Emmys highlights

GOOD TV ABOUT GOOD TV: Last night’s Emmys began with the strongest hour of comedy we’ve seen on TV this year, from Seth Meyers’ razor-sharp opening monologue—which he began with a barbed reference to the VMAs and finished by introducing first presenter Amy Poehler as Beyoncé—through a filmed segment showing Meyers accompanying man on the street Billy Eichner as he finds out how much random people know about the Emmys. But the funniest bit was arguably Jimmy Kimmel’s mini-roast of Matthew McConaughey, which you’ve gotta watch (it’s just two minutes). Musically, RCA's Weird Al parodied TV themes, and Epic's Sara Bareilles delivered a technically and emotionally nuanced performance of the Chaplin standard “Smile” during the In Memoriam segment. The 2014 Emmys will be remembered as a Breaking Bad love fest, but the show also drove home the point that the most sophisticated comedy minds today are in TV. What film comedy of recent years can hold a candle to a single episode of Veep, for example? As winner Julia Louis-Dreyfuss noted of her series, "The show is dense." (8/26a)