Okay, I'm going to just sound a little excited on this one: Lady Gaga just won the Golden Globe for best actress in a limited television series for her work in American Horror Story: Hotel. That's not even the full name of the category (it's much more convoluted than that), but the fact is that Lady Gaga won for her TV series debut playing a vampiric bloodthirsty character known as The Countess. And there's a reason she won: she's been fantastic, fearless, and heartfelt since the very first episode aired.

Gaga was up against a number of strong performances, including Kirsten Dunst in the most recent season of the (fabulous) Fargo, Sarah Hay in Flesh & Bone, and Felicity Huffman in American Crime. But despite the fact that American Horror Story has swung from the unnerving, to the crazy, to the ridiculous, and back again over the course of its many seasons, Lady Gaga's performance has grounded this season the entire way through, marking it as an actually earnest and heartfelt entry in the season (in its own gothy, adolescent way). That's assuming the show doesn't completely crash and burn before things wrap up, of course. The season has yet to conclude, but leave it to the Golden Globes to give out awards to shows that haven't even finished airing.

And to top it all off, in a show full of half-drunk stars that were pretty much unable to take anything seriously, Lady Gaga took the stage to confess that she had always wanted to be an actress, and sincerely thanked Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy for giving her the chance in the first place. Or maybe that was acting, too. But if it was, it was so convincing she deserves the award anyway. So if you haven't watched American Horror Story: Hotel, or gave up halfway through the season, do yourself a favor. Go watch it. And then get ready to buy a lot of Sisters of Mercy (and probably Lady Gaga) records afterwards.