Jean Smart accepts the award for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for "Hacks" during the ... [+]
The Emmy Awards 2024 waited until the last minute for the biggest upset. After FX’s The Bear dominated the night with a record total of wins for a comedy, it failed to win Best Comedy.
Instead, HBO’s Hacks, a show about an aging comedian who mentors a younger woman, took the top prize. That came after Jean Smart, the legendary star of Hacks, won Best Actress in a Comedy, edging The Bear’s Edebiri, who won the 2023 Best Actress in a Comedy Award.
Hacks has been nominated for 48 Emmys in three seasons. It has won nine, including three this year. In addition to Best Actress and Best Comedy, it earned Best Writing for a Comedy Series for Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky.
The Bear won 11 total 2024 Emmy awards, setting a new record for comedies and besting the record of 10 it set last year.
In three seasons, The Bear has received 36 Emmy nominations, including 23 this year to pace all comedies. The show took home three of the major acting awards, including a second straight Best Actor trophy for Jeremy Allen White. Supporting actors Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Liza Colón-Zayas also earned trophies, with the latter becoming the first Latina actress to win in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
The Bear also won a slew of Emmys at the Creative Arts ceremony held a week before the Primetime Emmy Awards. The show earned seven victories, including a victory for Jamie Lee Curtis for Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Other Nominees For Best Comedy
Other top contenders in the category included ABC’s Abbott Elementary, the feel-good comedy about the dedicated teachers and staff at an inner-city Philadelphia elementary school; Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, about an unlikely trio of podcast hosts/murder investigators; and FX on Hulu’s Reservations Dogs
HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm also received a nomination. It has been nominated for Best Comedy 12 times and has never won. Apple TV+’s Palm Royale, starring Kristen Wiig as an ambitious woman taking on Palm Beach high society in the 1960s, and FX’s What We Do in the Shadows, a faux documentary about vampires.
Why Is The Bear Considered A Comedy?
The loss for The Bear is bound to derail some controversy. Many people were uncertain why the show, which features a lot of dramatic moments and doesn’t fit the traditional definition of a comedy, was even eligible for Best Comedy.
But the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Emmy Awards, allows producers to decide what genre to submit their show under. They have been adamant that humor undergirds the show and so have submitted it as a comedy.
Still, even Emmy hosts Dan and Eugene Levy had a zinger ready for Bear. “I know some of you might be expecting us to make a joke about whether The Bear is really a comedy. But in the true spirit of The Bear we will not be making any jokes,” said Eugene Levy during the opener.
People on Twitter openly questioned and protested the classification.
