During the weekend, My phone blew up with text messages from TV comedy writers who were watching the final season of The bearSome enjoyed the new episodes, others were frustrated by them, but no one called this tale of toxic workplaces, addiction, mental illness, and ruined personal relationships a genuine comedy — despite the fact that FX, Hulu, and Emmy voters everywhere continue to consider it a comedy. As one writer put it, “I like the show a lot, but it’s a whole other level of offensive that it won Best Comedy. They don’t even try to talk about comedy in most episodes.”
But later this month, The bear The second season will likely garner even more Emmy nominations than last year’s 13, all in the comedy category. And that’s just one part of what could be the most confusing Emmy Awards ceremony ever. Plus, the likely frontrunner for best drama series is Shogunwhich until the announcement a few months ago of new seasons in development was presented as a limited series. And among the contenders in the limited series category, there will be new seasons of Fargo And True Detectivefranchises that have been around for a decade.
This all comes on the heels of the strike-delayed January 2023 awards ceremony, in which Jennifer Coolidge won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for a Primarily Comedic Role in a Series, The White Lotuswhich had previously swept the limited series categories, and where Succession Creator Jesse Armstrong’s acceptance speech for best drama series called his series a satire.
We get it. These Emmy categories were created in a very different era of television and have made sense for decades. I love Lucy, the whole familyAnd Frasier were undoubtedly comedies, just like Hill Street Blues And The West Wing were clearly dramas. You might see some blurring as to which actors were considered supporting roles. and who were considered top stars (**). But it wasn’t until 1999 that a significant existential controversy over the Emmys took place, whenAlly McBeal a one-hour legal show with a comedic tone, but without the traditional humorous structure of aSeinfeld won the comedy series award — the same night as its sister series,The practice
Editor’s Choice Famously, all six
Friends They insisted on casting themselves as supporting actors during the early years of the series, to avoid anyone appearing to overshadow the others, and later they all moved to the lead role at the same time.(**) Somewhat less famously, but amusingly, Rob Lowe introduced himself as the lead actor on every show he was on, even when he was clearly the fifth or sixth actor on a show like
Parks and recreation . As the 21st century dawns, it has become increasingly difficult to draw clear distinctions between categories. Desperate Housewives — a one-hour soap opera with a more dramatic tone than usual — was nominated for a comedy series in 2005. Edie Falco won an Emmy for a comedy actress for a 98% dramatic performance in Nurse Jackie and, intrigued by this development, she insisted in her acceptance speech that she was not funny.Orange is the new black — also an hour-long series, overtly comedic at times but intensely dramatic at others — was nominated for comedy series in 2014, and shortly afterward, the Emmys changed the eligibility rules so that all hour-long programs are automatically considered dramas and all comedies are automatically considered half-hours, though shows can ask to be moved.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (succeeded in his bet and won the 2018 comedy series award.)Meanwhile, we had anthologies like True Detective, Fargo And american horror story wreaking havoc on the category in the early and mid-2010s. The first season of american horror story competed in a limited series in 2012, as did Fargo in 2014 — the same year the inaugural ceremony took place True Detective season was considered a drama series. It didn’t go very well for True D creator Nic Pizzolatto and friends, who were crushed by the finale Break the badseason; subsequent payments, including this year’s True Detective: Nightmare Before Christmassubmit in what was eventually renamed Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. To make things even more complicated, we had a series of limited series like Downton Abbey, Big Little Lies And
which turned out to be, in fact, unlimited, forcing category jumps for later seasons. Related Now the entire nomination process and awards ceremony has morphed into Schrödinger’s Emmy Awards, where a show can be a comedy, drama, or limited series, and the only way to know for sure is to open the ballot. The bear is a half-hour series whose first season could at least loosely be described as a comedy, although the most memorable moments were the more serious ones. Shogunwas developed as a miniseries, but a second season is now in the works; some cynics have speculated that this is all a way of gaming the system, as there is a very large, Succession-U-shaped gap in the drama categories, and one of the only nominees for best drama series from the previous cycle, The crown is even eligible this time. Fargo has been allowed to remain as a limited/anthology series all these years, even though some characters appear in multiple seasons, while Coolidge’s return automatically forced
White Lotus elsewhere. (And not in the comedy categories, because… it lasts an hour?)Perhaps the most ridiculous example of this confusion is Showtime. The curse The Nathan Fielder-Benny Safdie-Emma Stone team-up seems designed to defy categorization. Fielder is a comedian by trade, and the show was explicitly a satire on reality TV, gentrification, and other things, so maybe it was a comedy. But it’s impossible to imagine the show continuing after what it did to Fielder’s character in its final episode, so it’s a limited series, right? It has less value as a drama, but hey, the episodes were an hour long each, and both Fielder and Stone got to play dark moments for their characters, and even the satire wasn’t
funny, then… maybe? So of course, the show was pitched as a drama series — despite no evidence of any attempt to make additional seasons — simply because the path to getting there was much easier than in a comedy or limited series.
Tendency
At this point, TV fans can just throw up their hands and admit defeat. Creating a set of drama categories wouldn’t solve anything, because too many shows these days would be able to justify their eligibility for those categories. And it wouldn’t solve the problem of miniseries being successful enough to be renewed. The Television Academy could try to eliminate genre distinctions altogether, much in the same way that comedic and dramatic performances compete at the Oscars. But in those head-to-head competitions, drama tends to win hands down, and some years you’re lucky to see anyone nominated for a comedic performance. Plus, the Emmys are meant to make Hollywood feel good about itself, and reducing the number of people honored (or creating a kind of confusion where many shows and people win trophies, but not in any kind of clear and direct competition) is a doomed idea. The Emmys have other problems to deal with, like the tendency of voters in recent years to nominate every actor on the few shows they watch. But the one thing we know for sure when the new nominations are announced on July 17 is that there will be a lot of head-scratching over which shows and actors got voted on.
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