Netflix‘s House of Cards – the prettiest dress in the TV store these days – got shut out of the TCA Awards tonight. It had been up for Outstanding New Program and Program of the Year, but those wins went instead to FX‘s The Americans and AMC‘s Breaking Bad, respectively. (Scroll down for the full winners list.)
“Three nights ago we were in New York, and had this New York premiere and we had the pleasure of seeing Warren Buffet shake hands and have his picture taken with Keith Richards and that was fucking awesome,” said Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, picking up his show’s trophy for Program of the Year. He said he remembered at the time thinking, “‘How the heck did it come to this?’ I’ll tell you how it came to this – folks like you guys. A great many of you who, back in season one when our official number was 117 viewers – folks like you guys spread the word about Breaking Bad.”
“Boy this is awfully nice… it is,” said Individual Achievement in Comedy winner Louis C.K., eyeing the trophy and noting if he ever opens a diner he can put the list of cocktail specials on it. “No, it’s beautiful. It’s literally a plastic piece of shit. I don’t blame that bitch [absent best actress winner Tatiana Maslany, who sent in one of the night’s several taped acceptance speeches] for not coming. I really am grateful – see, sometimes comedy undercuts feelings. It’s a problem I deal with all the time.”
Accepting the award for Best Reality Series, Shark Tank exec producer Mark Burnett noted that not all of this year’s nominees are his shows – he also EP’s nominated Survivor and The Voice. Also nominated this year was Amazing Race. He said people are always coming up to him and saying, “‘I love your show Amazing Race,’ which I do NOT make – and tonight three TV critics said they love my show Amazing Race.”
“I never heard of the TCA — I’m in the movie business — until about six months ago,” Behind the Candelabra producer Jerry Weintraub said, picking up the trophy. He dedicated the win to the late Marvin Hamlisch, saying Behind the Candelabra was his last score.
“Yeah, it’s really shitty,” Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre said, looking at the actual trophy. He nicked the acceptance speech delivered by the Americans gang who’d talked about ingesting critics’ tweets on their show each week, etc. “If I followed the tweets, I would have hung myself years ago. And the idea that Louis [C.K.] mentioned that critics can help a series when it’s struggling – they can also sneak into the nursery and kill the baby. You write a show and it’s called [by critics] ‘putrid’ – it sticks with you!”
“After the 100th episode we’re all going to kill ourselves,” added Parks and Rec star Amy Poehler.
Career Achievement Award honoree Barbara Walters accepted her award on tape: “Thank you members of the Television Critics Association for this wonderful honor. I’m delighted. I’m smiling all over that you have chosen me,” she said; critics giggled. “I only wish I could be with you but I have this little daytime show called… um, it’s called The View.”
But the highlight of the ceremony was the presentation of the group’s Heritage Award to Norman Lear’s All in the Family. Lear and Rob Reiner, who played Meathead on the show, got up on stage to accept, not long after Babs Walters got the Lifetime Achievement Award. “How do you smile all over?” Reiner said, of Babs’ taped acceptance speech. “The only part of her that wasn’t smiling was her face – she couldn’t do it.”
“Thank you TCA for the last 40 years. You didn’t like us at all at the beginning,” Lear said. “You were like my mother. She called after the first [All in the Family] show and said, ‘You have to flush a toilet?’ And… Life magazine said of that toilet flush, ‘You should flush the whole show.’ That was the beginning.”
Then the two men read from what they said was a portion of recently released tapes of conversations between President Nixon and his underlings, in which Nixon said of All In The Family: “The point that I make is that, goddammit, I do not think you glorify, on public television, homosexuality! You know what happened to the Greeks? Homosexuality destroyed them. Aristotle was a homo. We all know that – so was Socrates.”
The 2013 TCA Award Winners
Individual Achievement in Drama
Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black – BBC
Individual Achievement in Comedy
Louis C.K., Louie – FX
Best News/Information Show
Ken Burns, The Central Park Five – PBS
Best Youth Program
Bunheads – ABC Family
Best Reality Programming
Shark Tank – ABC
Outstanding New Program
The Americans – FX
Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries or Special
Behind the Candelabra – HBO
Best Drama Series
Game Of Thrones – HBO
Best Comedy Series – TIE
CBS’s The Big Bang Theory and NBC’s Parks and Recreation
Career Achievement Award
Barbara Walters
Heritage Award
Norman Lear’s All in the Family
Program of the Year
Breaking Bad, AMC
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