Will ‘The Bear’ cook the competition again  in comedy categories?

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Hot on the trail

Despite controversy around its genre, FX series is this year’s favorite. ‘Reservation Dogs’ may break through for its final season. And don’t count out‘Abbott.’

“ABBOTT ELEMENTARY” THREW ONE HELL OF A party to wrap up its strike­shortened third season, with Janine (Quinta Brunson) inviting her colleagues over for a micromanaged bash (hey, it’s Janine) that showcased why this delightful sitcom won the Emmy for casting a couple of years ago. ¶ Putting all these people in the same room and watching their characters unleash their own brands of nerdy chaos — Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) enjoying some brown liquor, turning the former into Sea Barbara (“I am the captain!”) — was to appreciate that “Abbott Elementary” now belongs alongside such great workplace comedies as “The Office” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” It’s even in conversation with them. You may remember that Mary Richards threw a (disastrous) party or two. And Janine and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) finally giving in to their feelings echoed the whole will­they­or­won’t­they Jim and Pam thing.And it was lovely! ¶ “Abbott” won four Emmys for its first two seasons. In addition to that casting prize, Brunson won for writing and lead comedy actress, while Ralph took supporting actress for the show’s debut year. Not bad. But it still feels a little light. We’ll see how it fares this year against “The Bear,” the category’s overwhelming favorite, even with all the drama surrounding its comedy.

Glenn Whipp Columnist

Illustration by Erica Bonkowski

Comedy Series

“ABBOTT ELEMENTARY,” “ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING” and “THE BEAR” are the only holdovers from the eight series nominated last year. But most of the open slots will be filled by series that have been nominated in the past, including two shows — “CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM” and “HACKS” that weren’t eligible in 2023. It’s also likely that twice­nominated “WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS” returns after being crowded out last year, as its writing was as sharp and nutty as ever.

That leaves a couple of spots, one of which should go to “RESERVATION DOGS,” a gem that has been repeatedly feted by the American Film Institute and the Peabody Awards but not at the Emmys. It’s a special show, vitally important for Indigenous storytellers, and I can only hope that Lily Gladstone’s presence and promotion of the series during her

“Killers of the Flower Moon” awards­season run raised its profile among Emmy voters. It’d be nice — and fitting — for it to go out with a few overdue nominations. Among the newcomers, the broad, cartoonish “PALM ROYALE” has its fans, and I can only wish I was among them. It wasn’t for lack of effort. Guy Ritchie‘s “THE GENTLEMEN” possessed the mayhem and visual flair you’d expect from its creator. It was good frothy fun. Boots Riley’s “I’M A VIRGO” premiered almost a year ago, but I don’t think anyone who saw this comingof­age story about a 13­foot­tall teenager will ever forget it.

And since sometimes a show can come out of seemingly nowhere, let’s throw in “GHOSTS,” the CBS remake of a beloved British sitcom that has found a devoted following over the course of its three seasons. Times television critic Robert Lloyd loves it, and he was boosting “Schitt’s Creek” before anyone else knew about it.

Comedy Actress

After winning the supporting actress Emmy for “The Bear,” AYO EDEBIRI now graduates to the lead category. Sydney and Carmy were partners in Season 2, after all. She’ll join reigning winner QUINTA BRUNSON (“Abbott Elementary”) and JEAN SMART, who won the category for the first two seasons of “Hacks.” You could make a case for any one of these women and you would not be wrong.

KRISTEN WIIG has piled up nine Emmy nominations over the years and, again, “Palm Royale” has its supporters. Whatever you think of the show, you can’t say Wiig didn’t invest herself fully in the role of the series’ shameless social climber. Her “Saturday Night Live” former castmate MAYA RUDOLPH could be nominated for “Loot,” another Apple TV+ series that you wish were better than it is.

SELENA GOMEZ has yet to snag a nomination for “Only Murders in the Building,” with voters discounting her essential presence in the show’s central trio alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short. With the category thinner thanks to the strikes, this could be her year. Same for DEVERY JACOBS for her tough, tender portrayal of Elora in “Reservation Dogs.” The episode with Ethan Hawke playing her father, which Jacobs directed, was sublime.

Comedy Actor

Remember how weird it was when MARTIN SHORT was nominated for the second season of “Only Murders in the Building” but STEVE MARTIN wasn’t? That’s not going to happen again. They’ll join last year’s winner (and, let’s face it, this year’s too), JEREMY ALLEN WHITE from “The Bear.” LARRY DAVID has been nominated six times in this category for “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t receive a parting gift for its final go­round.

