Why Hacks Upset The Bear to Win Best Comedy

It took almost three hours for Emmy voters to render their verdict on the great “Bear” controversy, but that verdict came down clearly with the final award announced at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night.

“The Bear,” which had won 10 awards in January when the 75th Emmys were handed out, won another seven at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys and four more during Sunday’s show. But then, when Catherine O’Hara opened the envelope for the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy that seemed all but certain to complete the FX show’s near-sweep of the comedy categories, she read the title “Hacks.”

How on earth could “The Bear” have done so well with voters and then lost the big award? What did “Hacks” have that it didn’t?

That’s easy: Humor.

Since “The Bear” first came on the air in 2022, it has been the subject of complaints from pundits and columnists who thought it belonged in the Emmys drama categories, not the comedy categories. Those complaints reached the point where the lack of jokes in “The Bear” was the subject of one of the funniest jokes in the opening Emmy monologue by hosts Eugene Levy and Dan Levy — but when it won for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Direction of a Comedy Series, it seemed pretty obvious that Emmy voters had accepted it as a comedy series.

Except at the end, when the top award went to the show that was funny.

That award created a seismic shock that ran through the Peacock Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, the biggest surprise in a show that had far more surprises than any other Emmy show in recent years. And it led to the inescapable conclusion that all of those comments about “The Bear” being out of place competing with “Hacks,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “Abbott Elementary” and other comedies might actually have had some impact on voters, at least in that one category.

In addition, it didn’t help that after the May 31 Emmy cutoff deadline, FX dropped a third season of “The Bear” that drew a very mixed reaction from critics and viewers. The show’s second season was the one competing for Emmys, but a third season that was considered subpar and was available during the voting window didn’t help a show that seemingly had all the momentum. No such qualms existed around the third season of Max’s “Hacks,” which was widely praised and, yes, very funny in addition to being quite touching.

It was the biggest shock in that category at least since “Fleabag” dethroned “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in 2019, and yet it made perfect sense. And it stole the thunder from the FX drama series “Shōgun,” which otherwise would have been the top story at the Emmys on a night when it set a new record for the most awards ever won by a show in a single year.  

The historical drama had led all programs with 25 nominations and dominated the Creative Arts Emmys ceremonies that took place last weekend, winning 14 awards to break the record of 12 wins in a season, which was set by “Game of Thrones” in 2015 and tied by that same show in 2016 and 2019. 

“Shōgun” came into Sunday’s Primetime Emmy telecast already holding the record, with six chances to add to its total – and then, in one of the biggest surprises in a night that had its share, it didn’t win anything for the first two hours. It lost supporting actor to “The Morning Show” (expected) and then writing to “Slow Horses” (definitely unexpected), essentially going missing-in-action on a show it was expected to dominate.

It wasn’t until two hours and 20 minutes into the show that “Shogun” won its first award of the night, for directing. But that was followed shortly by wins for actors Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai and for the show itself, bringing its 2024 total to 18 to shatter the records set by “Game of Thrones” and by the limited series “John Adams,” which won 13 Emmys in 2008.

“Shōgun” enjoyed its monster Emmys in a year in which the drama category had been thinned out by shows that had gone off the air (“Succession,” “Better Call Saul”) and others whose new seasons weren’t ready because of pandemic- and strike-related production delays (“House of the Dragon,” “The White Lotus,” “Yellowjackets”). Based on the 1975 James Clavell novel that had already been turned into a 1980 miniseries that won three Emmys, the largely Japanese-language show was immediately heralded as a strong Emmy contender when its first two episodes dropped in February, though FX originally listed it as a limited series on its FYC page.

It wasn’t until May that the network said it had commissioned two more seasons and shifted “Shōgun” to the drama series categories, where it didn’t have to face other viral programs like Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer” and “Ripley.” And while “Shōgun” likely would have done well with Emmy voters regardless of category, its record-breaking total was made possible by the move to drama series, as well as by voters’ habit in recent years of giving lots of awards to a small number of shows.

As TheWrap pointed out last month, the first and only comedy and drama series to sweep all seven of the Primetime Emmy categories came in 2020 with “Schitt’s Creek” and in 2021 with “The Crown,” and since then the consolidation of awards in a few shows has reached record levels.

But “Shōgun” was really the only program to benefit from voters’ tunnel vision on Sunday. In the limited series categories, “Baby Reindeer” was the big winner, with four awards, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series — but “Fargo,” “Ripley” and “True Detective: Night Country” also won one award each, suggesting that voters really did survey the field of contenders before making their picks.

This didn’t feel like an entirely predictable night the way the last Emmys did. Rather than rubber-stamping their favorites, voters dropped in a handful of surprises: “Slow Horses” in drama writing, Lamorne Morris from “Fargo” in supporting actor in a limited series, “The Traitors” upsetting five-time winner “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in the reality-competition category …

Those wins were enough to puncture the impression that voters simply cast ballots for their favorites in one category after another. Over the past few years, the Emmys have given us plenty of opportunities to wonder if the voters were a little lazy; Sunday, it felt like it’d be a cheap shot to use that label on them. 

Sure, a host of deserving shows were completely shut out. Sorry, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; you had a nice 12-season run, so you’ll have to take some kind of perverse pride in your record as the show with the most nominations in the Outstanding Comedy Series category, 11, and the fewest wins, 0. Apologies, “Reservation Dogs”; at least you finally got a nomination, right? Welcome to the show, “Fallout” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and “3 Body Problem” and “Slow Horses”; there’s always next year.

But just as “Shōgun” was robbed of its status as the center of attention by the final award of the night, so did the “Hacks” win overshadow anything else that happened at the Peacock Theatre. We expected to see a drama make Emmy history, and it did. But a comedy — a real comedy, not a comedy-because-the-Television-Academy-says-so comedy — stole the show and walked away with the Emmys.

Isn’t that funny?