Emmys 2023 Leading Men Are More Melancholic Than Ever!
“The nominated men of this year’s Emmy season are going through it.
In the final season of Barry, Bill Hader’s eponymous hitman is once again compartmentalizing his violence to an insane degree. Jason Segel’s therapist in Shrinking is flailing since the death of his wife. Jason Sudeikis’ Ted Lasso is maybe the patron saint of funny men with panic attacks, and Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy on The Bear is grappling with the suicide of his brother. Even Martin Short’s Oliver Putnam on Only Murders in the Building, though outwardly silly, wrestles with his relationship to his son — whose paternity is a question mark.
And those are just the lead actors. We haven’t even gotten to the supporting players yet.
The men who got the TV Academy’s attention in the comedy categories this year show the spectrum of masculinity in crisis. These are guys who are questioning their place in the world, whether because of grief, trauma or their own insecurities. Their antics — when there are antics — are secondary to their emotional journeys, many of which, at least in some ways, have to do with how to be men in society.
To be fair: Comedy has long been a home for the male ego to be explored and parodied, as evidenced in such past Emmy nominees and winners as Kelsey Grammer’s aesthete Frasier Crane, Ted Danson’s washed-up baseball player Sam Malone and Alec Baldwin’s Reagan-obsessed Jack Donaghy. All these characters operated on bravado, and their shows often commented on the futility of that. At the same time, rarely were these characters actually introspective. It was the job of the audience to read into their turmoil.
That’s not the case anymore. The rise of the self-examining male comedy hero at the Emmys has been a long time coming. Donald Glover took the trophy for his work on Atlanta in 2017 and Hader won in both 2018 and 2019. There was a short break for some levity when Eugene Levy took the trophy with the Schitt’s Creek sweep of 2020, but since then Sudeikis has been the reigning champ. Meanwhile, it’s no secret that some of this year’s comedy nominees aren’t all that funny, especially given the presence of the uber-dark Barry and the melancholic The Bear.
Still, this crop of male nominees seem to have an extra level of malaise. Barry has always had a conflicted take on his place in society, and that is magnified in the final season after he lands in prison and attempts to negotiate a deal for himself where he can go into witness protection. Despite the fact that she initially doesn’t agree to this, he always sees himself taking along his former girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg). He views himself as Sally’s protector in a way that she doesn’t necessarily reciprocate. She does go along with him, and the action jumps ahead in time to their lives off the grid, where Barry plays the role of a small-town dad who listens to Christian podcasts. He believes by acting this part — the loving father, the religious devotee — he can save his soul in a way that the audience knows he can’t.
Barry began by playing with a gendered trope: What if the hardened hitman was actually a sensitive actor? Many of these shows use professions as a way to comment on masculine identity.
The Bear‘s Carmy, on the surface, is the tattooed avatar of a demanding chef, but the FX/Hulu series pulls back his layers to reveal a man struggling with deep loss. In the episode White submitted, the season one finale, “Braciole,” Carmy tells an Al-Anon meeting about how he felt small in comparison to his charismatic brother, who was an addict. It’s a dissection of himself and his relationship to a man he once thought was an ideal.
The world of Ted Lasso is filled with men comparing themselves to one another, which makes sense given that it’s about a soccer team. But the series from Sudeikis and his co-creators has eschewed competition among men in favor of camaraderie. Case in point: the turnaround of season one villain Jamie Tartt. Now he’s a team player, and the role garnered Phil Dunster a supporting nod alongside Brett Goldstein as Tartt’s former rival Roy Kent, whose gruff exterior belies a big softie.
This exploration of male vulnerability carried through to Shrinking, co-created by Goldstein, Ted Lasso showrunner Bill Lawrence and Segel, which finds a heartwarming tale in a mess of a man trying to connect with his daughter and do his job after a tragedy. In the pilot, Segel’s Jimmy is shirking his responsibilities and hanging out with women way younger than he is. Even that first installment shows him trying to get his head on straight.
The idea of a sensitive man considering his own masculinity within a TV series is not new, but in this race it seems like we’ve reached an apex of sorts. You could even apply that to Tyler James Williams’ nominated supporting turn on Abbott Elementary, where his character, Gregory, deals with expectations from his father and pines after Quinta Brunson’s equally nerdy schoolteacher.
Whether overtly sorrowful or just confused, these are guys who have a lot to work on. These stories are simply their vehicles for doing so.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.” – hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/emmys-2023-melancholy-comic-leading-men-1235568568/
