Yes, ‘The Bear’ is a Comedy

Is The Bear a comedy or a drama? This argument popped up online this week after the Chicago restaurant show made a near clean-sweep of the Emmys.

So, if you’re organizing the Emmys, then it’s a comedy. It won Outstanding Comedy Series and Best Lead Actor for White and Best Supporting Actor and Actress for Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Ayo Edebiri respectively. If you’re most of the Internet, you’re probably more likely to say it’s a drama. Or maybe something in between.

When you get right down to it, THE BEAR is a drama disguised as a comedy and SUCCESSION is a comedy disguised as a drama.

— Marc Hirsh (spacecitymarc.bsky.social) (@spacecitymarc) January 18, 2024

A lot of online speculation has floated the theory that the people who submitted The Bear’s first season for Emmy consideration as a comedy as a way to better its chance. The theory claims FX submitted it as a “comedy” to avoid having to compete with Succession, which pretty much ran the board on the five main categories except for Supporting Actress, which went to Jennifer Coolidge for The White Lotus for the second year in a row.

It’s a close call. Both seasons of The Bear are full of tense, sad and touching moments that feel authentically relatable, even when the situations are cartoonish and heavy. Nominations should’ve gone all around the Thanksgiving table from the second season’s most memorable episode when we finally get to see another piece of self-loathing baggage that Carmy, played by Jeremy Allen White has to carry with him under already enormous pressures. Spoiler: His family’s nuts.

Some of the show’s funniest moments and characters balance out the tension, most notably Moss-Bachrach’s Cousin Richie, played by Moss-Bachrach, who richly deserved his Emmy.  Richie is the Cartman of The Bear. He’s a loudmouth, short-tempered, impulsive, hair-trigger guy who seems more interested in being the center of attention with his crazy Chicago stories than doing work he doesn’t believe is all that important. He’s not above brandishing a firearm to quell an angry crowd and he’ll waste Carmy’s time and money to win a meaningless argument. Cousin Richie’s presence alone is enough to qualify The Bear as a comedy or at least a dramedy that leans more towards the “-edy.”

Part of The Bear’s appeal is its dedication to realism even when the result is Looney Tunes-grade chaos. The show’s writers and producers understand food and five-star cuisine on a higher level than most cooking shows but its realism doesn’t disqualify it as a comedy. It enhances it. It is its best comedic weapon.

The Christmas “Feast of the Seven Fishes” flashback episode is a squirmy ascent of madness to a conclusion with an epic disaster that’s necessary to understanding Carmy’s dynamic with his fellow chefs and within himself. It has to be a disaster of epic scale given the demons he struggles with in the face of his brother Michael’s tragic suicide.

Anyone who’s watched the show before discovering that glorious, jarring ending at the hands of Carmy’s bipolar mother Donna, played by Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, knows it had to be something really bad. Something Earth-shattering had to have happened to Carmy’s family for Carmy to be a habitual self-loather even when he’s winning and for Michael, played by Jon Bernthal, to feel low enough to take his own life. It’s so unexpected and big that you can’t help but laugh, but not because we’re enjoying Carmy’s pain. Quite the opposite.

Anyone with a family can relate to the moment a simple discussion can spiral wildly out of control into physical chaos but the place The Bear lands is comical. It’s big, beyond ridiculous, and unexpected. Most importantly, it’s funny. A drama wouldn’t dare take such a risk for fear of people calling it over the top and unrealistic. Time and again, The Bear does exactly what a great comedy is supposed to do.

There are moments like that scattered across every episode. The Bear is a textbook example of Mel Brooks’ philosophy that “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when I fall in an open sewer and die.”