'The Bear,' and exploring joy and pain through food
FX's kitchen dramedy leaves you wanting a bigger bite
I gave my dad a call last Monday while taking the dog for the ole post-work walk. After the “same old, same old” recaps of the day, we struck gold.
On Sunday, we apparently both sank into our respective couches on either coast and binged “The Bear.” Neither of us planned this.
But I’ll be damned if FX doesn’t run a compelling ad campaign. It got us both.
“The Bear” grabs you from the jump.
It’s a dive into a pressure cooker kitchen, with gorgeous food, stress, joy and failure all settled in a Chicago beef joint. Jeremy Allen White leads as Carmy, looking every bit like the young, brilliant chef he’s billed as, who carries the scar tissue and shitty kitchen tattoos of an apathetic veteran.
This is one of the very few shows I’ve watched that’s left me annoyed it’s not longer.
It keeps you engaged. There are these little, persistent moments of beauty, but not necessarily connoting joy. It’s abrasive, sometimes muddy, rough around the edges.
Carmy is the show’s nuclear reactor. He is chaos if left untamed; a compact human ball of pressure and potential.
He is dealing with the suicide of his too-well-loved older brother, Mikey, who, in his wake, left him an ailing restaurant with bills Carmy can’t pay and emotions he can’t process.
There’s beauty in his pain, in his exhaustion, in the rage he can’t quite explain.
He’s got no roadmap for this. He eventually relents in part to his sister, Sugar’s attempts to break through to him, and heads to Al-Anon meetings for some respite. But those don’t solve his brother’s tragedy, nor the distance between them preceding his death that leaves him confounded.
There are layers of Carmy we don’t get to fully unpeel, but there’s enough to empathize with and feel frustrated by him.
That’s sort of a theme for the show. You get so many glimpses of those layers; not just of Carmy, but of nearly every character. It’s incredibly impressive storytelling, an exercise in thriving in brevity (unlike this review).
What this show does — among many things — excellently, is place you within the brutal, but familial nature of a professional kitchen.
My uncle is a chef. He has the callouses, the reach-into-a-hot-oven, no gloves, and pull out a piping pan without so much as a grimace-type hands.
It takes a lot for food to impress him. He’s seen how the sausage is made too many times.
“The Bear” puts you in that space: of the scars, the pain, the fury of the kitchen. It wears on everyone involved.
The sincerity isn’t by accident. There is an earnest attention to detail from both the actors and showrunners, who worked intently to recreate that environment.
Per the LA Times’ Stephanie Breijo, showrunner Christopher Storer is “an avid cook,” who brought in some outside help:
“His sister, Courtney Storer — former chef of Jon & Vinny’s — served as a culinary producer.”
That’s just the tip of the iceburg. Matty Matheson joins the show as comedic relief, but also provided cooking assistance and firsthand kitchen examples for the actors.
And those actors didn’t just “act” like chefs.
Allen-White “enrolled in a two-week crash course in Pasadena’s Institute of Culinary Education along with Ayo Edebiri,” while Lionel Boyce staged at Hart Bageri in Copenhagen.
White then spent a couple weeks at the Michelin-starred Frenchi bistro, Pasjoli. He worked behind chef Dave Beran, who, per Breijo, was impressed by Allen-White’s efforts and will welcome him back for further understudy work if the show is renewed for a second season.
All of that struggle and earnest cooking takes place in an all-time Chicago beef palace.
It was filmed — in part — and set at the legendary Mr. Beef on Orleans in Chicago.
That happens to be the only Chicago beef joint I’ve ever been to (shout out @Dieter for the recommendation and for Portillo’s absurd lines for pushing me down the street).
The proprietor of Mr. Beef, the most Chicago man I’ve ever encountered and whose name I do not know, makes a cameo in the first episode. He’s the guy selling beef in exchange for vintage denim.
I remember him rambling about Bernie and Trump and Joe Rogan to me in a way where I couldn’t really place him on a political spectrum.
He just had to get his takes off while I sat there with my hands drenched in a dipped combo: beef with a polish sausage nestled inside, dipped in its own juice and topped with celery and peppers. Plus fries with hot cheese on the side.
You can actually feel your arteries tighten eating that, but have to welcome it.
