.99) are both marked "the complete first season." So miniseries, my eye.