There is a lot of debate right now about what happened to the comedy category at the Primetime Emmys, and the question is whether shows like The Bear, Barry, and Palm Royale should be classified as such.
Does it even matter anymore? The genie is long out of the bottle: “Ally McBeal,” which won the Emmy for best comedy in 1999, was an hour-long series with a lot of comedic elements. But I never thought of it as a comedy (especially in 1999, when comedy still essentially meant a multi-camera sitcom). The first season of “Desperate Housewives” was nominated for a comedy Emmy, but it was certainly more of a cheesy drama.
If “Barry” was a comedy, so was “Better Call Saul” — and in hindsight, it might have won a few Emmys in those categories. Among the comedy Emmy winners of the past decade, most combined a lot of drama with their comedy: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Fleabag,” even “Ted Lasso.” Now that “The Bear” could potentially become the most awarded “comedy” in Emmy history, I’m not sure what that means — other than that it’s a half-hour series that contains some laughs, it’s the show’s prerogative to decide which category it wants to compete in.
After all, the best comedies always contain a healthy dose of tragedy. If you watched a lot of sitcoms like me in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, you’ll remember the “very special episode.” It usually came late in a television season when the producers decided to tackle a sensitive subject or put their characters through the emotional test.
Of course, this was a regular occurrence in Norman Lear sitcoms, especially in All in the Family and its spin-offs. This was especially true in episodes like Edith’s 50th Birthday, which dealt with sexual violence and rape, while Edith’s Crisis of Faith dealt with violence against the LGBTQ community, and Cousin Liz dealt with gay rights.
These episodes aired during Season 8 of “All in the Family,” and all three were nominated for the 1978 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Writing—“Cousin Liz” won the award. The fourth show to be nominated in that category that year was “Fallen Idol,” a dramatic Season 6 adaptation of “MAS*H” episode in which Radar is injured and Hawkeye takes the blame.
I mean, these are probably more serious themes than most of what we saw in Season 2 of The Bear. After all, a transgender character was killed off in “Edith’s Crisis of Faith.” I’d be interested to know what people thought at the 1978 Emmys and if there was any debate about how dark the field of comedy writing had become that year.
This was all a bit before my time. By the early 1980s, the “very special episode” had become a cliche. Commercials would announce that a “very special” episode was coming by having the announcer lower his voice and play sad music while we learned that this was the week Gordon Jump appeared as a child molester on “Diff’rent Strokes.”
But there have also been times when sitcoms have tried something completely different. You can’t be a Gen Xer like me and not remember the seminal episode of Family Ties, “A, My Name is Alex.” Shot in part like a stage play, that hour-long episode wasn’t as funny because Alex P. Keaton grappled with a survivor’s feelings of remorse after the death of a friend. The episode won the 1987 Emmy for Best Comedy Screenplay, despite its dramatic tone.
Series such as “The Golden Girls” and “Roseanne” also occasionally enjoyed “very special” shows, but in the early 1990s these focused more on shows aimed at young viewers: “Full House,” “Life and Me,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and, of course, Jessie’s addiction to “caffeine pills” in “Saved By the Bell.”
They all meant well. But the rise of irony and cynicism in the 1990s all but wiped out the practice of “very special episodes” as we knew them. When storytelling eventually became more sophisticated thanks to the rise of cable television, the spirit of Norman Lear brought back the idea that comedies could tackle difficult subjects, feature complicated characters, and sometimes tread darker ground than most dramas. As long as we honor good television, I suppose we can live with the murky nature of what a comedy or drama is.
