Emmy season has arrived.
The 76th season of the award show spans two weeks — the first to celebrate Creative Arts and the second for Primetime TV show awards. But as the awards are announced, I’m noticing that television is shifting from comedy, HBO and long-series content.
FX’s hit show “The Bear” made history by securing 23 Emmy nominations across the comedy category. However, this accomplishment rings hollow.
The show follows one of America’s top chefs, Carmen Berzatto, who takes over his family’s sandwich shop after his brother dies. Throughout three seasons, we see Berzatto renovate the shop, transforming it into a high-end restaurant.
Despite its brilliance, nearly anyone who’s seen the show can contest — it’s not a comedy. It’s stressful, maintaining a thrilling pace and episodes littered with screaming matches. The show has an occasional glimpse of humor, yet it is far from a comedy. While “The Bear” may be the most successful and most obvious outlier, the comedy genre as a whole seems to be straying from pure comedy.
Out of eight shows nominated, only three (“Abbott Elementary”, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “What We Do in the Shadows”) are standard sitcoms. The other five are blends of comedy and drama. This blurring of genres raises issues, primarily that a “true” comedy cannot tackle the same subject matter that dramedies can. It makes more traditional comedies seem shallower in comparison.
“The Bear” can flesh out Berzatto’s difficult relationship with his craft, exploring how cooking becomes an unhealthy obsession, ruining his mental health. Whereas audiences hold a show like “Abbott Elementary” to different standards. The show is expected to stay light and comical. If they introduce a meaty, dramatic subplot, it changes the project’s integrity. As a result, pitting these shows against each other seems unfair. The stereotypical sitcom is dying out, making way for darker, more emotional shows, edging out the comedy in its very genre.
But “The Bear” isn’t the only record-breaking show. In the Emmy’s first weekend, FX’s “Shogun” has already won 14 awards — more than any show has won in a single season. Both shows dominating their respective genres are FX’s products, marking a shift from last year’s season.
In 2023, HBO’s projects “Barry”, “The Last of Us”, “White Lotus” and “Succession” were major players, specifically in the Drama section. There were even a few categories where only HBO originals were nominated. This year, HBO is lagging behind FX and Hulu (Hulu being FX’s major distributor) as most of their previously nominated shows either ended or are in multi-year hiatus.
After the Emmy’s first weekend, FX has won 27 (34 if including Hulu’s wins) awards while HBO, in fifth place among distributors, won eight. HBO’s fall from the ranks is primarily due to the length of time they dedicate to releasing each original. HBO rarely releases a show’s next season the following year.
Most seasons take around two to three years for each release, whereas other studios can release a season each year. “The Bear”, “Abbott Elementary”, “Reservation Dogs”, “What We Do in The Shadows” and “Only Murders in the Building” all maintain a standard year to year schedule.
I am sure next season, if not the season after, HBO will be back in the race. But as this year reflects, FX can make quality programming without timely development.
Not only is television drifting from comedies and certain networks, but the style of TV itself is changing. The anthology category is one to keep an eye on, as most of this year’s critical acclaim lies in this section.
The shows are easily bingeable, ranging only a few episodes but gaining more traction than their full-series counterparts. Longer than a movie but shorter than a typical show, these programs have become a sensation in modern programming. Because they are easy for audiences to consume and require less dedication to produce, their presence is likely to expand and become more common across networks.
As this Emmy season has shown, television is changing. Shows are getting shorter, less funny and more concentrated on certain networks.
