During the opening While hosts Eugene and Dan Levy made a few jokes at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night, the Levys acknowledged that many viewers would expect them to make a joke about how The bear is not a comedy, despite its 23 nominations in various comedy categories. “But in the spirit of The bearWe’re not going to joke,” Eugene joked.

The crowd’s reaction sounded different from the Levys’ other punchlines, as if those present were both shocked and fully in agreement with the Schitt’s Creek And SCTV Star bluntly gives the most blatant example of an ongoing Emmy problem: Nobody knows which categories a show belongs to anymore. Everyone loves The bearbut almost everyone agrees that it is a drama with occasional humorous moments and that the series was only classified as a comedy because each episode lasts about half an hour.

For most of the evening, it seemed as if this would be another year in which the TV Academy just shrugged its shoulders at the genre question and The bear everything it wanted. Yes, Jean Smart beat Ayo Edebiri for lead actress in a comedy, but Smart already had five Emmys in total and two before that for her Hacking role as comedian Deborah Vance, and the easiest way to win an Emmy is to already have multiple Emmys. (Edebiri would likely have repeated her title had she stayed in the supporting actress category, where her co-star Liza Colón-Zayas won instead.) Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jeremy Allen White repeated their acting wins from the 75th Emmys, as did Carry Creator Christopher Storer for directing. Hacking Creators beat Storer in writing, but they also had this in 2021 against another juggernaut in Ted Lasso. Even without a sweep up to this point, it felt like the night would end with another Carry Coronation.

Until it didn’t happen anymore.

Instead, to the shock of everyone in the theater – especially the winner – the trophy went to HackingAnd perhaps this is the beginning of a way out of this era of total category confusion.

Perhaps that is too much weight to attribute to a single victory, especially when The bear still holds the record for most Emmy wins by a comedy in a single season, including eight wins at the Creative Arts ceremony last week, where Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis won guest acting trophies for their work in the Christmas episode “Fishes.” But it doesn’t feel like it. Shows that otherwise dominate don’t tend to lose the big prize unless voters want to send a message. They’ve long shown they’re willing to award dramatic performances in comedic shows and vice versa, and The bear won the trophy for the comedy series in January, but a second statue would have been too much for him.

The timing may also not have been on the FX series’ side here. Carry Season 1 debuted in June, shortly after the previous Emmy eligibility window closed and just before voting on the previous year begins. So its seasons are being honored long after they first aired on Hulu, and people have voted on The bear Season 1 while Season 2 was still fresh in their minds. That really benefited the show last time, because Season 2 was so incredible. For example, would Moss-Bachrach have won Best Supporting Actor for Season 1 if the voting window hadn’t overlapped with when people saw his pièce de résistance in Season 2’s “Forks” episode? Possibly, even though he had less to do in the first year. But here, Season 2 was being voted on while people were still talking about Season 3, which wasn’t as popular and made even less of an effort at comedy than previous years. In the days and weeks after that season premiered, I heard a lot of grumbling from people who work in television who felt the show had gotten high on its own stash, and who also assumed it would somehow continue to win Best Comedy Series.

Instead, voters opted for Hackingwhich is not without its dramatic moments, but is undoubtedly a comedy. (It also has the advantage of being a show about showbiz, which can often be a deciding factor, as Hollywood loves nothing more than to celebrate stories about itself.)

So what now? There are precedents for series moving from comedy to drama, although not always voluntarily. (Rule changes forced Orange is the new black to make this change after the first season.) The drama categories will likely be completely open again next year, as last night’s winner Shogun won’t have a new season ready in time. Perhaps FX will take the hint, especially since Season 3 appears more vulnerable than Season 2 — one of the best seasons of TV in recent memory — did last night. Perhaps this result will give Academy leadership the confidence to finally consider changes to the categorization system. Or perhaps we’ll just be back in the same place a year from now, because change — especially in a system where so many shows have plausible arguments for multiple categories — is hard.

Nonetheless Hacking The win provided a surprising conclusion to a telecast that was a mix of the familiar and something new. Since the WGA and SAG strikes had pushed the previous ceremony back to January, this was the second Emmy show of 2024. And with those producers returning for this telecast, many of the same elements carried over, particularly the emphasis on TV nostalgia. There were some reunions (Ron Howard and Henry Winkler at a recreation of Arnold’s Diner from Beautiful dayshalf The western wing cast in a mock Oval Office setting), while many other awards were presented by actors representing TV archetypes such as mothers (Connie Britton, Meredith Baxter and Susan Kelechi Watson) or cops (Jimmy Smits, Don Johnson, Niecy Nash-Betts). It wasn’t quite as effective as last time, partly because the Levys weren’t really part of the trip down memory lane while their predecessor, host Anthony Anderson, waded into various honors. But that trend will likely continue, since the majority of people watching the Emmys at this point are old enough to enjoy a glimpse of Josiah Bartlet and friends.

There were still many repeat winners – including cases like Smart or The Daily Show with Jon Stewartwhere voters were happy to vote for a star or a show as soon as they were eligible to vote again – but there were also some surprises and uncertainties. Shogunwhich was expected to overpower the other dramas, instead lost its first few categories before finally picking up a major quartet award for Outstanding Drama Series, Drama Lead Actor for Hiroyuki Sanada (who is competing with Shogun Co-creator Justin Marks to make the Best Drama speech a bilingual affair), Lead Actress for Anna Sawai and Director for Frederick EO Toye. Peacocks The traitors won the reality competition trophy, possibly marking a changing of the guard after RuPaul’s Drag Race won the trophy five of the last six years. Netflix is ​​great Baby reindeer Director Steven Zaillian won the limited series category, but he won the directing trophy for his stunning work on Ripleyand Jodie Foster from True Detective: Nightland and Lamorne Morris from Fargo In season 5, they became the first actors to win an Emmy for their work in a long-running anthology series.

All in all, a solid, largely unremarkable show. But if this year’s (second) Emmys go down in television history, it will be because voters drew a clear line at shows that try to game the system by competing with shows that have nothing to do with it.