By all accounts, "The Bear" swept the 2024 Emmys. The FX series broke its own record for most wins by a comedy, garnering 11 wins across acting, writing and directing categories for its second season. "Hacks," however, won outstanding comedy series.
The tense series unfolds in the kitchen of a Chicago sandwich shop-turned-gourmet restaurant. Characters grapple with all manner of hardship, ranging from childhood trauma to substance abuse. "Fishes," which won best directing at the Emmys, was called chaotic; there are rankings of the show's most stressful episodes.
In their opening monologue, hosts Dan and Eugene Levy poked fun at the debate of the night. "Now, I love the show," Eugene Levy said, introducing "The Bear." "And I know some of you might be expecting us to make a joke about whether ‘The Bear’ is really a comedy. But in the true spirit of ‘The Bear,’ we will not be making any jokes."
The Bear's Emmy Wins Reignite a Debate
Online, viewers poked fun — and critiqued — the categorization. Comedian Laraine Newman wrote, "Every time I think about The Bear being in the comedy category for the Emmys I can feel an ulcer developing." "The bear’ is committing voter fraud and stealing the election," one tweet read. Another likened it to "category fraud." "The joke of the bear might be how the series is categorized as comedy series after all," another wrote.
Viewers believed the categorization shut out other, truer comedies, like "Abbott Elementary" or "Only Murders in the Building." "Jeremy Allen White is an amazing actor in a great show… who hasn’t delivered one funny line in three seasons. The #Emmys are broken. Martin Short, Steve Martin & Larry David are three of the funniest humans ever. Comedy needs to be factored into Best Actor in a COMEDY Series," one X user wrote.
Others defended the show. "Let's not pretend this wasn't one of the best TV episodes of the year," an X user wrote about "Fishes," which won Christopher Storer an Emmy for directing.
The Cast and Creators Weigh In
The cast also addressed the debate on the red carpet. "Those are conversations for other people to have. Our conversation is in the work," Ayo Edebiri said in a Variety interview. "I think the show is really funny. Comedy, drama… Who cares, man?" Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who won outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series for the second year in a row, said.
"I think it is an important conversation to have. But I think the show is funny and the work is good... so I'm not really interested in discourse that's insulting to anyone, really," she said.
FX has not clarified why “The Bear” was submitted as a comedy. However, FX chairman John Landgraf addressed the debate in an interview with Variety, and essentially said he leaves the categorization up to the Academy. "I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’m in my 60s, and I’ve been doing it my whole adult life. And I’ve never seen a better season of any television series, let alone a comedy, than 'The Bear' Season 2. Like, that’s as good a season of television as I’ve ever seen. And there are parts of that season that are very, very funny. We let the voters decide the answers to these questions," he said.
A Longstanding Debate
This is hardly the first time a show that straddled comedy and drama has been submitted at the Emmys as a comedy. “Barry,” year after year, swept the Emmys’ comedy category and was an often violent show about an assassin working through PTSD. In this evolving, genre-bending TV landscape, the Television Academy's rules for what constitutes a drama and what constitutes a comedy have changed. In 2022, the Emmys eliminated program length determining whether a show was a comedy or a drama.
The Debate Will Likely Continue
The debate will likely rage on. The third season of "The Bear" just premiered, and was as stressful and wrenching, meaning that next year's Emmys will keep the controversy going.
The Bear's Emmy Wins Reignite a Debate
The Bear's wins at the Emmys have reignited a long-standing debate about the blurring lines between comedy and drama in television. Some viewers and critics argue that the show, with its intense focus on the stressful realities of the restaurant industry, is not a true comedy and its inclusion in the comedy category is unfair to other shows that lean more heavily into humor. Others, however, defend the show, arguing that its dark humor and moments of levity make it a legitimate contender for a comedy award.
The debate highlights the changing landscape of television, where shows are increasingly blurring genre lines and exploring complex characters and storylines that don't fit neatly into traditional categories. As audiences continue to consume content across a wider range of platforms and genres, it's likely that the debate over "The Bear" is just the beginning of a larger conversation about how we define and categorize television shows in the future.
