Emmys 2024 Voters Finally Decide 'The Bear' Is Not a Comedy

One of the most persistent questions in television was seemingly answered last night, as the win for Outstanding Comedy Series went not to the reigning champ but to Hacks

During the opening patter between father-son hosts Eugene and Dan Levy at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night, the Levys acknowledged that many in the audience might expect them to make a joke about how The Bear isn’t a comedy, despite its 23 nominations across various comedy categories. “But in the spirit of The Bear, we won’t be making any jokes,” Eugene quipped.

The response from the crowd sounded different from how they reacted to the Levys’ other punchlines, as if the attendees were both scandalized and in full approval of the Schitt’s Creek and SCTV star bluntly calling out the most blatant example of an ongoing Emmy problem: Nobody knows what categories any show belongs in anymore. Everybody loves The Bear, but almost everyone agrees that it’s a drama with occasional moments of humor, and has been placed in comedy only because its episodes are around a half-hour apiece.

For the bulk of the night, it seemed that this would be yet another year where the TV Academy just shrugged its shoulders at the genre issue and gave The Bear everything it wanted. Yes, Jean Smart beat Ayo Edebiri for lead actress in a comedy, but Smart already had five Emmys overall, and two prior for her Hacks role as comedian Deborah Vance, and the easiest way to win an Emmy is to already have several Emmys. (Edebiri likely would have repeated had she stayed in the supporting actress field, where instead her co-star Liza Colón-Zayas won.) Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jeremy Allen White repeated their acting wins from the 75th Emmys, as did Bear creator Christopher Storer for direction. The Hacks creators beat Storer for writing, but they had also done this in 2021 against another juggernaut in Ted Lasso. Even without a sweep to that point, it certainly felt like the night would end with another Bear coronation.

Until it didn’t.

Instead, to the shock of everyone in the theater — the winners most of all — the trophy went to Hacks. And perhaps that’s the start of a path out of this era of utter category confusion.

Maybe that’s too much weight to give any one win, particularly when The Bear still set the record for most Emmy wins by a comedy in a single season, including eight wins at last week’s Creative Arts ceremony, where Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis won guest actor trophies for their work in the Christmas episode “Fishes.” But it doesn’t feel that way. Shows that are otherwise dominant do not tend to lose the big award, not unless the voters feel like sending a message. They’ve long shown a willingness to award dramatic performances in comedic shows, and vice versa, and The Bear did win the comedy series trophy in January, but a second statue seemed a bridge too far. 

Timing may also not have been the FX series’ friend here. Each Bear season has debuted in June, just after the previous Emmy eligibility window has closed, and just before voting on that previous year begins. So its seasons get honored long after they first streamed on Hulu, and people were making votes about The Bear Season One while they had Season Two fresh in their minds. That very much worked to the series’ benefit last time around, because the second season was so incredible. Would Moss-Bachrach, for instance, have won supporting actor for Season One if the voting window didn’t overlap with people seeing his tour de force in the “Forks” episode from Season Two? Possibly, though he had less to do in that first year. Here, though, voting on Season Two was happening while people were still talking about Season Three, which was less universally beloved, and which made even less of an attempt at comedy than the prior years. In the days and weeks that followed that season’s premiere, I heard a lot of grumbling from people who work in television who felt the show had gotten high on its own supply, and who also assumed that it was going to keep winning Outstanding Comedy Series somehow. 

Instead, the voters opted for Hacks, which isn’t without dramatic moments itself, but which is unquestionably a comedy. (It also has the advantage of being a show about showbiz, which can often be a tiebreaker, since Hollywood loves nothing more than to celebrate stories about itself.)

So what now? There’s precedent for series moving from comedy to drama, though not always voluntarily. (Rule changes forced Orange Is the New Black to make that shift after its first season.) The drama categories seem likely to be wide open again next year, since last night’s winner Shōgun won’t have a new season done in time. Maybe FX takes the hint, especially since that third season seems more vulnerable than Season Two — one of the great TV seasons in recent memory — looked going into last night. Maybe this result gives the Academy leadership the reassurance to finally explore changes to the categorization system. Or maybe we’re just back at this same spot a year from now, because change — especially in a system where so many shows have plausible arguments for multiple categories — is hard.

Still, the Hacks win provided a surprising note on which to end a telecast that was a mix of familiar and a bit novel. Because the WGA and SAG strikes pushed the previous ceremony into January, this was the second Emmy show of 2024. And with those producers returning for this one, a lot of the same elements carried over, particularly the emphasis on TV nostalgia. There were a few reunions (Ron Howard and Henry Winkler on a recreation of Arnold’s diner from Happy Days, half The West Wing cast in a faux Oval Office set), while many other awards were presented by actors representing TV archetypes like moms (Connie Britton, Meredith Baxter, and Susan Kelechi Watson) or cops (Jimmy Smits, Don Johnson, Niecy Nash-Betts). It wasn’t quite as effective as last time, in part because the Levys weren’t really part of the trip down memory lane, whereas their predecessor host, Anthony Anderson, threw himself into various tributes. But it is likely a trend that will continue, since the majority of people watching the Emmys at this point are the ones old enough to be excited by a glimpse of Josiah Bartlet and friends.

There were still lots of repeat winners — including instances, like Smart or The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where voters were happy to vote for a star or a show the second they were eligible again — but also some surprises and uncertainty. Shōgun, expected to steamroll the other dramas, instead lost its first several categories, before finally hitting a big quartet towards the end of the night for Outstanding Drama Series, drama lead actor for Hiroyuki Sanada (who tag-teamed with Shōgun co-creator Justin Marks to make the best drama speech a bilingual affair), lead actress for Anna Sawai, and director for Frederick E. O. Toye. Peacock’s The Traitors won the reality competition trophy, perhaps signaling a changing of the guard after RuPaul’s Drag Race won the trophy five of the previous six years. Netflix’s terrific Baby Reindeer mostly had its way with the limited series categories, but director Steven Zaillian won the directing trophy for his stunning work on Ripley, and Jodie Foster from True Detective: Night Country and Lamorne Morris from Fargo Season Five became the first actors to ever win Emmys for their work in long-running anthology series. 

A perfectly solid, largely unremarkable show, all in all. But if this year’s (second) Emmys go down in TV history, it will be because voters drew a line in the sand about series trying to game the system by competing where it doesn’t belong.