The Bear is Overrated. There, I said it. But it doesn’t have to be.
The Bear, created by Christopher Storer, produced by FX and exclusively streaming on Hulu, which are both, of course, owned by Disney, is a breakout hit amongst the aforementioned chaos that is the current television industry. It is a good show. It has the ingredients to be a great show. But like a cook nervously opening the grill to check on the ribs, it tends to get in its own way.
This is Storer’s first real foray into writing, best known for Directing Ramy and Bo Burnham specials. The head staff writers aren’t especially experienced, either, though some have worked alongside more veteran showrunners, like Elizabeth Meriwether(New Girl, The Dropout). The cast are somewhere between nobodies and household names. The biggest stars come in the explosion of guest appearances by acclaimed actors in season two who hopped on The Bear hype train and tend to outshine their counterparts. The lead, Jeremy Allen White, had a main role on Shameless and a now very-worth-re-watching episode on Law & Order: SVU playing a pyrophile teen (it means what you think), but this is otherwise a breakout role for him. (In very cliché Hollywood fashion, he and his wife with two kids together divorced after the success of season one, but perhaps the timing was just a coincidence). The benefit of all this inexperience is a refreshing energy to the show. Hungry, inspired cooks in the kitchen with all the makings of a great and original dish.
The show is fun, sincere, and versatile. They sent the actors to chef training instead of relying on hand doubles for an authenticity that is tangible. It blends family with coworkers, shouting with introspection, and utilizes its dynamic tone and pace to give the show some real legs. The downside of their inexperience is that they don’t seem to know how much of each ingredient to use or how long to set the timer. There are the obligatory mouthwatering cooking montages set to cool music. And a few expected flybys of the chefs learning and improving their craft. But they tend to overdo it. Too many montages begin to feel a little high school video class. Some storylines seem to be headed nowhere. Marcus, the sous chef who leaves to become a pastry chef, then returns, seems to be dangling in the wind. He brought a quiet charm to the screen in the first season that made you cheer for him and adds poise to the hectic kitchen. So the show won’t let him go but isn’t entirely confident what to do with him. They’ve included a possibly budding love interest with the Bear’s right hand girl, Sydney, but the chemistry is lacking. The scene of them on Facetime with connection issues was possibly more meta than intended. Then there is the odd moment in season two where he comes across a fallen biker who hit a fence and is bleeding but gets up, hugs him, and rides off. It was on par with the lack of direction in his storyline while attempting to feel profound. One of the best characters is Matty Matheson, acclaimed real life Toronto chef and consultant for the show, but he is seldomly featured.
The real struggle is the show’s inability to balance the character’s personal demons within the world they’ve set up around them. It is very heavy handed rather than organic. They will open on Carmy literally in a therapy session explaining to the audience his problems. The stigma around mental health is thankfully being stripped away and included in pop culture, but the writers don’t seem to know how to naturally weave them into this show. It’s as if the episode you were watching stops and zooms in on a completely different one, screaming at you, ‘look at all these problems I have! I am stressed, don’t you see!’ Too often they force feed the family trauma into this fast-paced world about coming home to face those troubles and open a restaurant in Chicago. The actors themselves embody it by over acting way too hard. Even guest star and recent Oscar winner, Jamie Lee Curtis, floods the table with emotions amidst a dizzying flashback episode of their dysfunctional Christmas dinner. It felt like they knew they were digging into the mom and brother, so they brought in all these guest stars, tripled the size of their cast trailer footprint in the parking lot, rented a Steadicam and just got way too excited with it all. In trying so hard to showcase her alcoholic, bipolar fingerprints on Carmy’s past, they missed a perfect opportunity to see him cooking in the family kitchen. He moved a pot, but what of it? It should have been about her impact on him and his cooking and his upcoming restaurant, not just her outbursts with a stove in the background.
The very next episode, “Forks” leaves the loud, dizzying chaos behind for a quiet focus. It’s the best episode of the series. It highlights how a problematic father inspired an Alinea-esque, best restaurant in Chicago, run by the great Olivia Colman. Using the foil of her past trauma and her successful restaurant to tie into the present is great writing. Carmy sends his fuck up cousin, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, to learn how a true kitchen runs. They teach him why the effort and details, down to the streak stains on the forks, are so important because the patrons have saved their paychecks and anniversaries for the simple joy of eating here. It’s beautiful. So the showrunners are capable. But isn’t it strange they saved their best for a guest star and the cousin, in a one-off capsule episode about someone else’s restaurant, instead of for our hero and his own?
There is a lot to like about the show and honestly television needs it right now. The season two finale was the next strongest yet, which is promising. It was impressively set entirely in the restaurant, which is where they typically shine. And it was brave. The long take choreography, finding room for every character we’ve met so far, and challenging the main players in new roles. Give us more of that and less of Carmy’s Kendall Roy impression staring at his cell phone. The lack of quality original shows mixed with the Instagram foodie culture catapult The Bear into easy to love television. But success is not the same as greatness. They have found a great recipe, and have been able to mask some cooking issues, but I hope they do more of what makes the show great, and less waffling with what the recipe doesn’t call for.
