Everyone Knows <em>The Bear </em>Isn’t a Comedy

When Jean Smart stepped onto the Emmys stage last night to accept the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, the six-time Emmy winner took a cue from Deborah Vance, the veteran comedian she plays on Hacks. Almost immediately, Smart told a joke: “It’s very humbling, it really is. And I appreciate this, because I just don’t get enough attention.”

It was Smart’s third time landing the prize for her portrayal of the electrifying septuagenarian, but the 76th Emmys ceremony marked a new milestone for the Max series. Later that evening, Hacks was named Outstanding Comedy Series—beating out the expected winner, a show that tests the meaning of the category itself. The Bear, a tense, claustrophobic FX/Hulu series about the staff of a Chicago-area restaurant, did break its own record by winning 11 of the 23 categories it was nominated in. But two of the evening’s biggest awards went to Hacks, a comedy about comedians. Last night’s broadcast might be the first signal that the Television Academy is paying attention to industry discussions and online chatter about a long-standing debate: Is The Bear really even a comedy?

At the strike-delayed 75th Emmys, in January, The Bear claimed Outstanding Comedy Series among its six trophies in the major comedy categories. After the ceremony, when asked if he would consider the show a comedy, executive producer Josh Senior said, “I think the show is true to life. Sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it’s real.” That’s accurate, and the show is hardly the first dark, moody production to be up for comedy awards in recent years. But The Bear doesn’t exactly have a high laugh-to-cry ratio, making it an awkward fit alongside more traditional comedies such as Abbott Elementary and Only Murders in the Building. Senior also suggested that The Bear is eligible as a comedy because of its half-hour run time, but that reasoning is outdated: The Academy stopped using run time to distinguish entries in the drama and comedy categories in 2021, and there’s precedent for series being moved from one to the other. Back in June, before the nominations for last night’s Emmys were announced, Variety reported that “networks and strategists have been attempting to trigger a TV Academy review of The Bear to shift it to the drama series race, where it will face off against its network sibling, Shōgun.”

That change didn’t end up happening, but last night’s awards brought the underlying question out into the open. At the top of the evening, the father-and-son hosting duo of Eugene and Dan Levy—whose own sitcom, Schitt’s Creek, won Outstanding Comedy Series in 2020—addressed the contention directly: “I know some of you might be expecting us to make a joke about whether The Bear is really a comedy,” Eugene said. “But in the true spirit of The Bear, we will not be making any jokes.” (The good-natured joke was one of many about Hollywood’s idiosyncrasies: Dan also celebrated the Emmys as “broadcast TV’s biggest night for honoring movie stars on streaming services.”) In doing so, the Levys laid a comedic foundation for the Outstanding Comedy Series upset, using humor to relay the confusion—and, in some cases, disappointment—that viewers feel when seeing The Bear win so many comedy awards while sitcoms such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Other Two have rarely been recognized.

Some of the audience’s bewilderment about The Bear’s take on comedy stems from the show’s rapid release cycle and the awkward timing of the previous Emmys ceremony. The Bear is one of the rare prestige series that doesn’t take multiple years to put out a new season. So by the time Season 1 of The Bear swept the comedy categories in January, its (more tender, less breakneck) second season had already aired. And in the lead-up to last night’s awards, which were for Season 2, the series had already released its third season—an unfortunate overlap given that, as my colleague Sophie Gilbert wrote about the new episodes, “the meaning and implications of trauma have become the only subject The Bear wants to explore.” Carmy’s flashbacks and intrusive thoughts were especially difficult to watch, making it harder to remember the moments when pointed comedy had cut through the tension of earlier seasons.

[Read: It’s easy to get lost in The Bear]

The Bear cast’s earnestness throughout the night helped cement the feeling that the show is a serious work taking on weighty themes. Liza Colón-Zayas gave a heartfelt acceptance of her history-making award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, and a sincere Ebon Moss-Bachrach accepted his second consecutive win for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Their speeches, and the cast’s red-carpet interviews, tended to diverge from the jocular energy of other comedy ensembles—like the cast of Only Murders, who traded loving jabs as they announced Moss-Bachrach’s win. And in addition to Eugene and Dan Levy’s hosting throughout the night, viewers got to watch a jovial Schitt’s Creek mini-reunion play out as the cast introduced Catherine O’Hara to present the Outstanding Comedy Series award.  

Across the show, the Hacks acceptance speeches seemed to reflect the viewing audience’s appetite for reveling in humor: When co-creators Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky accepted the award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, the three riffed on the importance of comedy. “We make a show about comedy because as three weird, lonely kids, it was the thing that made us feel connected to other people,” Downs said before Statsky whispered something unintelligible in his ear. He continued: “Okay, Jen is saying she was popular, but two weird, lonely ki—” and then again revised his take after a whisper from Aniello: “Okay, so Lucia wasn’t unpopular, but it made one lonely weirdo and two semi-popular girls feel connected to other people.”

Any kind of art can do that, but the Hacks creators made the case for comedy as a uniquely effective tool for building bridges. Humor isn’t an incidental element of these stories, or a bonus for viewers who grit their teeth through anxiety-inducing material; it’s what makes them so powerful. As Aniello put it in another speech, “when you laugh with someone, you have something in common with them.” Finding the humor in trauma can be cathartic—and some of the most perceptive scenes in The Bear clearly convey that. But a series that takes its laughs very seriously—as Hacks clearly does—is more than just a frivolous delight.