'Hacks' Beating 'The Bear' Was Exactly What the Emmys Needed

_{A version of this story first appeared on The Ankler.}

The morning after an awards show always feels a bit deflating, doesn’t it? Even with the Emmys coming right at the start of the movie awards season, and the buzz of the Toronto awards still lingering (don’t worry, we’ll get there later this week), there’s a Monday morning sense of the sequins being just a little bit less sparkly.

That’s not even a hangover speaking: My colleague Elaine Low was on Emmy weekend party duty, and we’ll be discussing it all in a special early edition of the Prestige Junkie podcast arriving later today. Turns out I thought I was tired of talking about how Shogun, The Bear and Baby Reindeer would win everything, but when the Emmys threw in some actual surprises, it felt exciting enough to keep this season going a few more months.

I kid, I kid! Weary publicists, lay down your head just a moment, because SAG Awards and Golden Globes campaigns are right around the corner. For now, let’s look back at the evening’s surprises — good and bad — from thrilling victories to the product placement idea that never, ever should have left the brainstorming session.

Sweeps Are Out

Emmy hosts Eugene and Dan Levy know perfectly well how much these awards love a sweep. Four years ago, during a virtual ceremony while the world was really not doing its best, the Schitt’s Creek team picked up every single major award in the comedy category, a remarkable swan song for a show that barely made a blip when it first started airing in the U.S.

That particular kind of sweep has not been replicated since, but there’s still been a sense of repetition at Emmys ceremonies since. Succession and Beef and the first season of The Bear didn’t win every award they were up for, but it sure felt like it. At the 2023 Emmys, held earlier this year, each show’s stressful theme music started to feel like a warning bell: Get out of our way or risk being steamrolled.

Most of us expected more or less the same at this year’s event, with Shogun, the second season of The Bear and the limited series Baby Reindeer all tipped for multiple victories in their respective categories. All three did great and — with the exception being Hacks’ stunning victory over The Bear in the comedy category — have more or less all the bragging rights they could have hoped for this morning.

But it’s in the categories where the favorites didn’t win that the Emmys gave us some genuine excitement. Rather than voting straight ticket for the shows they loved the most, Emmy voters really seemed to pay attention, singling out shows for their specific accomplishments and the performers who best represented what their shows do best. Far from the Emmys era of rubber-stamping the same winner year after year, these awards reflect a genuine desire to spread the wealth — and a much better representation of this still-golden era of television than I would have thought possible.

Comedy vs. 'Comedy'

I cannot count how many times I heard grumbling this season about whether or not The Bear is really a comedy, a debate so sticky that it made its way to red carpet chatter last night. You could certainly argue, as my friend Joe Reid did at Vulture, that it ultimately did in The Bear in the top comedy category.

The Television Academy, after all, is filled with people who have made their careers in comedy, and they might be even more perplexed than the average viewer by the rise of comedies as likely to rip your heart out as make you laugh. As the Hacks team took the stage, I thought about my conversation with comedy directing nominee Mary Lou Belli, a sitcom veteran who told me that what her show had in common with “most” of her fellow nominees “is that they’re funny.” (The Bear’s Christopher Storer won that category anyway.)

I don’t know how to solve the category problem presented by The Bear, and I do wonder if it’ll make a full jump to drama next year now that Succession is off the table. For now, I’m just celebrating the comedy category finding a way to share the wealth, a bit more like it did back in 2021 when it was Ted Lasso vs. the first season of Hacks. Ted still snared the top prize, but Jean Smart won lead actress — she’s never lost for this role! — and Hacks won for both writing and directing, evidence of strong Television Academy support that really broke through last night.

Hacks creators Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky have always cultivated an underdog vibe — when I spoke to Downs and Aniello in May they were frank about how challenging the industry can still be: “It is really bleak in the world of comedy,” Downs told me. Now that they’ve taken the big prize, it will be interesting to see how Hacks figures into future races, though there ought to be a clear narrative for Hannah Einbinder, the co-lead of Hacks who gamely runs in the supporting category and has, egregiously, never won.

It’s also encouraging to see Hacks win the top prize in its third season, a rare feat for awards that often cannot stop overlooking something once they’ve started. Now that we’ve given Hacks what it deserves, how about Only Murders in the Building next? What better way to cure concerns about the future comedy on television than to give the top award to a different, excellent show each season?

On with the Show — and the Shogun

FX’s Shogun had already made history heading into Sunday’s main ceremony, picking up an impressive 14 awards at the Creative Arts Emmys and breaking the record for awards won by a single season of a show. The wins for lead actress Anna Sawai, lead actor Hiroyuki Sanada and best drama series were simply icing on top.

But Shogun had to share its victories with The Crown, which picked up best supporting actress for Elizabeth Debicki, as well as somewhat unexpected victors The Morning Show (supporting actor Billy Crudup) and Slow Horses (writing for series creator Will Smith). Argue all you want about whether the meticulously crafted and acted Shogun should have won those too — I’m still pouring one out for Tadanobu Asano — but these victories make perfect sense.

