The Bear is not a love story, but it is a story about the things we love. In Episode 2 of the new season, Sugar tells Carmy that he doesn’t have to keep doing something he doesn’t love anymore—that is, cooking, or running a restaurant, or the toxic stew of the two he’s concocted at the Bear. And it would be hard to blame Carmy for falling out of love. All this time, it has seemed like he’s been running the Bear just to quiet the noise (and the voice of Joel McHale) inside his head, but that chaos still spills over into the kitchen like boiling water out of a pot. Even though he once insisted to his brother, Mikey, that a restaurant they opened together could be “calm” and “make people happy,” Carmy is constantly in a state of distress in his pursuit of perfection.
Episode 3, on the other hand, shows us what it looks like when you do still love to cook. It opens as Syd prepares an exquisite scallop dish to serve to her boss. Soundtracked by St. Vincent’s “Slow Disco,” Syd measures out her sauces and monitors her pots and pans, apparently ignoring the doomsday clock that’s counting down the days until the restaurant’s demise. Her slow dance around the kitchen reminded me of a scene in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice where the crowd fades around Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, leaving the two alone in what had been a heaving ballroom. The Bear’s kitchen, usually a cacophony of screaming matches and crashing plates, is more like a sanctuary when Syd cooks alone. Carm, in turn, describes her dish as “better than perfect,” a compliment Syd probably couldn’t have dreamed of hearing a few short months ago—and a testament to her passion for the craft.
Season 3 centered on Carm’s slippery, solo climb to the mountaintop of greatness, as imagined in Michelin stars and glowing reviews hailing his genius. But all season, his traumas from other kitchens seeped into the Bear; he started acting just like his old bullies as he tried to create food and an experience that he thought they’d approve of. His stubbornness about changing the menu every day (despite his own nonnegotiable claim that “less is more”) and his propensity to shoot down Syd’s or anyone else’s ideas created a restaurant where turmoil was inevitable and money hemorrhaged with every order of Orwellian butter.
When Season 4 starts, it seems like it’ll just be more of the same. Carm, in a few of the spare minutes he spends outside the kitchen, watches Groundhog Day, which is about waking up in the same place and doing the same thing every day, a pretty nifty metaphor for the grind of restaurant work. In the second episode, there’s yet another kitchen standoff, a lot like Richie and Carm’s argument over nonnegotiables in the second episode of Season 3. Once again, Richie and Carm shout over each other; Cicero reminds the staff, for the umpteenth time, that he’s bleeding himself dry for this; and Syd and Sugar try to keep the peace before they just say “fuck it” and join in, too. But this time, there’s the cloud of Cicero and Computer’s ticking time bomb hanging over them: They’re pulling funding from the Bear in two months’ time, and the restaurant will have to find a way to be self-sufficient. No more five-component dishes, no more extravagant flower budget, no more big birthday surprises orchestrated by Richie and the gang.
More Helpings of ‘The Bear’
Whether it’s because Carm finally comes to terms with how bad he is at running a functional, profitable restaurant or because he has nothing left to prove to his one-time tormentor, in the second half of Episode 3, he doesn’t just wake up like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. This time, consciously or not, he opts to let his employees come into their own. And for once, the Bear operates … efficiently? Carm lets Syd put her better-than-perfect scallops dish on the menu, which wows customers (including a bespectacled diner who seems an awful lot like a Michelin inspector). Syd also pushes Gary, a baseball player turned struggling sommelier, to get a more practical lesson in wine from Alpana Singh (another in a long line of restaurateur cameos on The Bear). Ebraheim looks into new business opportunities for the sandwich window, an acknowledgment that he’s running the only profitable part of this whole operation. Marcus asks for more firepower at the pastry station (which, spoiler alert, arrives later in the season in the form of a familiar face). Richie creates a winter wonderland for a family visiting from L.A., and one of his shouting matches with Carm even ends up being productive when they collaborate on a just-right beef sandwich for their guests.
The sentimentality of The Bear, like the cloying life lessons of its cousin Ted Lasso, can sometimes get stuck in your craw. But I’ll admit it: I shed a tear or two when that family took in some Chicago “snow” on the Bear’s patio. And sure, you could say all this payoff perhaps comes too quickly for our characters. Three episodes in, how quickly they’ve grown and learned their lessons after remaining in stasis all of Season 3! But I was ready for some of the emotional highs of “Forks” or “Honeydew” after last season mostly cycled through the lows of “Fishes.” And, really, this is the emotional and professional outcome of seasons, not days; the people of the Bear have studied up, done their time as stages and at school, and taken all the knocks the Bear (and Carmy “The Bear” Berzatto) could throw their way. And now we get to see what we glimpsed on that visit to Ever in Season 2: a restaurant running smoothly, operated by people who love what they do and who, with a little help from the OG Ever crew recruited by Richie and a little less help from Carmy, can finally do it well.
The Bear clearly has optimism to spare for the ideal of a well-run and well-loved restaurant: Look no further than its running panel of celebrity chefs who wax poetic about the power and importance of nurturing people. But the show is also aware of what can happen when a restaurant becomes the cult of a sometimes abusive personality (although it may be reluctant to call out some of those real-life personalities head-on). Last season, it showed us what a restaurant could become when it centers around a person’s singular vision; now, it’s showing us what an alternative utopia can look like when the big personality steps to the side.
Now, even absent the hectoring of their erratic boss, is restaurant life a totally healthy and stable environment for the Bear crew? Perhaps not. (I see those missed calls from your dads, Marcus and Syd!) But it is a starting point for the “vibrant collaboration” Carm once listed among his nonnegotiables and then apparently forgot about as soon as he wrote it down. And as Carm takes a back seat and watches some vibrant collaboration take over in Episode 3, he observes each of the Bear’s parts moving together, fueled by some anxiety, sure (that clock keeps ticking), but also by a dedication to making great food and serving it with panache. And maybe he realizes that his heart’s just not in this anymore—he can’t quite stoke the fire like Syd or Richie or Gary or Marcus can.
And if there’s no love for him in the kitchen anymore, maybe he’ll just try to find it again with Claire, whom he barges in on with declarations of love and some very belated apologies in the middle of the night. (Speaking of Austen references.) But it might be too little, too late for Carm. All the havoc in his head gummed up the promise of both the kitchen and his love life, and perhaps Claire and the Bear are just better off without him. And maybe that call to “Sugar’s boyfriend (Pete?)” about updating the partnership agreement means he’s coming to terms with his own lack of love for, and relevance in, the restaurant that bears his nickname.
Carm’s restaurant is finally emerging from under his shadow, and we’re beginning to see what the Bear and The Bear can look like when it operates with care instead of chaos. For the cynics out there, failure could still be around the corner for the Bear. But for now, just let the rest of us have a little dessert course before we close out the check.
