CHICAGO TRIBUNE

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

LOS ANGELES — The 2009 Emmys looked a lot like the 2008 Emmys, when it came to the winners.

Once again, Tina Fey picked up a best comedy statue for “30 Rock” (it was the NBC show’s third win). “Mad Men” won for a second time as best drama.

Glenn Close and Bryan Cranston picked up their second Emmys in the lead drama acting categories, for “Damages” and “Breaking Bad,” respectively, and Alec Baldwin also won a second time for his performance as network executive Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock.” The only new winner in the top acting categories was Toni Collette, who won for her role on “United States of Tara.” All those winners were quite deserving, but there was a certain d ja vu quality to the proceedings, as there often is at the Emmys.

But in one important respect, the ceremony that aired Sunday on CBS was very different from the 2008 Emmys. Thanks to the efforts of terrific host Neil Patrick Harris and an overall jazzier approach to the broadcast, the 2008 Emmys were much less of a chore to sit through. Though the ceremony inevitably got bogged down, especially in the mushy, miniseries-dominated middle, the 2009 ceremony was as much of an improvement as the still-flawed Emmys probably could have made.

The opening number set the tone: Harris sang that viewers should “put down the remote,” and the producers tried a variety of strategies to see ensure that, some of them successful, some of them not. If nothing else, the pace was peppier.