You know who else has a lot of Emmy nominations? KELSEY GRAMMER He won four times playing Dr. Frasier Crane and is up for consideration again for “Frasier’s” revival, which many people liked and some found anticlimactic. Chances are he’ll be snubbed (and, yes, here this usage is correct) by more than a few voters for his politics.

Two newcomers worth mentioning: THEO JAMES, the star (and mostly straight man) of “The Gentlemen,” and the impossible­to­ignore JHARRELJEROME, who plays the sheltered, 13­foot­tall hero of “I’m a Virgo.” Jerome won an Emmy three years ago for Ava DuVernay‘s “When They See Us,” and he deserves to find himself back at the ceremony again for his heartfelt work on the show.

COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTRESS

SHERYL LEE RALPH and JANELLE JAMES have been nominated twice for “Abbott Elementary,” with Ralph winning for the first

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Potential comedy series nominees include, clockwise from top l eft, “Abbott Elementary,” “What We Do in the Shadows,” “The B ear,” “Only Murders in the Building” and “Reservation Dogs.” season. Where’s LISA ANN WALTER? Winning “Celebrity Jeopardy!” is nice and all, but she deserves some recognition here too.

HANNAH EINBINDER earned nominations for the first two seasons of “Hacks,” and the show’s third season has focused primarily on the friendship and often fraught working partnership between Einbinder’s Ava and Jean Smart’s Deborah. The dynamic has changed, and the equal footing has given Einbinder more leeway to display her range. She has truly impressed.

Of course, “The Bear” will have a presence here too with a couple of likely firsttime nominees — ABBY ELLIOTT and LIZA COLÓN­ZAYAS. And we can’t forget MERYL STREEP, who, on “Only Murders in the Building,” managed to convincingly play an actor relishing her big break after decades of frustration. Talk about an imaginative leap.

Comedy Supporting Actor

With the departures of “Ted Lasso” and “Barry,” there’s plenty of room in this cate­ gory. Last year’s winner, “The Bear’s” EBON MOSS­BACHRACH, will be back, of course, and probably will win again for the powerful episode detailing Richie’s transformation, “Forks.” He’ll likely be joined by three of his castmates — the great OLIVER PLATT, who has earned a nod (and a chocolate­covered banana) as lovable tough guy Uncle Jimmy, LIONEL BOYCE for playing the beloved pastry chef Marcus and, yes, MATTY MATHESON, the Canadian chef and acting novice who has become an essential member of the show’s ensemble.

That’s half the category. TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS definitely will return a third time for “Abbott Elementary.” Although their roles were reduced this season, it’s possible CARL CLEMONS­HOPKINS or PAUL W. DOWNS make it in for “Hacks” or BOWEN YANG gets nominated again for “Saturday Night Live.” It does feel like CHRIS PERFETTI is due some love for “Abbott.” He brings such a delightful theater­kid energy to his socially awkward history teacher, and his rapport with Williams was a highlight of this season.

→ Kate Winslet in “The Regime,” clockwise from top left; Sofía Vergara in “Griselda”; Morgan Spector in “The Gilded Age”; Tom Hollander in “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans”; and Maya Rudolph in “Loot.”

As the wealth gap grows in real life, watching the rich behave badly isn’t as fun as it used to be. Creators are rethinking the approach.

THE RICH, TO PUT A SPIN on a biblical phrase, are always with us. In business, in politics — but also pretty consistently on TVtoo.

HBO’s “Succession,” after all, took home three of the last four drama series Emmys before it wrapped its run last year. The small screen is filled with a parade of characters cossetted, burdened and driven to extremes by excessive wealth and its associated power — but is it a story we’ve seen a little too oftenand one that cuts a little too close to reality lately?

The answers are yes and yes, which means many series (limited and otherwise) are finding success by tapping into the lifestyles of the rich and horrible with new ways to expose those tarnished, gilded cages, including “Loot” (Apple TV+); “Mary & George” (Starz); “Griselda” and “The Gentlemen” (Netflix); “The Regime,” “The Gilded Age” and “The Righteous Gemstones” (HBO); and “Feud” (FX). And in the process, their creators are reconsidering that their wealthy, fantastically awful protagonists not only need a makeover — they also require some comeuppance.

