A professional deep in recovery grapples with the loss of his brother. A family’s tense showdown over Christmas dinner ends with a parent driving her car through the wall of her own living room. A young man balances his arduous, budding career with tending to his comatose mother in hospice care.
This fraught intensity would seem to point to an arresting nighttime drama; but these are actually plot points from Season 2 of “The Bear,” which won 10 comedy Emmys for its first installment. This year, the show garnered a record-breaking 23 nominations.
When Christopher Storer’s series quietly popped up on FX on Hulu in June 2022, audiences were charmed by its combination of raucous human comedy and its rather grave storyline: An up-and-coming chef attempts to reinvent the restaurant left to him by his beloved brother who took his own life. Even then, viewers wondered: Despite the huge laughs generated by its astonishing acting, writing, and directing teams, isn’t “The Bear” a little too serious for a category that’s been swept by the likes of “Modern Family,” “30 Rock,” and “Everybody Loves Raymond”?
“The Bear” Credit: Chuck Hodes/FX
TV has an identity problem that’s only becoming more prevalent as comedy progresses from farce and one-liners to more personal storytelling. This resistance to formula has led to an increase in dramedies that eschew techniques like multicam filming and laugh tracks.
The Television Academy opened itself up to this categorization quirk in 2021 when it announced that running time would no longer factor into the criteria for deciding whether a series is a comedy or drama. That was partly due to the fact that even all-out comedies like Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and the CW’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” were exceeding the previous 30-minute limit for the category.
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Even before this change, a precedent was set in 2015 when the Academy announced that an hourlong show would automatically count as a drama. This meant that Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” which had previously competed as a comedy, had to change categories. This shift led to Uzo Aduba becoming the only actor ever to win a comedy and drama Emmy for the same show and role. (Ed Asner almost managed this feat in the 1970s. However, he won for playing the same character on two different series: “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Lou Grant,” which competed in the comedy and drama categories, respectively.)
These blurred lines go beyond widespread carping about the unfairness of comedies like “Hacks” and “Only Murders in the Building” playing runners-up to a series like “The Bear.” (This is especially true of the recently released third season, which features some episodes that are entirely devoid of laughs.)
“Mr. & Mrs. Smith” Credit: David Lee/Prime Video
Other acclaimed series are also challenging this binary. Prime Video’s “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” which earned 16 nods in the drama categories, is right on the line; but is it really much more dramatic than co-creator and star Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” or his costar Maya Erskine’s “PEN15”?
CBS’ “Elsbeth” (which didn’t receive any Emmy noms) was also curiously submitted as a drama. Sure, someone dies every week, à la “Murder, She Wrote”; but if the tone were any lighter or Carrie Preston’s delightful sleuth any more effervescent, the thing would fly off into the New York City skyline. The juxtaposition of this series against serious-minded endeavors like “Shōgun” and “The Morning Show” is a mystery that even Elsbeth Tascioni would struggle to solve.
As social media cries grow louder for show creators to recontextualize their genres (even the stars of “The Bear” have been forced to grapple with fan questions), it’s worth noting that the limited series and TV movie categories make no such distinction. Perhaps as shows continue to avoid adhering to an either-or, there could be a movement to eliminate comedy/drama delineations altogether. (Other awards bodies already have; the Independent Spirit Awards do for both film and television.)
Another avenue could be a season-by-season analysis based on a new set of criteria, maybe decided on by committees of professionals chosen by the Television Academy. It would be a messy effort, to be sure—and probably of the last-ditch variety—but it also would address some series’ tonal shifts as they progress. (HBO’s “Barry,” for example, confounded comedy-seeking audiences the longer it ran, as Bill Hader’s titular hitman began embracing his demons wholeheartedly.)
“The Morning Show” Credit: Erin Simkin
Everything you need to know about the topsy-turvy nature of modern TV is exemplified by Jennifer Aniston going solemn on “The Morning Show” and Meryl Streep taking a light comedic jaunt through “Only Murders in the Building.” But perhaps the answer to this conundrum is best expressed by an exclamation from Carmy Berzatto on Season 1 of “The Bear”: “It’s about consistency and being consistent. We can’t operate at a higher level without consistency.” Heard, Chef.
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 1 issue of Backstage Magazine.