To Hacks.
Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty

With Catherine O’Hara on stage, perhaps it was only fitting that the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards ended on a whimsical note. The bear three of the four acting awards (and five of six if you include the guest actor awards at last week’s Creative Arts Emmys), not to mention a directing award, the FX “comedy” (oh, we’ll get to that in a minute) was overtaken in the final moments of the evening by a show that is exactly what The bear was accused of not having a sense of humor.

Hacking went home with three major trophies on Sunday night: Jean Smart for Lead Actress (her third win in four years for Hacking and sixth Emmy overall); Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky for the script for the third season finale of “Bulletproof” and a completely unexpected win in the category “Outstanding Comedy Series”. For anyone wondering how Hacking could have pulled off that surprise, but the picture began to clear while the show’s producers were still onstage. “Support comedy!” implored series co-creator Lucia Aniello. “She speaks truth to power! Support your local comedian!” And although the plight of the at-risk stand-up comedian (or comedy writer) wasn’t the focus Hacking‘ Emmy campaign this year, you could sense an intention in Aniello’s statement. A victory for Hacking was not only a success for a show about a comedian, but a success for comedy itself. Social media told the rest of the story:

When the Emmy season began, I was more than ready to answer the question “is The bear really a comedy?” as mere hand-wringing from those of us who cover television for whom things like fraudulent awards categorization and award winner snobbery in favor of drama over comedy are common bugbears. But as Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk wrote in her article on whether The bear is or is not a real comedy, there were many subtweets that didn’t even try to be subtle, from people at shows like Abbott Elementary School This revealed a real resentment against The bear and his two-year Emmy dominance in that category.

This undercurrent continued throughout the Emmy election season, though not always publicly. When I asked about the rumors at an Emmy campaign event, I was often met with disbelief and anger that The bear was campaigning as comedy. Obviously I didn’t hear that undertone clearly enough, but in my defense, the first hour of Sunday’s broadcast didn’t give the impression that most Emmy voters had done that. Jeremy Allen White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach both repeated their wins from last year. Liza Colón-Zayas pulled off a surprise victory over the favorite Hannah Einbinder (who had campaigned with her). ass this year) in the category “Supporting Actress”. Jean Smart may have won the head-to-head race against Ayo Edebiri, but it is Jean Smart! She always wins. Only a win in the category “Writing”, where Hacking started to look like the stalking horse in the comedy race. That’s when it dawned on me that all these people in writers’ rooms and at Emmy events and on social media – whose resentment towards The bear had overridden their polite decorum—they all vote. And a show about a stand-up comedian fighting for respect in an entertainment landscape that doesn’t value her would probably go over pretty well with those voters.

The irony is that Hacking is not exactly the broadest comedy. In fact, there are many people – especially those who work for this website – who could argue that Hacking is weakest when it comes to the comedic performance of Deborah and Ava, and the show might work better as a pure drama. In the end, we will never know for sure if the “fraudulent comedy” argument was the reason The bear lost. The only way to find out for sure is to run The bear as a drama next year. Just as an experiment! And then we can all start talking about how Only murders in the building is the comedy show that deserves our support.