Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I’m going back to the start
—Coldplay, The Scientist
I suppose for a show like The Bear, beginning a review of season three of the much heralded FX show (whose Emmy haul this year should be measured in tonnage), with a quote from the decidedly uncool Coldplay might seem a strange choice. With that said, as I was watching the remarkable first episode (“Tomorrow”) of The Bear’s new season, the words of “The Scientist” kept coming to mind (besides, if Willie Nelson and Aimee Mann thought enough of that song to cover it…let me not digress).
Because that’s exactly what happens in the ironically named episode: we go “back to the start.” “Tomorrow” tells the story of Carmy’s departure from Chicago to New York to become a chef. The grind he went through from working for a sadistic chef, a tough but far more decent one who sends him to Copenhagen to learn from another chef while living on a boat with an invisible cat, to Mikey’s death. The entire episode is all but dialogue free. Not a single word is spoken for nearly the first five minutes, and even the few bits of dialogue that are heard are clipped, fragments of conversations–never a whole discourse is heard. The 36 minutes of this grand opener is storytelling at its finest through a visual medium. We are shown. We are not told.
The narrative is fractured, jumping back and forth in time and from location to location, but done so masterfully that we always know where and when we are. Last season’s “Fishes” holiday dinner episode took us back in time to one of the most frenzied and anxiety-inducing episodes (I mean that as a compliment) ever committed to television. “Tomorrow” is a different creature altogether, trading out the linear for the lyrical, but serving much of the same purpose, to give us greater understanding of why Carmy (so perfectly rendered by Jeremy Allen White) is the way he is: morbidly obsessed with perfection, incapable of commitment to anything that isn’t served on a plate.
And oh, the depictions of the servings. More than any other episode of the series, “Tomorrow” showcases the inventiveness of the presentation of food, to such a degree that once Carmy completes a dish, it occurred to me that it is almost a shame to think of its contents being consumed instead of preserved in amber. To watch these confections from conception to completion is like watching a great and exacting artist apply paint to canvas. To eat the food is to destroy it, even if that is its purpose.
“Tomorrow” is the finest episode of television I’ve seen this year, and despite having a half of a year to go before the New Year, I’ll be stunned if that changes. The amount of information imparted and the style and depth with which is conveyed can be breathtaking at times. “Tomorrow” is a cinematic collage that is avant-garde and yet delivered with such ease that it’s nothing less than a small miracle.
Show creator Christopher Storer and his remarkable cast and crew are not playing the same game as anyone else. I’ve seen some early reviews that are calling Part III a step down from the show’s staggering Part II. Maybe that’s true, but isn’t that also true of every other show on television? Part II may well be The Bear’s version of season four of David Simon’s The Wire, or David Chase’s season two of The Sopranos—trips around the sun that equate to something beyond “prestige television” and crossover to landmark status.
While it’s natural to compare The Bear Part III to Part II, the idea of doing so doesn’t just seem unfair, but irrelevant. Especially when you consider few shows in the history of TV have ever been so restlessly creative and so unwilling to serve you the same dish night after night, regardless of how much safer and easier that might be.
I do think it’s fair to say that Part III is a transition season to a degree. The decision to shoot Part III and Part IV consecutively probably isn’t just a choice of simple efficiency, but as with everything related to The Bear, also purposeful on a higher level. Episodes 2-8 are more straightforward (while still retaining an impressionistic streak) in showing “The Bear’s” post-opening struggles to find its footing as a restaurant—something Carmy’s anxious perfectionism often gets in the way of by changing the menu every single night and insisting on the highest grade of ingredients. All while “Uncle Jimmy” (the always great Oliver Platt) bemoans the financial bloodletting caused by Carmy’s pathological drive to break the wheel and reinvent it every time the restaurant doors open.
The pace of creation is exhilarating, but one wonders if it’s sustainable. Still reeling from his accidental breakup with Claire (the disarming Molly Gordon) delivered from the bad side of a broken refrigerator door, Carmy’s meltdown escalates his already sky scraping control freak nature and causes relationship harm both loud (in the case of Richie) and quiet (where Syd is concerned). Carmy’s idea of collaboration increasingly becomes “here’s my idea, now hurry up and agree with it so I can move onto the next thing.” The regression with cousin Richie and the lack of consideration towards Syd is painful to see. As the season closes, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, who is somehow better than ever) is presented with another option and her inability to decide results in one of the most believable panic attacks you will ever see dramatized in any medium.
