Three Seasons of The Bear
Monday is about movies. Sometimes TV. Today, I caught up with all of The Bear. New favourite TV show ever.
Okay, so I’m now up to date with The Bear, the FX/Hulu show which you can watch on Disney+. It runs three seasons, currently. There’ll be more. And as with all shows that head on past the third season, you have to wonder if there was ever the goal of a story arc — or was it always just about renewal.
But, for now, I’m optimistic about The Bear. It’s good. Often great. Sometimes I’m close to mesmerised by it.
The show, created by Christopher Storer, debuted in 2022 — and I hoovered up season one at the time, and really liked it. A kitchen/restaurant comedy/drama that’s not really about food at all, it’s about addiction, and trauma, and family, and fucked up relationships, and baggage, and it just happens to depict this through the stress of line-chefs moving from running a sandwich shop to — eventually — opening an actual restaurant.
It goes deep into the motivations, with flashbacks galore, including standalone-styled episodes for some of the slightly peripheral but still main characters. We’ll see them dedicate a whole episode to a dessert chef heading off overseas to learn his trade, or other chefs in the line learning from masters; polishing silverware, doing their own version of a Mr Miyagi-styled wax-on/wax-off training session where they’re pushed towards enlightenment via disgruntlement.
But again, that’s not really what the show is. That’s just a nice to have. A wee side-dish, a garnish even.
Like many people that watched, and loved the first season, I asked every chef I know if it was accurate; most said some version of hell yes. They talked about being triggered by it, in fact. One said he loved it, but had to watch it one episode at a time, the old-fashioned way, never more than one a week. Another told me that when the order-machine was spitting out paper and they were behind, it gave him a mild panic attack, issuing a nightmare about a real work scenario that had been slightly similar.
But I didn’t actually need those stories, I would have been happy enough with it, even if the kitchen aspect didn’t fully check out. The way I’m very happy with Whiplash, despite every jazz school drummer being desperate to point out that it’s “not really like that at all”, as if throwing a chair at a student has to be myth-busted and fact-checked. These aren’t true crime docos.
The truth hides deep within fiction. Or as Stephen King puts it: “Fiction is the truth inside the lie”.
So, anyway, after devouring the first season of The Bear I somewhat went into hibernation. Season two arrived, and I slept on it. The mainstream media printed variations on the This Chef Says It’s Real/This One Says It’s Not QUITE Like That But Not Far Off story. And I simply ‘forgot’ to watch season two. Then I started it, and liked it, but stalled. It happens sometimes.
Fortunately I never quite had it spoiled, so, a few weeks back I decided to watch the second season from the start; well it was in preparation for the then-new season three.
So I got to enjoy (if that’s the word) the Jamie Lee Curtis guest-star highlight, within the nearly hour-long mid-season stress-fest that felt like the play August: Osage County if rewritten for a culinary edition of Black Mirror.
From season two straight into season three, and of course the feature articles start to arrive questioning whether The Bear still has its fur.
A lot of comments from people online about how season three was fine, but a little too mellow, or a little distracted, perhaps even slight; just a little less impactful.
But I’m not so sure.
I think this is the show really going deep — reminding us that it was never about the food, nor the business angle, it’s about the impacts of trauma on different family members, it’s about where you find the family that matters if your own crew is just too weird and unhelpful for you; it’s about the cost of making something your focus.
Jeremy Allen White is Carmen "Carmy" Anthony Berzatto, he’s been working in Michelin-starred restaurants but has to return to his hometown because he’s inherited the sandwich shop set up by his brother Michael. Jon Bernthal plays “Mikey” in flashbacks — the character has taken his own life. Abbey Elliott plays Natalie, their sister (aka “Sugar”). She isn’t a big part of the first season but her role is nicely developed across seasons two and three. (And I was pleased about that, Elliott was one of my favourites when she had a brief run on SNL a decade or so ago, and it’s nice to see her finding a solid role within a huge-hit of a show. I feel she deserves this).
Carmy is in recovery and he is still grieving, and he is intense.
But by the second and third seasons that will all elevate.
I found season three of The Bear to be — if anything — the best. I loved the way it took us through the different players, and where they got their grit from, or where they went to try to find it at least. I really loved the way that this offers no simple redemptions but isn’t exactly hard on the characters, because so many of them (Carmy, in particular, but also “Richie”, played so brilliantly by Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are actually so very hard on themselves. A byproduct of that being they’re often very punishing to be around.
All of this would potentially be too gruelling or just deeply unsatisfying if it wasn’t for the way the sandwich is made. The storytelling here — the deep, filmic commitment to making the sorts of 30-40 minute “short films”-as-TV-shows that Louis CK did rather brilliantly when his TV show Louie was in full swing — is the master stroke of this show. Each episode is its own little story. And, yeah, sure, there’s a bigger picture we’re moving towards. And maybe in season three it started to get a little frustrating — the action, energy, and humour of season one replaced by something more brooding, and often beautiful: A very touching, very palpable fragility.
I’ve got my fingers crossed as The Bear sits in hiatus currently. A fourth season on the way. Its story not just to be continued, but very much still unfolding, with the potential for more flashbacks to earlier moments, as well as new characters coming in or smaller ones stealing the limelight for a smidge.
I’m trying to watch less TV, not more. And The Bear just wrapped me up these last few weeks, compelled me, made me pleased I bothered to catch up.
I hope it doesn’t let me down from here. Right now it feels like it’s well on the way to being an all-timer.