Permit me to throw shade at the Emmy Awards for a moment.
Reservation Dogs is a better kinda-comedy than The Bear. Dogs is consistently funny and finds ways to explore the lives, relationships, and histories of the characters in rewarding ways.
The Bear is equal parts endearing and yelling. Once or twice a season, it speaks to craft and intensity. Those are my favorite episodes. The Fak family is the only undeniably comedic element of The Bear. Give us a spin-off of that and let it legitimately win all comedy awards.
The Bear belongs in the drama category, but isn’t the length of a drama because no one could sustain watching an episode of that show for that long. 🙃
By kinda-comedy, I mean “22-minute shows that are eligible for comedy awards at the Emmy’s”. The real solution here is for the Emmy’s to fix their categories in two ways:
- Don’t call “dramatic” shows that are shorter than 44 minutes comedies. This is absurd and an easy fix.
- Unrelated to The Bear, currently: create separate categories for “returning shows” and “ending shows”. Emmy voters have a tendency to award shows in their last season disproportionate to their competition.
In short: Reservation Dogs was the comedy that Emmy voters think The Bear is. 🌶️
