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Everyone is talking about what counts as arealcomedy, and youre not entirely sure where it all came from.
But it definitely has something to do withThe Bear.
Is it even funny?
Lets get into it!
FXsThe Bearis a half-hour-ish-long fictional TV show about a Chicago restaurant and the people who run it.
Byseason two, Carmy and Sydney have reimagined what the restaurant could be and reopened it as The Bear.
So …isit a comedy?
What an interesting question!
Heres the short answer: not really.
and theyre all operating in this space together.
If at any moment Sydney rolled her eyes and said Oh, brother!
The themes are about creation, discovery, playfulness, love, and growth.
But the drama has also been there from the beginning.
Its always been more interested in the tension of existential sadness than in relieving that tension.
I basically just skimmed all of that.
Let me loop back and try.
Youre gonna laugh sometimes, but youre going to laugh less and less as the show goes on.
And even when you do laugh, its often going to be at least halfway into pained groan territory.
It used to be much easier to tell TV comedies and TV dramas apart.
Of course, anyone whos ever tried to make an audience laugh knows this is bullshit.
Comedy is really fucking hard to do.
This is an eye-of-the-beholder thing.
Wait, this whole thing is about the Emmys?!
Kind of, yeah!
But the prime-time Emmys, much like contemporary politics and TikTok posters, do not do well with nuance.
Half-hour shows traditionally get called comedies, regardless of what happens inside that half-hour.
Hour-long shows are often called dramas in the same way.
But as shows likeFleabagandAtlantahave reshaped the half-hour TV landscape, the Emmys havent done anything to redefine those categories.
Is there a solution?
(Half-hour single-cam versus half-hour multi-cam, maybe?)
