The Bear That Wasn't... A Comedy

A long time ago, I first watched an MGM short directed by Chuck Jones, The Bear That Wasn't. The 1967 short, based on a 1946 children's book by director and animator Frank Tashlin, was about a bear who, after awakening from hibernation, finds himself in the middle of a busy city and a building site. The bear is mistaken for a worker by a foreman on the site and protests that he's not a human. The foreman tells him he's just a silly man in a fur coat who needs a shave and demands him to go to work right on the spot, which the bear reluctantly does much to his protests. The bear tries to plead his case only to be repeated the same line over and over again that he's just a silly man in a fur coat who needs a shave. The bear is also told he's not really a bear because he's not in a cage in a zoo with other bears. This causes the bear to just surrender to what people have told him and decides to just accept it. 

Months pass, and he finds himself uncomfortable in his surroundings and what others told him he was, and decides to leave the trappings of human life and finds a cave to hibernate in. He decided just because he was told he was just a silly man in a fur coat who needed a shave didn't mean it was true. He wasn't a silly man, and, of course, he knew he wasn't a silly bear either.

The reason I bring up is because of a very popular series is undergoing a similar identity crisis because of what people have told it was it was and wasn't. And it too is a bear, or rather Hulu's highly popular series The Bear.

The Bear has been rightfully acclaimed by critics and honored with tons of awards. For the last couple of award cycles, the media has been going on about how to exactly classify it. Officially, the various television academies classify The Bear as a comedy. Many comedic writers and performers see the series more as a drama. Most audiences feel the series is more dramatic than comedic. And yes, while the series has a lot of great comedic performances, if there's a considerable number of viewers who feel the dramatic elements are more prominent.  They feel The Bear is a dramatic series, not a comedy.

But because the series isn't about an hour long, folks don't immediately see The Bear as a drama. They'll focus more on the comedic elements of the series and label it as a comedy. 

The Primetime Emmys has an identity crisis when it comes to what's considered a comedy and what's considered a drama. While the rules changed as recently as 2015, the television industry still sees anything longer than a half hour is considered a drama and anything up to a half hour is a comedy. 

By those standards, Dragnet, Adam-12, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone are comedies, and The Love Boat, Psych, Ally McBeal, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. would be dramas

The Twilight Zone, one of the most influential (and still socially relevant) television series ever created with iconic stories that expose humanity's fears & flaws as well reminds us of our ultimate potential, would be considered a comedy.

Yes, there are often humorous elements in some of the tales, but just because humor is present doesn't make it a comedy, especially if it's told in a half-hour format. We have warped our minds into thinking dramatic stories should only be told in hour-long formats on television for decades.

That said, there have been times television told comedic stories in hour-long formats. Sometimes, you get anthologies like The Love Boat. Sometimes, you get stand-alone stories that largely use comedic elements like Ally McBeal or Psych. Don't dismiss their place in comedic TV.

And seriously, you're saying shows like The Mighty Gemstones and Peacemaker are dramas?

Similarly, an earlier series, Netflix's Orange is the New Black, had been classified as a comedy when it initially premiered and received tons of comedy awards. And it stayed that way until 2015 when the Emmy rules were rewritten, and hour-long shows were officially classified as drama, regardless of their content. 

As a result of that rule change, Uzo Aduba became the second performer after Ed Asner to win a Primetime Emmy for playing the same role in a comedy and a drama. Unlike Mr. Asner, who won for playing Lou Grant on the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show and a dramatic spinoff Lou Grant, Ms. Aduba won for playing Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren only on one series exactly a year apart.

What exactly changed? Just the classification of the show by the Television Academy. If Orange is the New Black had reduced its run time to 30 minutes, it still would have competed in the comedy space while still maintaining the same kind of storytelling it had when it was an hour long. 

This sounds crazier than it should be, but that's the way the business works. The fact that we're even having this conversation about The Bear in the first is an indictment of a much bigger problem with the industry as a whole. If enough people think The Bear isn't a comedy but rather a drama, then The Bear is a drama. And if you have to write articles to justify and cement that the show IS a comedy, it probably isn't one. 

A great show? Absolutely. But it's a drama. It's not just a silly show featuring a man who needs a shave. And there's no shame in that.