“The Bear,” especially Ebon Moss-Bacharach’s performance as Richie — or “Cuz,” as he’s called by Carm — put me back in that place.
None of this works without him. Moss-Bacharach is supposedly from Amherst, Mass., but you’d be forgiven for thinking he grew up in Chicago (at least I did).
Moss-Bacharach said he prepared for the role by having local friends take him out to hang out in Chicago bars and hitting up Blackhawks and Bulls games for multiple weeks before shooting.
Locals can vouch better than I can, but he — plus his comedic relief interactions with Matheson — sure as hell captured the vibe I felt in my few days there.
There’s the cold, the loving exasperation and artery-assaulting requisitions that the city makes of its denizens. It’s a city stoked in tradition. And Richie is that tradition, and the stubbornness to relinquish any bit of it.
One of the major conflicts is that Carmy is trying fundamentally change this historic Chicago restaurant.
For Richie, it feels like an existential assault in a world that’s passing him by.
Why would you change an institution? If The Beef isn’t sacred, what is?
In order to enact change, Carmy has to win his fellow chefs over while keeping the restaurant functioning every single day. That’s the foundry for the tension and gems of this series.
Just about every character in this show is substantial.
But with just eight episodes — all of which are 25-ish minutes aside from the 45-minute finale — there’s not a lot of time to dive into every single one.
Instead, you get flashes into who they are, sometimes via quick-fire montages. It’s enough to show you who and why they are at this moment in time.
By far, my favorite moment of the series were the two scenes between Ayo Edibiri’s Sydney — Carmy’s No. 2 — and Lionel Boyce’s— a Loiter Squad legend — Marcus, the kitchen’s pâtissier, in the finale.
They’re sitting around a table in her apartment, on a quasi-first date, lamenting the disasters of the kitchen.
It’s stunningly real.
Their conversation has the cadence of those quirky, not fully confident jokes of a first date. They’re both testing the waters, prodding each other. Both characters are opening up, bit by bit, gaining increasing comfort.
Maybe it’s that other TV just struggles to capture the realism of 20-somethings hanging out accurately. But it’s a tier above everything else that tries to capture those moments.
She’s cooking for him, taking the care and precision required to get every detail, like the garnish (below), juuust right.
I mean, just look at how he’s looking at her.
There’s no sex in this show and this is as close we get to romance. But it doesn’t need to lean on any of that to be compelling.
In this lone, intimate glimpse, there’s such romantic sincerity and affection; whether as friends or something more.
Anyone who has ever put effort into cooking knows there is a connection of cooking someone a good meal, especially someone you care about. You could argue Sydney’s care in cooking for him is as intimate as anything else that’s not shown.
It’s an incredible case study in how this shows nestles you in a mood, and part of why you want more of it.
There are so many other things to mention. But at the end of the day, this is a show that tells a story through food.
Much of that is told with the cinematography and soundtrack.
It’s a soundtrack that doesn’t necessarily stand out, but every track fits. Some stand out more than others, but for the most part, you’re not thinking too much about the song selection.
That is with the exception of the show’s unofficial theme, “New Noise” by Refused.
It’s this anxiety-inducing, high-strung, itchy guitar riff that makes you feel like the Kool-Aid Man’s about to burst through the wall with an eight ball in his oversized hand.
“New Noise” is usually paired with a stylized zoom towards the kitchen’s clock for added anxious effect. Together, they put you in the space of knowing shit’s about to go down.
And as far as the visuals, well, Hiro Murai is an executive producer.
There are multiple other executive producers — Joanna Calo (previously of BoJack Horseman, Undone), Nate Matteson (Station Eleven, The Choe Show) of Super Frog and Josh Senior, with Tyson Bidner (Ramy) serving as producer and Matty Matheson as co-producer — plus Storer.
I certainly need to buff up on the work of the others, because they all seem to be excellent, with credits on fantastic projects.
But when you see Murai’s name involved, there’s an understanding that what you see, at the very least, is going to be visually captivating.
“Atlanta,” — which Murai effectively runs right alongside Donald Glover — may be my favorite show of all time. It’s at least the most visually captivating. I can’t think of many, if any dull scenes.
That’s true, too, for “The Bear.” It’s gorgeous.
It’s not pretty for the sake of prettiness; more in the sense that every shot is lit in a way to serve a particular purpose.