“‘Dynasty’ was popular when I was a kid,” recalls Matthew Read, executive producer on “The Gentlemen,” a show about a man whose newly inherited estate houses a marijuana empire. “But it would be hard to have an audience look up to those characters or enjoy their conspicuous consumption in the same way [today]. Something like ‘Succession’ let you enjoy how unhappy these rich people are.”

Watching the rich enjoy their privileges, at one point, was a way for the havenots to peep into a life they’d likely never attain. “People are aspirational,” says Gillian Anderson, who plays a TV journalist whose interview with Prince Andrew forces the royal to retreat from public life in Netflix’s “Scoop.” “Everyone always imagines that when you get that rich or famous, that means everything is going to be OK.”

“It’s interesting to see what people do with those opportunities,” says Chloë Sevigny, who plays a wealthy heiress on “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.” “It’s something we’re all curious about: What would I do with that money?”

And as Julian Fellowes (creator of class­conscious historical drama “The Gilded Age,”who writes the show with Sonja Warfield) notes, not all rich folk need to be portrayed as horrible: “Some people who have made a lot of money are really nice and see it as their job to pull their weight. Others feel they’ve done the work and they should have fun and everyone else should push off.”

But that’s the trick these days in focusing on characters with unimaginable wealth. With suggestions that an abundance of money actually affects people’s thinking — consider the “affluenza” criminal defense writers are shifting tack. Will Tracy has been doing this for a few years now, writing for “Succession,” penning 2022’s “The Menu” (with Seth Reiss) and creating “The Regime,” a limited series about an out­oftouch ruler in a fictional country.

“There’s that madness that seeps through all [those] projects,” Tracy says. “You can see it in ‘The Regime,’ that that amount of power and access to material resources has allowed her to create her own reality, and everyone around that person has to pretend that her reality is reality.”

That vicarious, fantastic thrill that audiences once gleaned from stories of the rich and powerful takes on different meanings in TV series about them today. As billionaires proliferate and expand the ever­widening class divide in the real world, watching the super­rich slip away without real consequences can make a show feel hollow, not aspirational.

Some series are addressing this more directly: “Griselda”invites audiences to identify with a female drug lord — a gender shift Eric Newman (who co­created the limited series with Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard and Ingrid Escajeda) says puts a new spin on things. Retribution, in the end, is exacted on her through the deaths of her children, a consequence he’d insisted on.

“As storytellers, we have an obligation to show that there is no happy ending when there’s this much trauma,” he says. “I look at criminals sympathetically, but if you’re telling a story that adheres to authenticity, these people don’t get away with it.”

Tracy’s fresh spin in “Regime” involves a political dictator who craves love from her constituency but is way too involved in her social media perception. “When shows like ‘Dynasty’ were on TV … the richest people in the country were ciphers, this black box,” he says. “Now the richest and most powerful people in the country are very visible … and they let us into their world through social media. They want us to be part of their thought process, and their thought process is, largely, insane. ... We want to watch that freak show.”

“Mary” creator DC Moore says when he was putting together his limited series about a mother and son amassing wealth and status from King James I, he recognized there is an echo of the past in today’s real world. “I feel like we’ve come back to that sort of age, in the last 10, 20 years where absolute power and autocracy is on the rise and those leaders are everywhere,” he says. “I completely had that in mind when I was writing this.”

But not every show is aiming directly at a big, consequential ending for its characters. “We’re in an interesting time, and people have a greater understanding of behind­the­curtain [life] and that money doesn’t solve everything,” says “Gemstones” creator­star Danny McBride, whose show is about a family of wealthy televangelists. “But I don’t think consequences have to be the point of [my] show. That’s not how I view storytelling, that a certain show has to follow a certain payoff.”

Meanwhile, there’s “Loot,” which has gone all in on the concept of having billions fall into the lap of a protagonist who wants to do good with it — instead of spending it, say, shooting rockets into the air or stumping for autocracy.

Co­creator Alan Yang (with Matt Hubbard) notes that the show “isn’t a polemic; we’re not trying to change everyone’s minds. ... but this show is on the end of the spectrum where we believe change is possible. It’s not just one lone billionaire, it’s not even every billionaire — everyone has to pull together to fight stratification in society. Ten nice rich people are never going to change the world. But do you have any hope that people can change? That’s baked into the show. Ultimately, that’s at the heart of what we do.”

Story by Bob Strauss