Some days, 'The Bear' eats you

In 2022, we bailed on watching The Bear a few episodes into Season 2. We had enjoyed the blockbuster first season, but by the time it was inexplicably sweeping the comedy categories at the Emmys the first time around, the thought of the show and the discourse around it had just become too exhausting to enjoy the season very much, so I just let the universal and endless praise of some episode called "Fishes" sweep past me and I went on with my life.

The backlash to The Bear continuing to be submitted as a comedy, despite it being a show almost entirely about depression, trauma, anxiety, self harm, and PTSD seemed to make it all the way up to the top of the Emmy pyramid, when Hacks winning Best Comedy Series in 2024 felt like a shocking act of rebellion. I returned to The Bear last week, out of nothing more than curiosity at the fourth season being released, realizing it would be pretty easy to get all caught up, and I liked the characters well enough to revisit the world and see what they'd been up to.

In checking the season overviews on Wikipedia, I noted that after near-universal acclaim for the first season, the Rotten Tomato critics score has steadily gone down for each subsequent season (although still solidly in the 80% range). But what I learned from listening to a recent episode of My Brother, My Brother & Me is that a not-insignificant number of people really hated the third season.

Watching all of seasons 2, 3 and 4 over the course of ten days or so has obviously warped my perspective on the show as a whole, but I found myself mostly surprised at how little confidence the creators of this show seem to have in it – which is really surprising, given that it was a beloved, acclaimed and lauded success in every measurable way right out of the gate. When I finally got to "Fishes," I enjoyed it, but it was the following episode, "Forks," focusing on Richie's time at the Michelin Star restaurant Ever, that really knocked my socks off.

"Fishes" had its moments – there has been maybe no bigger laugh elicited from me by the show than at John Mulaney suddenly materializing out of nowhere – but the episode lacked confidence in itself, which as I already noted, became a recurring theme of these three seasons for me. The episode was all about chaos; arguments and snippets of conversation and action in various rooms during a family gathering for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. All of this surrounded Mama Bear Jamie Lee Curtis's manic and drunken cooking in the kitchen, pulling people into her frantic orbit and repelling them in equal measure. As opposed to many episodes of The Bear, which involve minutes upon minutes of two or three people yelling repetitive cusses at each other, the chaos of "Fishes" was chopped up into dozens of pointed little scenes and asides and exchanges ... but then every time we went back into the kitchen, they chose to insert smash zooms of various filthy kitchen timers. It took me out every time, because it was really lampshading that the show wanted this episode to feel chaotic. It wasn't enough that the episode already was chaotic. They'd already done it! But they didn't think we'd get it.

"Forks," meanwhile, was everything I want out of The Bear: a very flawed human being finding value, happiness, and grace through experience, exploration and connection. Best of all, the episode featured almost no yelling. It was a tremendous character study that took its time and introduced one of the series' core concepts: "Every Second Counts." Unfortunately, the show will at times forget this very important tenet.

There were some bright spots in Season 3, notably John Cena's sudden appearance as yet another Fak and the introduction of the wonderfully dry The Computer. My favorite Season 3 episode is "Napkins," mostly because of the incredible sequence at the end of Jon Bernthal being maybe the most personable and empathetic character who has ever lived. But it was a wearying season, with far too many scenes consisting of nothing but hollering and every character either maddeningly refusing to have simple conversations with each other or being wholly unwilling to get over themselves, even when all evidence says they should. (And yes, I know "not being able to get over yourself" is the whole point of The Bear, but far too often, that point is used to prolong the conflict, rather than make the viewing experience even the slightest bit enjoyable.)

(All of the actors in The Bear are incredible and deserve the (numerous) accolades they've won, but in a world where Rhea Seehorn never won an Emmy for Better Call Saul, I'm less inclined to want to sing praises for people turning in excruciatingly heavy and soul-wrenching performances for submission in the comedy categories.)

Things have been better in Season 4 (and the sudden appearance of Rob Reiner has certainly helped), but just as when I previously complained about Hacks manufacturing tension between its leads at the expense of making the show worse, we probably should have hit the point where the main characters don't hate each other a season earlier. Things looked real promising in the penultimate episode, but the season finale really let me down, placing the entire episode in the alley behind the restaurant and having the whole thing be a conversation between Carmy, Syd and Richie (with an appearance by Sugar). I understand that the idea behind the episode was, "these three finally have the conversations they should have been having a couple of seasons ago," but the problem is that – they should have had them a couple of seasons ago. Syd inexplicably taking two seasons to not view the partnership agreement while not telling Carm that she was being recruited to be Chef de Cuisine at a competing restaurant was nearly as baffling as her being offended to be offered The Bear. (I won't even get into Ebrahim going so far down the road toward trying to franchise the sandwich window with the help of Reiner's Schnur without even discussing it with any of the actual owners of the establishment.) In theory, I understand these characters and their motivations, but in practice the things that they do feel terribly alien to me. And I say this as someone who hates himself as much as these characters seem to!

I know my criticism of the show here has been very ... critical ... but I actually enjoy this show a solid 70% of the time. Sometimes I enjoy the show very much. But it's a show that keeps getting in its own way, resorting to endless scenes of people screaming the same things over and over at each other in lieu of creating real tension or complications, and having people not discuss things for seasons on end rather than trying to come up with additional stories. (I worked in restaurants for about eight years; there will never be a shortage of stories to tell in a restaurant.)

I'm hopeful for Season 5 after Jeremy Allen White's character seems to be in such a good place (even if no one else believes him), and I would really hope that the showrunners have some semblance of an endgame in sight at this point. If that's the case (and it should be), I'm eager to see what they can do when they're building towards a resolution rather than trying to pave more runway; they're at their best when they have a target they're trying to hit.