If it weren&rsquo;t for Neil Patrick Harris and the freshened-up look and feel of the Emmys, I would swear this was a repeat of last year. </p><p>&ldquo;Mad Men&rdquo; and &ldquo;30 Rock&rdquo; held off six other shows in their respective fields to defend their titles for best drama and comedy series. Bryan Cranston of &ldquo;Breaking Bad,&rdquo; Alec Baldwin of &ldquo;30 Rock&rdquo; and Glenn Close of &ldquo;Damages&rdquo; also repeated.</p><p> More d&eacute;j&agrave; vu: &ldquo;The Daily Show&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Amazing Race&rdquo; and whatever movie HBO threw its marketing budget behind this year (it was &ldquo;Grey Gardens,&rdquo; a film based on the musical play based on the documentary of the same name).</p><p>And you could probably fit everyone who watched all of these shows into the Nokia Theatre where the Emmys were handed out. </p><p>For a show airing on America&rsquo;s most-watched network, the odd takeaway from this year&rsquo;s telecast is that members of the TV academy are addicted to obscure shows. Small wonder that host network CBS took every opportunity to promote &ldquo;NCIS,&rdquo; &ldquo;Criminal Minds,&rdquo; &ldquo;Old Christine&rdquo; and other viewer favorites &mdash; it&rsquo;s all the love they were going to get on this night. </p><p>Still, if CBS seemed to shamelessly plug its products during the Emmys, it earned that right. Emmy broadcasts rotate among the major networks, but CBS made a case Sunday night for keeping the broadcast where it is. </p><p>How did they do it? Mainly, the show&rsquo;s producers and writers made fun of all the award-show conventions that they didn&rsquo;t simply get rid of. Everything was a joke, from Harris&rsquo; witty intros to the presenter&rsquo;s scripted lines to John Hodgman&rsquo;s narration as the winners marched up to the podium.</p><p>Hodgman&rsquo;s installation as the color announcer was easily the night&rsquo;s most daring move. Hodgman, &ldquo;The Daily Show&rdquo; contributor known for his unabashed cluelessness in Mac ads and his books of made-up facts, talked while winners marched to the stage. He dispensed trivia that ranged from the weird (Cranston&rsquo;s acting debut was in a United Way promo his dad directed) to the surreal (&ldquo;The Office&rdquo; director Jeff Blitz&rsquo;s first act on learning of his nomination, Hodgman asserted, &ldquo;was to kiss Angelina Jolie and then go back to bed&rdquo;).</p><p>At first it appeared that this year&rsquo;s contender bloat &mdash; most awards had six or seven nominees instead of five &mdash; would favor the upstarts over the favorites. </p><p>Actress Toni Collette had a role tailor-made for Emmy: Her &ldquo;United States of Tara&rdquo; required her to play three more roles than her competition (her character has multiple personality disorder). The voters did not disappoint.</p><p>More surprising was Cranston&rsquo;s repeat for his little-seen but much-loved role as Albuquerque&rsquo;s least likely meth king on &ldquo;Breaking Bad.&rdquo; Like &ldquo;Mad Men,&rdquo; that show airs on AMC, a cable channel that wasn&rsquo;t even making original dramas four years ago. But in the end, many of last year&rsquo;s champions added to their collections.</p><p>Highlights and lowlights from Emmy night 2009:</p><p><strong>&bull;NPH = MVP</strong>. The legend of Neil Patrick Harris as the Man Who Can Play Anything &mdash; child doctor, Dr. Horrible, ladies&rsquo; man, gay blade, musical ham &mdash; just grew a little larger after his effortlessly effervescent performance as Emmy emcee. Picking up where he left off at the Tony Awards, Harris kicked off the broadcast with &ldquo;Put Down That Remote,&rdquo; a Rat Pack-quality tune full of laugh lines (&ldquo;Thank God the boob tube/ rhymes with Tony Shalhoub/ or he wouldn&rsquo;t be in this song&rdquo;), and stayed daisy-fresh while firing off one-liners for the next three hours.