The summer of 2022 gave us the debut season of House of the Dragon, the final season of Better Call Saul, and the third season of The Boys, but while those shows arrived with plenty of fanfare, a dramedy about the ins and outs of a professional kitchen sizzled in the spotlight. You can track the meteoric rise of The Bear in the many ways the FX series has permeated the mainstream: Phrases like “Yes, chef!” have entered the lexicon, the show’s lead actors have headlined everything from magazine covers to underwear ads, and the city of Chicago is home to Bear-themed food tours with guides cosplaying as Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy Berzatto. (By the way, Italian beef sales are through the roof.) The Bear, in turn, has earned its fair share of industry plaudits, capped off by an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for its first season. If there was any precedent to The Bear’s sudden cultural ascension—or the emotions the show extracts from its captivated audience—it can be found in the Emmy winner the series dethroned.
Ted Lasso might seem like a strange point of comparison for The Bear, especially after the former’s reputation soured in subsequent seasons, but once you connect the dots, it’s hard not to notice the similarities. After all, both series are centered on a newcomer (Ted Lasso, Carmy) who takes over a workplace that’s fallen on hard times. The workers (soccer players, restaurant staff) are resistant to change, sometimes outright hostile to it—in this analogy, the hotheaded Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is The Bear’s Roy Kent equivalent—but over time, they work toward self-improvement with a shared sense of purpose. (Just as Ted Lasso’s unofficial mantra is its “Believe” poster hanging up in the locker room, The Bear’s kitchen lives by “Every Second Counts.”) Even so, both protagonists battle personal demons born out of familial trauma and are prone to anxiety attacks, which underlines how they’re just as in need of saving as the people working under them. (Some critics would argue—and I’d agree—that The Bear handled Carmy’s family baggage with a much defter touch than when Ted Lasso revealed that its title character’s father died by suicide.)
I point all of this out not to upset any Ted Lasso haters who have latched on to The Bear, but to emphasize that the latter is like a perfectly baked cookie: hard on the outside, but soft and gooey at its center. For all the stressful situations that characters in The Bear find themselves in—make no mistake, the chaos throughout Season 2 would raise anyone’s blood pressure—it’s clear that creator Christopher Storer wants the show’s ensemble to become better versions of themselves, not unlike the gang at AFC Richmond. And in The Bear’s third season, now streaming in its entirety on Hulu, the next step is for the characters to find a balance between pursuing greatness and achieving self-fulfillment. Naturally, that comes more easily for some people than others.
Before we get to the main course, here’s a quick refresher: By the end of The Bear’s second season, Carmy and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) have finished transforming their restaurant from a sandwich shop into a fine-dining establishment called—wait for it—The Bear. While their soft opening was a success, Carmy spent most of the night locked in the kitchen fridge before inadvertently ruining his relationship with Claire (Molly Gordon), who overheard him lamenting that their time spent together had become a distraction. (The worst part: Carmy didn’t realize that Claire had left a voicemail professing her love for him.) Now, the real work begins: How will The Bear fare with the daily grind of not just satisfying hungry customers, but sustaining a profitable business?
Unsurprisingly, Carmy won’t make it easy for anyone—least of all himself. Carmy wants The Bear’s menu to change daily, a massive undertaking for the kitchen staff that inevitably raises the restaurant’s operating costs, much to the chagrin of his sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott). (Spare a thought for poor Natalie, who is dealing with the stress of managing a new business while in her third trimester.) Carmy also creates a list of “nonnegotiables” for the staff to follow—some as contradictory as “respect tradition” and “push boundaries”—which does not go over well with everyone. “Chef Carmen uses power phrases ’cause he’s a baby replicant who’s not self-actualized,” Richie says in one of their many confrontations this season. Syd, meanwhile, has to contend with how much of a voice she’ll have in the kitchen alongside Carmy, or whether it’s more tempting to seek pastures new.
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If The Bear’s second season reckoned with the family trauma that’s affected the Berzatto clan, Season 3 illustrates that past experiences in a toxic work environment are just as negative an influence in the culture you create. While “Every Second Counts” still defines The Bear, Carmy is stuck following another mantra, “Subtract,” that he learned from the psychologically abusive chef (Joel McHale) he worked under in New York City. Carmy takes the buzzword to heart, subtracting so much from his life that the kitchen ends up being the only thing that defines him. He even reneges on his desire not to pursue a Michelin star for The Bear—despite previously warning Syd that such prestige is a “trap”—and has outbursts similar to the one at the end of the first season that caused Syd and Marcus (Lionel Boyce) to briefly quit. “If it’s not perfect, it doesn’t go out,” Carmy tells the staff—never mind that even the best kitchens in the world would unravel from the demands of overhauling their menus every single day.
There’s another word that repeatedly pops up this season—“haunting”—that explains the turmoil some of the characters are going through. Carmy is haunted by his past experiences in the kitchen and at home and by how he left things with Claire. For Natalie, it’s the fear that the trauma she endured growing up will be passed on to her child. For Marcus, it’s the sorrow that his recently deceased mother, who was the reason he fell in love with cooking, never got the opportunity to experience (and taste) what they’ve built at The Bear. But the very thing the characters are striving toward building is also what can heal them. As one of Carmy’s nontoxic mentors from the past tells him: “We cook to nurture people.”
That, for me, is the key ingredient that makes The Bear so irresistible. In spite of all the anxiety-inducing moments in the kitchen or the self-destructive tendencies of certain characters, this is a series with a deep well of empathy for its ensemble. (That does not make The Bear a love story, though.) And from a technical standpoint, this is a show that, like its eponymous restaurant, is executed with impeccable craftsmanship. The Bear has always excelled at montage making, but Season 3 takes things to another level, highlighted by a sequence breathlessly covering the first month of service—the various dishes prepared in the kitchen, the customer work at the front of house, the number crunching behind the scenes—that spans nearly an entire episode. It’s the best montage work I’ve seen since Better Call Saul, which, if you know me, is just about the highest praise a show can get.
Since it’s already been announced that The Bear shot its third and fourth seasons back-to-back, it’s perhaps unsurprising that everything builds to an ellipsis that leaves the restaurant’s future up in the air. But for all the potential doom and gloom, I expect The Bear to ultimately follow in the footsteps of Ted Lasso, putting its characters through a series of hardships so that they come out the other side as better people. What does that look like for Carmy, someone whose sense of self is still completely tied to his work, and what would happen if he loses everything he’s built? Does Syd need to forge her own path to realize her full potential, or can she make this (platonic) partnership work? The fact that I’m eagerly craving these answers speaks to how The Bear has crafted an enduring recipe for success.
