The Old Guard Keeps Its Grip Despite all the fear and anxiety, Netflix didn't steal the night in the end. "Modern Family" on ABC won the Emmy for best comedy, which was almost a surprise because it has won so many times before and because other shows, like "Veep" of HBO, have gained ground. "Breaking Bad," on the other hand, is about to end its run, so it was almost inevitable that that AMC hit would get yet another standing ovation. Many other wins were unexpected, and some were well-deserved - like Jeff Daniels, who won the award for best actor in a drama for "The Newsroom" on HBO, and Merritt Wever, of "Nurse Jackie" on Showtime, who won the award for best supporting actress in a comedy. Ms. Wever proved she deserved her statuette, giving the shortest and best acceptance speech. She thanked the academy, then said, "I gotta go, bye," and walked offstage. If it's a new and golden age of television, as so many presenters insisted, you couldn't tell from the host, Neil Patrick Harris, who treated the Emmys like the Tonys and made self-conscious jokes about the precariousness and even irrelevance of classic television in the era of on-demand premium cable and Internet streaming. Mr. Harris said that the awards show would celebrate the best of television, then added, "For our younger audience, that's the thing you watch on your phones." In a night was could have celebrated the many exciting innovations in the field, the Emmy producers chose to look backward, not only with tributes to dead actors but also with mournful references to a more glorious time in broadcast television, particularly on CBS, which presented the event. That network put its chief executive, Leslie Moonves, in a coy cameo in the opening skit, and it stretched a link between the anniversary of the CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite's coverage of the Kennedy assassination and the Beatles" first performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" - also on CBS - so that Carrie Underwood could sing "Yesterday." CBS executives seem so worried about their own mortality that they're celebrating their own mortality. Insecurity may also be the reason the show kept veering into song-and-dance routines that have no bearing on the Emmys. Mr. Harris, a frequent awards-show host, was mocked in a fake ad in which his "How I Met Your Mother" co-stars warned about the risks of Excessive Hosting Disorder. But it was the show itself that needed an intervention, shifting from awards to musical numbers better suited to the Tonys and the Grammys: Awards Show Identity Disorder. Mr. Harris did two song-and-dance numbers, including one that paid tribute to "Mad Men" with a tune from "Guys and Dolls." The other made fun of its own irrelevance to the moment at hand: "It's the number in the middle of the show." That was a lot of time wasted on a night when there were so many deaths to acknowledge, including those of Cory Monteith of "Glee" and James Gandolfini of "The Sopranos." Even stars who didn't die this past year got a shout-out. Michael Douglas's award for best actor in a movie or mini-series was one of three that "Behind the Candelabra," an HBO biopic of Liberace, won that night. Mr. Douglas thanked his co-star, Matt Damon, who played his younger lover, and said he would split the statuette with him, adding roguishly, "You want the bottom or the top?" With that many awards, it wasn't clear why Elton John needed to sing a solemn song from his new album that had nothing to do with that Vegas showman, But it certainly wasn't much of an homage to play on an unadorned piano with no candelabra in the wind. Fashion, always a side benefit of an awards show, wasn't much more innovative or exciting. There is so much change in the industry and so little experimentation in wardrobe choices: year after year actresses, or rather their stylists, select tasteful, risk-free monochromatic, strapless gowns by Valentino, Prada or Zac Posen. Hollywood is still so haunted by the over-the-top fashion faux pas of Cher or Björk that even comedy stars abide by the sartorial equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: first do no fashion harm. And that made Lena Dunham's choice of a bold, full-skirted, green ball gown covered with red roses seem more shocking than her near-nudity on "Girls." The real winner of the night may have been cynicism and distrust of government. Seven or eight days away from a possible government shutdown, some of the winners, like "Veep," "Homeland" and "Political Animals," reflect television's repulsed but riveted relationship with Washington. The federal government may be a swamp, but it's a swamp viewers love to splash in. Compared with the waste and gridlock on Sunday's Emmy awards show, Washington may be a lot more functional.