The Morning Show got an enormous 10 acting nominations, and a repeat victory for Crudup was as good a way as any to reflect the clear affection for the show in the TV Academy. As Slow Horses continues to build its audience Stateside, with a new season airing on Apple TV+ as we speak, a writing award for this clever, twisty spy thriller was ideal recognition — and maybe a way to draw in even more new viewers. The English Will Smith also pulled off one of the night’s best lines when he took the stage: “First of all, relax. Despite my name, I come in peace.”

The Night’s Most Thrilling Surprise

In the limited series category, it was the expected big night for Baby Reindeer, with two victories for Richard Gadd and another for Jessica Gunning in addition to the series win. Its competition within the Netflix house — the sumptuous black-and-white Ripley — had already won three Creative Arts Emmys, and got an incredibly well-deserved directing win for series creator Steven Zaillian.

But the most thrilling surprise of the night, for my money, had nothing to do with Baby Reindeer at all. Robert Downey, Jr., fresh off his Oscar win, had been tipped for a best supporting actor victory for his role in The Sympathizer, even when he was the show’s sole nominee. Instead, he cheered loudly from his seat for Lamorne Morris, the Fargo star — and Prestige Junkie podcast guest! — who seemed as stunned and delighted as the rest of the room.

Or Maybe This Was the Most Thrilling Surprise

Not quite as exciting as getting an invite to the Traitors Castle, but close! Following Alan Cumming’s victory for outstanding reality host at the Creative Arts Emmys last weekend, The Traitors pulled off a matching win in the reality competition series, breaking what had seemed like an eternal stranglehold on the category by RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Despite what some people who got mad at me online might believe, I was not in fact rooting for RuPaul’s Drag Race to lose, merely lobbying for some more variety in a category that ought to better represent the wide, widely entertaining range of reality TV out there. We don’t know yet if this is a changing of the guard or a one-off like Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Girls triumphing in 2022, but that sounds like something to worry about in the future. Today, we celebrate Cumming and his plaid.

Does Johnnie Walker Pay in Whiskey?

It makes perfect sense to do an awards show bit based around the bar, given how often the night’s biggest talent congregates there instead of in their seats. It even makes sense to secure a liquor sponsor — the Mo?t & Chandon that Taylor Swift was sipping at the Golden Globes didn’t get there by accident.

But someone really got ahead of themselves scheming up the backstage moment with Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Emmy by his side, and Red White & Royal Blue’s Taylor Zakhar-Perez, who met up at the “bar” to toast with glasses of Johnnie Walker before taking the stage to present together. It’s hard to tell if it was intentional or a production snafu, but both of them looked directly into the camera at multiple points, giving a real “Can we have our money now?” Liz Lemon vibe.

Archetypes Are Not the New Reunion

During last year’s Emmys — yes, they happened in January, we’re still calling them last year’s, move on — the producers scored sentimental points by reuniting the casts from Martin, Ally McBeal and All in the Family on replicas of their original sets. In an era when so many awards shows seem hellbent on cutting every extra minute, they were big swings that paid off beautifully.

Reunions were part of the mix this year too, with Dan and Eugene Levy reminding us of Schitt’s Creek from the very beginning and castmates from The West Wing and Happy Days taking the stage together as well. But the show’s script also leaned heavily on the idea of “classic TV archetypes,” pairing up people who had played TV dads, cops and so forth, for shared presenting segments.

I love it when awards shows give us unlikely pairs, and it was a treat to see Kathy Bates mixing it up with Giancarlo Esposito, even if she is an iconic movie villain, not a TV one. But it felt weirdly academic for the hosts to have to explain the concept of a TV archetype before cutting to a given reunion, and not nearly as natural as just putting the Cheers gang back at the bar.

Just look at the 38 words it took to introduce a segment with Mindy Kaling, Mekhi Phifer and Zach Braff: “Joining us onstage right now are three actors whose characters were members of a profession that has been the source of great storylines going back to the very first medical drama, City Hospital, that debuted 73 years ago.” All that as a way to say “TV doctors!”

Then again, these unlikely in-person pairings are a lot more fun than a montage — and I love a montage! — and the more famous faces you can get onstage in an awards show, the better. So maybe there’s a smoother word than “archetype” we can deploy next time and make this all feel a little more natural.

Hosts with the Most

Levy père et fils brought precisely what they promised in pre-show interviews: gentle humor so inoffensive that their most frequent target was first-ever Emmys host, Walter O’Keefe, who died in 1983. It’s a wise move for a room as clubby as the Emmys, full of returning winners and industry veterans. You try making a risky joke in front of Carol Burnett!

Perhaps the Levys or the show’s producers Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay welcomed the contrast of immediately following the opening monologue with Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. The Only Murders trio, who reportedly turned down an offer to host the Oscars in 2022, brought a sparkling, well-honed energy that every awards show obsessive dreams of.

The Levys remained a welcome presence every time they returned to the stage — or the aisles, in one particularly effective bit. But it was also hard not to wonder what Marty and Steve were up to in the audience. The Oscars hosting slot is still open for next year. Maybe it’s worth asking again?