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In The BearJeremy Allen White plays Carmy, a renowned chef who returns to Chicago to take over the family restaurant after his brother commits suicide. Both the restaurant and Carmy’s life are in shambles, and he suffers from anxiety and depression. At the end of the season, he decides it’s best to start from scratch and completely renovate the place to open a new restaurant. The second season follows the process leading up to the opening of the new business. The third, released on Disney+ last Wednesday, delves into the first months of the restaurant and Carmy’s struggle to achieve excellence.
Shot with many close-ups, following the characters and the food closely, with very quick exchanges of dialogue and lots of shouting, it reflects the tension that exists in the kitchen of a professional kitchen and the stress and anxiety that it can transfer to its workers. Grief, mental health and motherhood/fatherhood are frequent themes in the series. Its episodes usually do not exceed 30 minutes because it is difficult for someone to endure such a level of audiovisual pressure for longer. And as hard as it is to believe with this description, for the awards, The Bear It’s a comedy. And not just any comedy, it’s a record-breaking comedy.
The Bear has already broken two Emmy records. It is the comedy that has won the most awards in history for its first season. And since mid-July, it is the series that has received the most nominations in the comedy categories for a single season: its second batch of episodes has garnered 23 nominations (the record was held by 30 Rock since 2009, when it won 22 nominations).
It is also the comedy that has provoked the most debate about its own identity as a comedy. Journalist Stuart Heritage published in The Guardian a text entitled “The Bear “It’s not a comedy, and it’s time to stop pretending it is.” Heritage argued that the series was doing harm to comedy as a concept. He even considered it a mistake that Jeremy Allen White won awards for comedy lead in a non-comedy role to the detriment of other actors who are purely comedic (Jason Segel, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Martin Short in the case of last year’s Emmys; although the journalist himself concedes that the roles of his four competitors also had a lot of drama).
A few days earlier, Sarah John posted on The Daily Beast another article on the subject, with the opposite point of view: “Once and for all: Yes, The Bear “It’s a comedy.” “It’s short-sighted to think that just because a show is about stress, tension and trauma, it’s not brilliantly reflecting the humor that’s needed to navigate life,” she added. For her, the show is a parody of the restaurant industry and family struggles. “Some of the best episodes of The Bear They will keep you on the edge of your seat, holding your breath. But tension causes adrenaline, not gloom and depression. These episodes often function as satires,” he adds.The Bear “It consistently finds humor in terrible things. It explores serious themes, but in a surprising and open-minded way,” he adds.
In the middle ground lies the criticism of Vulture Kathryn VanArendonk, who titled: “Is it The Bear a comedy? And should I care?” She argues that the categories of drama and comedy have evolved and that The Bear fits into a more fluid concept of comedy close to the dramedy that became fashionable since the arrival of platforms. In fact, the first season describes it as a sitcom The second one would focus on the story of a dysfunctional family (the restaurant workers) who come together to try to make things work (get the business up and running). It even finds a “bubbly humor” in an episode as serious and dramatic, almost tragic, as Fish. She does feel that the drama is clearer in season three because there isn’t as much comic relief. “Whereas Carmy’s intensity in previous seasons was balanced by humor in other characters, in season three everyone is dragged down by the weight of their high standards and no one is having a good time,” she says.
What is a comedy for the Emmys?
The origin of all this controversy is in the division in some awards between drama and comedy. The Emmys separate drama, comedy and limited series. And the differences between the three are very blurred. The Emmy rules, established by the American Television Academy, say the following: “Comedy and drama series are defined as programs with multiple episodes (minimum of six) where the majority of the duration of at least six episodes is primarily comedic for comedy series or primarily dramatic for drama series.”
This is the definition that screenwriter Joya McCroy was referring to, Abbott Collegewhen she tweeted: “Proud of the Emmy nominations of Abbott College this year, especially Best Comedy since we are clearly a program where the majority of the duration of at least six episodes are primarily comedic, as defined by the Television Academy.”
This rule came into effect in 2021. From 2015 to 2021, the criterion used to decide whether something was a comedy or drama was its length: series with half-hour episodes were automatically considered comedies and those with longer episodes were classified as dramas. This rule made it so that Orange Is the New Black, prison dramedy with one-hour episodes, competed in 2014 as a comedy and changed to drama in 2015. Orange Is the New Black filed a petition to have the Academy review the category, but was not granted a return to comedy. Curiously, that same year other one-hour series such as Glee, Shameless and Jane the Virgin Yes, they were granted the change to stay in comedy. This shows that the flexibility and arbitrariness in the Emmy criteria has always been there. In fact, other series like Transparent either Fleabagsometimes more drama than comedy, competed and won as comedies.
According to published Variety From different sources in the audiovisual industry, “chains and strategists” had tried to force the Television Academy to review the category of The Bear to be considered a drama. And what do they think in the series itself? That it is a comedy. “I think it is as real as life. What we are trying to do is tell a true story,” said executive producer Josh Senior after winning the Emmy for its first season. For actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Richie in the series), “those ideas about comedy and drama are a little bit old-fashioned. We are trying to reflect the chaos of being human, which is deeply funny and which we all suffer.” Others outside the series do not agree. Comedian Niles Abston, a writer for the series, Davetweeted in the thread of the record number of nominations The Bear: “The industry letting a series that is clearly a drama do this would probably be part of 30 Rock”.
Kathryn VanArendonk pointed out in Vulture There is a deeper issue behind all this: the greater weight and value that has traditionally been given to drama over comedy. “For many years now, half-hour series like Transparent, Louie, Atlanta, Fleabag, Barryy Russian doll They operate on much more serious registers, and we have been living for even longer (more centuries) in a cultural imbalance that says that serious things are more valuable — more important, more significant, more difficult to do, more artistically worthwhile — than funny things.” Perhaps that is why comedy has become so serious?
In an interview with EL PAÍS, screenwriter Bill Lawrence, creator of Scrubs, Ted Lasso and Unfiltered Therapy, spoke about the state of comedy television today. “People try to put things in a box: this is a comedy, this is a drama. And that’s not the case anymore. I don’t think Succession “It was the best drama when it won the Emmy. I think it was the best comedy. It made me laugh so hard, it was so darkly funny… The thing is, maybe there aren’t as many dumb comedies as there used to be. (…) The genre is changing. I think there are a lot of dramas that are comedic and a lot of comedies that are dramatic.”
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