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It’s been a running joke for years at this point that The Bear is one of the most intense, harrowing TV shows to ever get billed as a “comedy” for the purpose of winning awards. FX’s cooking series isn’t without laughs, of course, but it’s largely accepted that the series competes in the comedy category at shows like the Emmys primarily because of its length: Half-hour shows are comedies, no matter how much they might make you cry or suffer a nervous breakdown.
Not everybody involved in Emmy voting necessarily loves this, which might help explain how the show’s third season broke its streak of winning the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy at last year’s ceremony, with Hacks taking the award instead. (The Bear was forced to content itself with five of the six acting awards and the nod for Outstanding Directing.) This week—in between The Bear revealing its Emmy submissions (in Comedy, natch) and ahead of the reveal of the Emmy nominations next month, Vulture has a new piece diving deeper into the reaction the show gets from actual comedy writers, many of whom sound kind of irritated that they have to fight directly against the overpowering chorus of “Yes, Chef!”
All of this is anonymously sourced, presumably because everybody involved wants to still be able to make nice with series creator Chris Storer at award show parties. But there’s some juicy material, including at least one outright statement that The Bear isn’t actually very funny when it tries to be. “It was not well-crafted comedy,” said a writer for “a competing comedy,” “in the hands of people who aren’t experienced comedy performers. And it left a little bit of a sour taste in people’s mouths.” Another expressed specific frustration that the FX series managed to surpass 30 Rock‘s record for most comedy nominations in a single year in 2024. “I think that might have been the last straw for comedy writers,” one writer for a network comedy is quoted. “30 Rock is held in such high regard. So much work goes into making jokes, and 30 Rock was a joke machine. So when you see a show that doesn’t even actively try to be funny, it’s a bit insulting.” Other writers pointed to the fact that live-action comedy has shrunk massively in recent years, with many networks now only fielding a handful of live-action sitcoms. “So when you do see a non-comedy being celebrated at the highest level, it is a bit of a slap in the face.”
Worth noting—and acknowledged in the piece—that all of these people are Emmy voters, so they do have a measure of control over how this all goes down. “It’s strange,” one veteran writer is quoted. “Because I think that people have always said, ‘This isn’t a comedy,’ and even so, it’s winning.” Another reported hearing that one showrunner whose show was nominated pushed their writers to vote for Hacks because, “They wanted a funny comedy to win, and they felt that Hacks had a better chance than they did to send a message to the industry and to feel that comedy was still something that mattered.”
None of this is likely to change soon, of course: Emmys build prestige, and prestige is a useful currency in Hollywood, so FX is almost certain to keep submitting The Bear where it’s most likely to win. (And where it doesn’t have to compete and steal oxygen from shows like the network’s own Shōgun.) Network head John Landgraf waved off the question when it came up (as it repeatedly does) last year with a “We let the voters decide the answers to these questions.” The Vulture report does suggest that at least some comedy writers are willing to shift the board a little, campaigning to get a more obviously comedic show to be named the industry’s best comedy series.
