i Wrote an entire essay about this in regard to The Bear because we've had these issues before a lot, particularly in the last decade. Orange is the New Black and Shameless competed in both drama and comedy at the emmys at alternate times in their long runs, there were people who thought Succession deserved to be considered a comedy as much as a drama and I myself thought that two of the most brilliant shows of the past couple of years (Atlanta and Barry) really twisted the boundaries of a comedy.

I have come to think of figuring out what a comedy is the same way Justice Potter Stewart famously described pornography: I know it when I see it. I've never had any doubts The Bear is a comedy, and the workplace comedy definition you use is dead on. (In my rave review of Season 2, I said one of the reasons I loved The Bear was because this is basically what most workplace are like and that Carmy is, in his own way, just as awful a boss as Michael Scott was.) The reason we don't easily laugh at The Bear's comedy is because while we've been willing to change the benchmarks of what we consider a drama ever since The Sopranos for whatever reason we still seem to look at the comedy as if the only standard that we'll accept is those 80s-90s models with canned laughter at bad jokes. The Bear is another example of how TV has evolved and we should all be grateful for that,