During the opening patrol between father-son hosts Eugene and Dan Levy at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night, the Levys acknowledged that many in the audience might have expected 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 Bear“We’re not going to joke,” Eugene joked.

The audience’s reaction sounded different from the way they reacted to the Levys’ other jokes, as if the audience was both shocked and in complete agreement with the Schitt’s Creek And SCTV star who bluntly calls out the most egregious example of an ongoing Emmy problem: No one knows what categories a show belongs in anymore. Everyone loves The Bearbut almost everyone agrees that it is a drama with occasional humorous moments, and that it is only classified as a comedy because the episodes are about half an hour each.

For most of the evening, it seemed like this would be another year where the TV Academy simply shrugged its shoulders at the genre problem and The Bear everything it wanted. Yes, Jean Smart beat out Ayo Edebiri for Lead Actress in a Comedy, but Smart already had five Emmys in total, and two earlier for her Tricks role as comedienne Deborah Vance, and the easiest way to win an Emmy is to already have multiple Emmys. (Edebiri likely would have repeated if she had 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 Bear creator Christopher Storer to direct. The Tricks creators beat Storer to the writing, but they had also done so in 2021 against another behemoth in Ted LassoEven without having wiped to that point, it definitely felt like the night would end with a new Bear coronation.

Until it didn’t happen anymore.

Instead, to the shock of everyone in the theater – and especially the winners – the trophy went to TricksAnd perhaps that is the beginning of a path out of this era of total category confusion.

Maybe that’s too much to grant someone the victory, especially if The Bear still holds the record for most Emmy wins by a comedy in a single season, including eight wins at last week’s Creative Arts ceremony, where Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis won guest actor trophies for their work in the Christmas episode “Fishes.” But it doesn’t feel that way. Shows that are otherwise dominant don’t lose out on the big prize unless voters want to send a message. They’ve long shown a willingness to reward dramatic performances on comedy shows, and vice versa, and The Bear won the comedy series trophy in January, but a second statue seemed a step too far for him.

Timing may not have been the FX series’ friend here either. Bear season kicked off in June, just after the previous Emmy eligibility window closed and just before voting for the previous year begins. So the seasons are being honored long after they first stream on Hulu and people are voting on The Bear Season one while they still had season two fresh in their minds. That worked in the show’s favor last time around, because the second season was so incredible. Would Moss-Bachrach have won Best Supporting Actor for season one, for example, if the voting window hadn’t overlapped with people seeing his tour de force in the season two episode “Forks”? Possibly, although he had less to do that first year. Here, though, season two was being voted on while people were still talking about season three, which was less universally beloved and made even less of an attempt at comedy than the previous years. In the days and weeks following that season’s premiere, I heard a lot of grumbling from people who work in television, who felt the show had gotten high on its own supply and who also assumed it would somehow keep winning Best Comedy.

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

So what now? There is precedent for shows moving from comedy to drama, though not always voluntarily. (Rule changes forced Orange is the new black (to make that shift after the first season.) It looks like the drama categories will be wide open again next year, as last night’s winner Shogun won’t have a new season in time. Maybe FX will take the hint, especially since that third season looks more vulnerable than season two — one of the best seasons of television in recent memory — looked last night. Maybe this outcome will give the Academy leadership the reassurance to finally explore changes to the categorization system. Or maybe we’ll just be back to where we were a year from now, because change — especially in a system where so many shows have plausible arguments for multiple categories — is hard.

Yet the Tricks win provided a surprising note to end a telecast that was a mix of familiar and a little new. With WGA and SAG strikes pushing the previous ceremony to January, this was the second Emmy show of 2024. And with those producers returning for this one, many of the same elements carried over, particularly the emphasis on TV nostalgia. There were a few reunions (Ron Howard and Henry Winkler at a recreation of Arnold’s diner from Happy dayshalf The West Wing cast in a fake Oval Office set), while many other awards were presented by actors representing TV archetypes like mothers (Connie Britton, Meredith Baxter and Susan Kelechi Watson) or cops (Jimmy Smits, Don Johnson, Niecy Nash-Betts). It wasn’t as effective as last time, in part because the Levys weren’t really part of the trip down memory lane, while their predecessor, Anthony Anderson, dove into various tributes. But it’s a trend that will likely continue, since the majority of people watching the Emmys right now are old enough to get excited about a glimpse of Josiah Bartlet and friends.

There were still many repeat winners, including agencies such as Smart or The Daily Show with Jon Stewartwhere voters were eager to vote for a star or a show once they were eligible again — but there were also some surprises and uncertainties. Shogunwhich was expected to sweep the other dramas, instead lost the first few categories, before eventually clinching a grand quartet by the end of the night for Best Drama Series, Leading Actor in Drama for Hiroyuki Sanada (who teamed up 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. Peacock’s The traitors won the reality competition trophy, perhaps signaling a changing of the guard after RuPaul’s Drag Race won the trophy five of the previous six years. Netflix’s great Baby reindeer Most of the films in the limited series category were successful, but director Steven Zaillian won the directing award for his stunning work on Rijpleyand Jodie Foster from Real Detective: Nightland and Lamorne Morris of Fargo Season five marked the first actor to ever win an Emmy for his work in a long-running anthology series.

A perfectly solid, largely unremarkable show, all things considered. But if this year’s (second) Emmys go down in TV history, it will be because voters have drawn the line at shows that try to game the system by competing where they don’t belong.