Noah Wyle for 'The Pitt' and Britt Lower for 'Severance' at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards. Courtesy of Getty Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment The 77th Emmy Awards offered an important reminder that stats are interesting, but, at the end of the day, the members of the TV Academy march to the beat of their own drum. Best drama series was always going to be a race between the second season of Apple TV+'s Severance and the first season of HBO Max's The Pitt, two outstanding options, but most indicators suggested that Severance would pull out a win. It was, after all, the most Emmy-nominated TV show of the season, with an astounding 27 nods, more than twice as many as The Pitt's 13, and the year's most nominated drama had won the best drama series Emmy every year since 2017, when HBO's Westworld (22) lost to Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale (13). Plus, The Pitt did not receive a picture editing nom, without which few shows have won best drama series (the picture editors peer group is the TV Academy's third largest). Related Stories TV Critic's Notebook: A Flat Nate Bargatze and a Lame Time-Saving Gag Upstage Worthy Winners at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards TV Noah Wyle Wears Tuxedo Made by Scrubs Brand to Emmys And yet... best drama series went to The Pitt. The Pitt was surely helped by being the shiny new toy, and Severance was surely hindered by the nearly three-year gap between its first and second seasons. TV Academy members with whom I interacted spoke about "falling in love" with the characters on The Pitt, while finding the characters on Severance a bit too "cold." They also got the message that The Pitt was and is shot in town, whereas Severance was and is not. And while they certainly have a great fondness for Scott, they have a longer history with Wyle, and many found his comeback to be something of "a Cinderella story." Any or all of these things may have tipped things slightly towards The Pitt. I suspect that the vote was awfully close. The two shows evenly split the four dramatic acting awards: Severance's Britt Lower, who wasn't even nominated for her show's first season, won best actress (in a slight upset over Kathy Bates, the sole representative of network TV in the entire field of dramatic acting nominees), and Tramell Tillman won best supporting actor (prevailing over two of his own castmates and three stars of HBO's The White Lotus), whereas The Pitt's Noah Wyle won best actor (over Severance's Adam Scott) and Katherine LaNasa won best supporting actress (over Severance's Patricia Arquette). And both shows lost best director (for which they each had two nominees) to Apple TV+'s Slow Horses and best writing (for which The Pitt had two nominees and Severance one) to Disney+'s Andor. I'm sure that Apple TV+ is a little bummed, because if Severance had won best drama series on an evening on which another of its shows, The Studio, won best comedy series, the streamer would have become the first platform to claim both of those top honors in the same year since 2016, when HBO did it with Game of Thrones and Veep. Even so, Apple TV+, had its best showing ever, with 22 wins, thanks largely to The Studio, a new show, like The Pitt, which came in with a comedy rookie-record 23 noms and utterly dominated the comedy field, collecting 13 wins (which breaks the record for most wins by a comedy in a single year that had been set last year by FX's The Bear, with 11), including four for Seth Rogen (the first person ever to win Emmys for comedy producing, directing, writing and lead acting in a single year). I suspect that much of the country doesn't "get" what the big deal is about The Studio, because it's essentially "inside baseball" for those of us who work in Hollywood. (I don't think most people in the rest of the country know or care about "oners" or Sarah Polley cameos, although we do!) But most of the people who vote for the Emmys work in Hollywood, and The Studio's strong showing is a reminder of how much the industry likes watching stuff about itself. HBO Max's Hacks, which won best comedy series last year, is, of course, also about the biz, and claimed two of this year's comedy acting awards: best actress for Jean Smart (it's her fourth win for the show and seventh win overall, which thrusts her into an elite club of actresses with seven or more wins, the other members being Allison Janney, Cloris Leachman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mary Tyler Moore), and best supporting actress for Hannah Einbinder (it's her first win for the show, and long overdue). As for the last comedy acting award? Best supporting actor went, in one of the biggest Emmy upsets of all time, to Jeff Hiller for the final season of HBO's Somebody Somewhere. Hiller's nomination caught almost everyone by surprise, and his win - over The Studio's Ike Barinholtz (aka