St. Vincent – "Fast Slow Disco" (2018)

I’m so glad I came

But I can’t wait to leave

I just finished watching season four of the critically-acclaimed FX series, The Bear.

The Bear is a very intense show.  Watching it is downright exhausting.

Despite that, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences classified it as a comedy – not a drama – when it nominated for a number of Emmy Awards after its first season.   

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The Bear has some funny moments, but is nothing like the other recent winners of the “Best Comedy Series” Emmy – shows like Schitt’s Creek, Veep, Modern Family, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.  (Actually, Curb Your Enthusiasm never won the best comedy Emmy, although it was nominated for that award no fewer than eleven times.  The fact that it never won proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Academy voters are about as sharp as a bowl of Jell-O.)

The Bear is a very compelling series.  It is beautifully shot, has a fabulous soundtrack, and features a great cast – none of whom (with the exception of Jamie Lee Curtis) were familiar to me.  

The Bear is different from most other TV series because it focuses almost entirely on work.   For most of us, our job is an extremely important aspect of our life, but most movies and television shows give the work lives of their characters very short shrift.

There’s a fair amount of stuff in The Bear about family relationships, and the show serves up a dollop of romance here and there.  But The Bear is mostly concerned with life at the titular restaurant where virtually all the important characters work.

I’ve never worked in a restaurant – much less a fine-dining establishment like the one in The Bear – so I don’t really know how accurately the show portrayed the lives of both the back of house and front of house staff.  But it seemed entirely authentic to me.

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My main problem with The Bear is that it fetishizes food.  I enjoy going out to eat as much as the next guy.  But for me, food is just food – what I have for dinner isn’t that big of a deal. 

In the world of The Bear, however, every meal is expected to be a work of art – anything short of perfection is unacceptable. 

One minor subplot of the most recent season of The Bear involves the efforts of one of the line cooks to lower the time it takes her to prepare a certain pasta dish to three minutes.  It’s not clear to me why being able to make that dish in exactly three minutes – as opposed to three and a half minutes, or three minutes and fifteen seconds – is that critical.  But that’s what the show would have you believe.

Everyone on The Bear always seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  (I can’t tell you how many times one of the cooks or servers asks another cook or server, “Are you OK?”  The answer is almost always “Yes” – but more often than not, that answer is a lie.)  If you ask me, they all need to lie down with a cool washcloth on their forehead. 

Take a chill pill, all you chefs and servers on The Bear!  I’m impressed that you care so deeply about your work.  I applaud you for going to the lengths you do to give your customers a memorable restaurant experience.  

But I’m sorry – I think The Bear takes itself waaaay too seriously.  Working in a restaurant isn’t like working in an emergency room – whether your experience at a fine-dining joint is transcendent or mediocre isn’t a matter of life or death.

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For many years, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences assumed that shows that had half-hour episodes were comedies for purposes of the Emmys, while shows with longer episodes were placed in the drama category.

That rule made sense during the heyday of network television, when comedies (e.g., The Beverly Hillbillies and All in The Family) always filled 30-minute time slots and most dramas (e.g., Gunsmoke and Star Trek) were an hour in length.  

But classifying a series as a comedy or a drama strictly on the basis of the length of its episodes doesn’t make a lot of sense in today’s world. 

According to the rules now governing the Emmys, a comedy series is one whose content is “primarily comedic” while a dramatic series is one whose content is “primarily dramatic.”  (I guess having a circular definition is better than no definition at all . . . but just barely.)

When FX submitted The Bear to the Emmys as a comedy, the Academy could have chosen to place it in the drama category instead.  Variety reported in June that FX’s competitors have tried to get the Academy to move The Bear into the drama category.

But The Bear isn’t the first show whose categorization has been controversial.  So far the Academy seems to have taken a laissez-faire stance with regard to whether a network says that a show that it submitted for Emmy consideration is a comedy or a drama.  That’s probably because the Academy doesn’t want to be seen as taking sides.

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Why did FX submit The Bear to the Academy as a comedy?  Many people think it was so The Bear wouldn’t have to compete in the drama category against Shogun, another FX series.

If that was in fact the network’s strategy, it worked beautifully.  The first season of The Bear won ten comedy Emmys, and the show took home eleven awards the following year.  

But at the most recent Emmy Awards, Hacks took advantage of the backlash over The Bear’s questionable categorization and won Best Comedy Series.

I haven’t seen Hacks – I spend enough money on streaming networks with subscribing to HBO, or Max, or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days – but I understand that it’s actually a comedy.

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Click here to listen to “Fast Slow Disco,” one of the two alternate versions of St. Vincent’s “Slow Disco” that appears on the soundtrack of season four of The Bear.  (“Fast Slow Disco” is played over the closing credits of the final episode.)

St. Vincent

St. Vincent – who was born Annie Clark – has said that after Taylor Swift heard the original version of “Slow Disco” (which Wass released on the 2017 Masseduction album), she told her that she should turn it into a pop song.  A few months later, Clark released the uptempo “Fast Slow Disco.”

Click here to buy “Fast Slow Disco” from Amazon.