Raymond bests Will & Grace and
Desperate Housewives as Emmy's comedy fave

Beloved but newly departed Everybody Loves Raymond was named best comedy on Sunday in an upset Emmy Awards triumph over red-hot newcomer Desperate Housewives, but another breakout ABC hit, castaway thriller Lost, won best drama. The surprise victory for Raymond, which also claimed the top comedy prize in 2003 and recently ended its nine-year run on CBS, was in keeping with Emmy voters' traditional preference for older shows and past winners over fresh faces and first-season series.

Freshman programs, even popular ones, have often been snubbed when U.S. television's highest honors are handed out each fall, but it is even more rare for shows to be honored for their last season on the airwaves. Raymond was one of only a few TV shows in the past 30 years--comedy or drama--to claim an outstanding-series prize in either category after leaving prime time. Two others were The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Barney Miller.

ABC, which airs Housewives and Lost, walked away with one of its best Emmy nights in recent years, winning six major awards overall, more than any other broadcaster. Still, HBO's seven Emmys gave it the highest tally overall. ABC's biggest triumph was best drama for Lost, a show that with Desperate Housewives sparked a ratings rebound at the Walt Disney Co.-owned network and ushered in a new wave of offbeat, form-breaking shows coming to TV this fall. The network's courtroom drama Boston Legal also yielded two acting awards--for series star James Spader and costar William Shatner, a TV veteran enjoying new success four decades after he sprang to fame as Captain Kirk on the 1960s sci-fi series Star Trek.

Cable television drew noticeably less Emmy recognition than in recent years, though Tony Shalhoub nabbed his second award as best actor in a comedy for playing an obsessive-compulsive detective in USA Network's Monk, and Blythe Danner won for best supporting actress in a drama for Showtime's Huff. HBO, a perennial Emmy heavyweight, was shut out of the series categories but picked up its trophies for best TV movie and best supporting actress in a TV movie, Jane Alexander, for Warm Springs, about Franklin Roosevelt's struggle with polio.

The Raymond victory marked a clear sentimental nod to an acclaimed show that many TV critics have bemoaned as one of the last true sitcoms left in the Nielsen ratings' top 10. The show's star, comedian Ray Romano, said backstage, "It was a shock to win," and called the victory "bittersweet." Romano plays a harried sportswriter and family man who lives near his meddling parents and brother. Executive producer Phil Rosenthal added, "We were stunned. We thought we were finished.... We're grateful and shocked." Raymond also garnered repeat best-supporting acting awards for costars Brad Garrett and Doris Roberts.

While the loss to Raymond was a disappointment for Desperate Housewives, which ranked as the highest-rated new show last season, the series earned a best-actress prize for one of the ladies of Wisteria Lane, Felicity Huffman. Housewives, a wry, steamy saga of suburban intrigue set on fictional Wisteria Lane, may have suffered from complaints by many that it was more of a drama than a traditional comedy. On the drama side, Patricia Arquette was a surprise first-time winner in the race for best actress for her role as a psychic detective in NBC's new drama Medium.

The 57th edition of the Emmys opened with Louisiana-born host Ellen DeGeneres paying tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in her opening monologue. "New Orleans is my hometown, and our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected," said DeGeneres, recalling that she also hosted the Emmys four years ago in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Many of the stars wore pins shaped like white magnolias, which are the state flowers of Louisiana and Mississippi.

But the show had plenty of lighter moments, including the star of HBO's Lackawanna Blues, S. Epatha Merkerson, taking the stage to accept her award for best lead actress in a TV movie only to lose her thank-you speech down her gown. "I wrote something, and I put it in my thing [bra], and it went down, and I can't get it," the flummoxed actress said when accepting her award. "It's probably stuck to me."

Another emotional highlight was an Emmy salute to Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and the late Peter Jennings, the longtime evening news anchors of the rival Big Three Broadcast networks--NBC, CBS, and ABC. "We were competitive, but we were always bound by a shared devotion to being reporters first," said Brokaw after taking the stage with Rather to a rousing standing ovation. (Steve Gorman, via Reuters)