While Part III doesn’t focus quite as much on the supporting characters as Part II did, Grace notes abound for Marcus, Fak, Natalie, as well as Gary and Ibraheim. Most notable is Tina’s almost stand-alone episode that showcases her painful journey from becoming newly unemployed after fifteen years to sitting at a quiet table at “The Beef.” As she opens the foil on her sandwich, the emotional toll of failing to find new work is so obvious that Mikey (the impossibly charismatic Jon Bernthal) takes note and makes the time to sit with her. What follows is one of the loveliest and most realistic conversations about making one’s way through life that you’ll ever see. It’s a discussion rife with compassion, shared fears, and results, finally, in a desperately needed opportunity. If Tina were a superhero (and as played by Liza Colon-Zayas, no one would blame you for wondering) this would be her origin story.
As for “Cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who stole Part II), the show admirably doesn’t use the falling out between him and Carmy as an excuse to send Richie backwards in terms of character development. Richie and Carmy somehow manage to work together despite not being able to hold a civil tongue in their mouths when interacting, and Richie has two truly great scenes that showcase his growth as a person. The first is when he meets Frank, the fiancée of his ex, Tiffany. Where many other shows would have turned Frank into a jerk or worse, The Bear does the opposite. Richie would love to hate Frank, but he can’t, which somehow makes the fact that Frank’s going to marry the love of Richie’s life even more awkward. This is the first time we meet Frank, and in The Bear’s typical fashion, he is played by a “name” actor. What’s so remarkable about the show is how these guest spots by well-known stars and character actors never feel like a distraction. There’s that moment of recognition and then the actor just slides into the role like it was written explicitly for them. And then there is a scene near the end of the season with Richie and Tiffany (the luminous Gillian Jacobs) on a park bench, in which Tiffany sweetly and somewhat selfishly insists on Richie coming to her wedding, because he’s not just her ex, he’s “family.” It’s hard to come to terms with how few scenes Jacobs has had during the series’ now three season run. The chemistry between her and Moss-Bachrach is so heartfelt and genuine that her screen time adds up to so much more than the minutes counted.
Jamie Lee-Curtis also makes a welcome return as the Berzatto matriarch Donna to the show with a high-stress mother / daughter bonding moment between her and Natalie (the superb Abby Elliott). Donna is the last person in Natalie’s phone that she wants to ask for help, but when no one else picks up, dear ol’ mom is all she’s left with. In one incredibly antagonistic and fraught sequence, mother and daughter find a moment of common ground on the rocky terrain of their relationship. It might be fleeting, but it’s a moment that will salve a wound or two, and create a much-needed good memory.
I’ve never been one to accept The Bear as a comedy despite the Television Academy’s insistence in putting the show in that category for Emmy purposes. If you share my opinion in that regard, Part III will further confirm your beliefs. There are certainly moments of humor in this new season (I howled when Platt asks if “Orwellian butter” is “dystopian”) but due to the losses several of the characters suffered in Part II and the uncertainty of the restaurant’s future, the bulk of the characters in the show are in a sort of limbo, unsure of how to move forward or doing so pensively. If Part III isn’t a drama, then I’ve no understanding of the term.
That sense of purgatory (along with the comparison factor to Part II) might explain some of the relatively weaker reviews this season has received in the aggregate, but if one rolls with this state of flux just a little bit, I think what you’ll find isn’t so much disappointment, but a deep hunger for more.
The season ending episode is almost as exquisite as the opener, as the staff of “The Bear” attend the closing of a long-hailed local restaurant run by a colleague of Carmy’s. The final night of the restaurant is a mixture of wake and celebration. Delicious dishes are served one last time, and at the end of the night members of the two restaurant’s collective crews cram themselves into a small apartment to eat a Tombstone pizza, Eggo waffles, and down some spirits. The exhausting and transient nature of the business is left behind for just a moment, but tomorrow another day of hard reality awaits “The Bear”–one that I can hardly wait to see when Part IV opens its doors.
And that’s the thing that gets me about The Bear. As a now middle-aged man who has consumed so much media over the course of my life, I can’t recall this level of anticipation for any form of entertainment since I was in my early twenties–back at an age when most of us had the time and energy to truly fall in love with a show, a film, an album. It gets harder as you get older. You are less frequently surprised, and true adult concerns like a mortgage, utility bills, child care (the list goes on forever) enter your life, and priorities change. Not to mention, a TV show’s new season in this still new(ish) streaming era has all but eliminated the term “appointment TV.”
But when Part III was set by FX for June 27, 2024, I told my wife that I would be making no plans. There would be no visitors to our abode. There would be no night out. Let the phone ring. Let the world catch on fire. We’re watching The Bear.
I never thought I’d feel that way again. What a gift.
Excuse me now, I’m pulling up Part III on Hulu. I’m going back to the start.