It was the final year for ‘Breaking Bad’ and the Emmy voters gave the show essentially every major award in 2014….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The nominees for the best supporting actor in a drama was potentially one of the most stacked categories of the entire 2014 Emmy Awards, but when Aaron Paul won for his portrayal as Jesse Pinkman in the final season of ‘Breaking Bad’ it was clear how the night was about to go.
Paul’s big win set the tone for the entire show as ‘Breaking Bad’ swept through almost every major category at the Emmys and became the story of the entire show. Anna Gunn took home the Emmy for best supporting actress for playing Skyler White and ‘Breaking Bad’ also took home the award for best writing in a drama series, beating out a slew of contenders including Nic Pizzolatto for his work on ‘True Detective’.
When it came time for the award for best actor in a drama series the writing was on the wall all show long that the entire Hollywood crowd believed Matthew McConaughey was about to walk up and accept his second major acting award this year. He already took home the Oscar for his work in ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ and it seemed like an Emmy would be joining his trophy shelf at home after Monday night was over.
Julia Roberts presented the award and took a painfully long time to finally announce the winner but when she did the name Bryan Cranston came off her lips and somewhere in the audience Aaron Paul was likely shouting ‘yeah, bitch!’ at the top of his lungs.
Cranston was a tour de force for five seasons playing chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin Walter White, but as great as he’s been it seemed like this was the one category he was ready to hand over to McConaughey for his work on ‘True Detective’ as troubled cop Rust Cohle. Instead, Cranston celebrated one more time as the best actor on television and for the last time as Walter White.
Once Cranston took home his Emmy while going against a murderer’s row of opposition, the award for best drama series was already a lock.
‘Breaking Bad’ won again with creator Vince Gilligan accepting on behalf of the cast and crew. The show cleaned up a number of awards at the 2013 Emmys as well and this seemed like another victory lap for a show hailed as one of the best to every air on television.
If there was an argument against ‘Breaking Bad’ it’s the fact that the series’ final season was split into two parts and both were touted as ‘the last year’. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter because ‘Breaking Bad’ will go down as one of the greatest of all time and does it really matter if the show got split into two seasons instead of just one? Either way the awards were going to fall in their laps like piles of money when blue sky hit the streets of New Mexico.
The only lesson to be learned this year is for a show like ‘True Detective’ that should have been considered a miniseries or movie, but the executives at HBO rolled the dice and put the series up against established favorites like ‘Breaking Bad’. It was a bold move, but in reality ‘True Detective’ really fit better next to shows like ‘Fargo’ or ‘American Horror Story’ but instead opted to take on the incumbent favorites in the drama series category instead. ‘True Detective’ did beat out ‘Breaking Bad’ in the directing category as Cari Joji Fukunaga took home the award for his work on all eight episodes of the outstanding freshman series.
Overall though it was ‘Breaking Bad’s night to win and there was no stopping the perfect mix of chemicals that brought this show a ton of gold statues while trumping ‘True Detective’ at every turn.
Final score: Walter White 1, Rust Cohle 0 and Walter White has just left the building.
