Warning: Spoilers for the third season of “The Bear.”
I ended my analysis of the trailer for the third season of “The Bear” by referring to the new installment as a 10-course meal. While each episode was a gorgeously edited and richly developed piece, it is hard to find cohesion, given the tonally shifting episodes. Though each is a marvel in its own right, it’s a little heady to jump from taste to taste every half hour. While rich in character exploration, this lack of cohesion threatens to buckle under the pressure of upholding the story using pillars of underdeveloped and unresolved plotlines.
The first episode is phenomenal. It serves as a beautiful prologue for a new era of the show. Instead of dropping us right back into the action like season two’s first episode did, it flows in and out of recollections of Carmen’s (Jeremy Allen White, “Shameless”) other kitchens, how he’s doing immediately post-fridgecident and flashbacks to both scenes from previous seasons and new bits of exposition — like an extra shot post-“Fishes” with Claire (Molly Gordon, “Theater Camp”). The score, a thrumming constant that links every shot together, and the little bits of information dropped that contextualize previous seasons’ stories (namely, the scene at the end of this episode) make this feel like a rich tapestry inviting us to look backward before we can continue. A bit of a palate cleanser, if you will.
The episode that follows is similarly great. Excluding the cold open and the gorgeous credits sequence with shots of Chicago workers’ daily routines, it follows a very typical “The Bear” conflict (they stand in the kitchen and argue). However, the comedic element of the same three topics being rehashed as new people start to clock in for the day and need to be roped in adds an unexpected flavor. Though the conflict between Carmen and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “Girls”) is, understandably, significantly more intense than usual, it still has the expected cadence and tone of an episode of “The Bear.” The addition of a new Fak (Ricky Staffieri, “Better Call Saul”) as well as Sydney’s (Ayo Edebiri, “Bottoms”) willingness to tell both of them to shut up, asserting her position as a restaurant partner, adds a new flavor to a classic confrontation. As the story takes place in a singular location and only ends when they disperse from it, it is reminiscent of “Review,” the season one episode shot in one take, due to its odd format.
“Napkins,” the season’s sixth episode, is trying to be “Fishes.” In this Tina-centric (Liza Colón-Zayas, “Allswell in New York”) episode, we see her life four years before the start of the show, struggling through a layoff and eventually getting hired at The Beef after a conversation with Mikey (Jon Bernthal, “The Wolf of Wall Street”). Though I am glad to learn more about Tina’s background and see Edebiri’s directorial debut, the entire preamble — set before she ever enters The Beef in the episode’s third act — adds nothing to the story. In fact, all the exposition can be (and is) summarized by Tina when talking to Mikey. It feels that the writers, seeing the success of the previous season’s flashback episode, wanted to recreate the spark from “Fishes” and picked a justification for another long-format flashback at random, trying to generate yet another showstopper episode through recreating format alone.
The same can be said for the eighth episode, “Ice Chips,” the actual unofficial sequel to “Fishes.” This episode is an extended conversation between Sugar (Abby Elliott, “Odd Mom Out”) and her mom, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”) about parenting and childhood as Sugar goes into labor. I found this to be a fantastically written and performed episode, and it is one of my favorites of the show. However, I cannot help but think it feels out of place; not because the story doesn’t belong, but because space was not made for it, as if the restaurant has been thrown out with the dishwater. Too much stopping for the sake of being dazzling gets grating quick. When the format is broken so much so quickly, it becomes less organized chaos and more chaotically organized. You struggle to find footing episode-to-episode because nothing’s really the norm. The episodes are good, to be sure, but they don’t feel like one story — more so fancy snapshots ordered semi-chronologically, trying desperately to prove themselves as the episode of the season. In a sentence, they can’t all be piece-de-resistances, but damned if they didn’t try it and lessen the value of the whole project in the process.
Moreover, the season doesn’t end in a fulfilling manner. There’s nothing to tie everything together or to send it all spiraling outwards, either. It’s just the same threads picked up this season (Carmy’s poor leadership, Sydney considering leaving, Richie going to his ex’s wedding) that seem to simply … stretch out towards the void, unresolved yet also uncomplicated further. Slapping a big “TO BE CONTINUED” at the end doesn’t fix it, either; it’s not a cliff-hanger if we are left off on the same cliffside we’ve been peering over the past few episodes. It feels like nothing comes to a head. Even the reveal of the mixed-toward-poor Chicago Tribune review doesn’t feel too problematic when it has already been revealed that the restaurant’s funding might be pulled. Similarly, some interesting thematics are picked up — the “haunting” B-plot and Marcus’s (Lionel Boyce, “The Jellies!”) focus on magic — and taken nowhere, despite their potential. Even in its ending, the season feels like it is trying to appear grand, yet cuts itself off due to its lack of cohesion.
Lastly, there’s the whole deal with Carmen. I understand that it’s the stress of running the restaurant and the Michelin Star getting to him but, jeez Louise, does he suck this season. It’s no fault of bad writing — this is purposeful suckery and, surprisingly, doesn’t fall into out-of-character territory. Instead, it is meant to motivate Sydney’s decision to leave (which, again, is disappointingly unresolved). Still, going from “I’m sorry” ASL and memories of Sydney calming him from a panic attack to shutting her down every two seconds, almost making Tina cry and saying that Claire (who, again, he still has not resolved things with after 10 episodes) is his peace is a radical change. If it weren’t for all the flash jam-packed into the season, it would be much more glaringly obvious, but as it stands, it’s able to come across as a niggling, back-of-the-brain annoyance that makes you frown every time White even so much as breathes.
None of this is to say it was a bad season. The only way for this showstopper-focus to be an issue is for there to be several, successfully showstopping pieces of content. The episodes I highlighted were exceedingly well done in isolation and, as an incredibly dedicated fan, the morsels of lore and parallels between scenes old and new left me overjoyed. As always, the show looks beautiful, and it is so easy to sit back and enjoy compilations of Chicago, gorgeous plating and back-to-back reaction shots. Getting to know Richie’s Mojo Dojo Casa Front of House methods, the new Faks (particularly that one Fak) and even Claire (whose presence in this season endeared me to her character leagues beyond what the previous season accomplished) was amazing.
In truth, I could (and still, might) write another analysis of the parallels and hidden themes this season held: Carmen’s burn in the opening episode being right over his palm’s heart line, the highlighted parallels between Carmen’s relationship with the guy who “made (him) mentally ill” and how he’s been treating Sydney, the recreation of the pilot’s shot with Carmen dead-eyeing his pricey knife on the floor (but instead with Sydney and Richie with notes and a fork respectively) during the third episode. There’s so much character exploration and parallelism used, as well as new vocabulary to describe the complicated family dynamics (the idea of haunting while still alive and discussions of how it manifests) that I, as a literary-figure-happy person, am more than happy to gorge myself with. In a way, this was just sweet treat after treat, but I can also see how, in a more objective manner, it is easy to get a bit sick from the sugar.
The 10-course meal was somewhat satisfying, though slightly hard to find balance within, but I enjoyed it all the same. Just be aware that for a watcher with less appetite for these characters regardless of story, this will be harder to digest than the previous season.
Daily Arts Writer Cecilia Ledezma can be reached at cledezma@umich.edu.
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