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The 75th Emmys had plenty to Bear in mind.
After the Hollywood strikes delayed it for months, the 75th Emmys finally aired on Monday night on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In addition to big nights for HBO’s Succession, FX’s The Bear and Netflix’s Beef, the Anthony Anderson-hosted event had plenty of surprises in store.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler brought back SNL’s Weekend Update to announce a category that would eventually give Elton John an EGOT, there were a number of heartfelt speeches like RuPaul urging everyone to “listen to a drag queen” and countless TV reunions from the casts such as Grey’s Anatomy, Cheers, Martin and more filled the evening.
Here are Adweek’s takeaways from the 75th Emmys:
The Bear, the winner for Best Comedy, is not a comedy
The Bear had a big night at the Emmys, winning six awards, including the accolade for Best Comedy Series. Even more impressively, it won its comedy awards despite not being a comedy.
Just because a series has comedic moments, it doesn’t make it funny. The Bear is demonstrably full of tragedy and trauma, with a dark story of family loss at the heart of it.
It’s chaotic. It’s tense. And it Bear-ly has any laughs.
Of course, The Bear deserves to win awards, with strong performances from Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who all won individual Emmys on the night. And being classified as a comedy inherently made the show more competitive for accolades, saving the series from going up against juggernauts such as Succession’s final season.
However, there’s no real explicit reason The Bear is in the comedy category. After all, Jeremy Allen White is winning awards for his dramatic turns in the series, not cracking jokes.
The Emmys used to have time constraints when it came to classifying comedies and dramas, with longer fare going in the drama category and 30 minutes or less coming in at comedies. However, those rules were thrown out a few years ago, making The Bear’s comedy classification a head-scratcher for viewers. Thankfully for The Bear, it seems jokes aren’t a requirement either.
The Emmys showed The Golden Globes the power of a solid opening
Unlike the recent Golden Globes, which kicked off the show with a poorly received, oft-mocked monologue—and didn’t give social media much else to talk about the rest of the night—the Emmys took a different approach.
The show opened with Anderson making jokes while singing a medley of classic TV themes, and even bringing out Blink 182’s Travis Barker to perform the drum solo from “In the Air Tonight.” Plus, rather than music playing off winners whose speeches went long, Anderson announced that his mom, Doris Hancox, would take on those duties.