Murai has this uncanny knack for putting you in a space and letting you feel it. He seats you in the mood, the environment, all the little minor details that create the ambience of that room before a single word is uttered.
I don’t know the technical specs behind it, but there’s an accent, almost a sheen to everything. The blues and oranges especially stand out, and not like a Michael Bay movie.
There’s this sort of enveloping darkness at the edges of shots that can make you feel a little boxed in at times, but really wraps you in the subject of each scene.
When you succeed at putting the viewer into a setting like that, there’s an ability to convey what’s not shown. There are these ghosts everywhere in “The Bear,” and you feel their presence.
The obvious one is the ghost of Carmy’s brother, living most prominently in a dingy back office, in the things he leaves behind, in the never-explained, but implicitly disastrous “system” he had in place.
But there are other ghosts, of failed relationships and businesses that led every character to working in this shitty, but almost-promising kitchen.
You get glimpses of Carmy’s past, which is brief, but severe enough to tell you who he is and why he is. You see how Sydney, someone who is also way too smart to be where she currently is, is there.
The show also displays Carmy’s panic attacks really well. There’s the tightness in the chest, the tunnel he goes into. It wraps you in a feeling. It’s the epitome of “show, don’t tell.”
Now, I have a few qualms with this show.
It’s a little too quick at times. Sometimes it feels like it needs like another 10 minutes an episode to let you bake in the mood it’s placing you in.
But that gripe is probably a net positive, in that it emphasizes how well this show conveys emotion in such a short period of time. Still, it leaves you craving more. And that’s probably a criticism more of logistics than actual showrunning.
*MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*
The ending, I think is largely a set up for a second season. But it doesn’t totally make sense. Carmy mentions how he owes something like $300k to his uncle Cicero, and comes into that much by the conclusion of the season via a cute note and recipe from his brother that pushes him to make a tomato sauce he resents.
I’ll ignore the logistics of his brother, Mikey, stashing money in tomato cans — all of which are minted with a “KBL” for KBL Electric, a clear, but vague scheme he was running — and credit the show for teasing towards that.
There’s a photo of their father, in Episode 4, with “KBL” across the front that hints at it coming back around at a later date.
I expect that if/when this show is renewed for a second season, those issues will be explained, but I have trouble understanding why his brother would stash $300k, just to owe $300k.
To begin to wrap this overwritten mess up, I’ll say that this is a show that is brilliant enough that it doesn’t need romance or cheap tricks to compel you.
There is an earnest effort to show you the exasperation of a real-life kitchen, and the pain and joy of those people who reside in it.
Through all that brutality, there is humor. There are countless, outrageously funny moments. In episode four, Carmy and Richie accidentally poison a birthday party of Carmy’s uncle, Cicero’s son, with Xanax. All the kids pass out in the yard.
Cicero asks, “What are they fuckin’ dead?”
Carmy answers: “No, no, no, I think they’re just… sleepin?”
Cicero: “Oh… Actually, I’m kind of into it.”
It’s an identical tone to many of the funniest, slightly Twilight Zone-esque scenes in “Atlanta.”
Maybe the funniest, or at least the one that sticks with me the most, is when an old man comes up to Carmy while he’s prepping for that party in that same episode.
He asks: “Carmen, is that you?... I thought you’d killed yourself!”
Carmy: “Nooo, that was my brother.”
*the old man walks away*
Comedy that bases itself in reality tends to be the funniest sort.
Let’s end with the last episode, which is an absolute gem, and at about 45 minutes. It’s the correct length for this series and concludes an all-season-long crescendo of the season’s best work.
That last episode opens with a mini-bottle, like “Atlanta” often does. It’s an anxiety attack from Carmy, when he’s imagining himself in a cooking show.
He wakes up spinning, in a cold sweat and goes to Al-Anon and talks for the first time. It starts out with a semi-wide shot.
After about a minute, it moves to a close-up and a six-minute monologue that doesn’t feel a second too long. It might be the second-best scene in the show behind the ones with Sydney and Marcus at dinner.
Carmy rips himself open to a group of strangers, revealing his motivations for striving for cooking excellence and losing his brother:
“The more people I cut out, the quieter my life got. And the routine of the kitchen was so consistent and exacting and busy and hard and alive and I lost track of time and he died… And he left me his restaurant.”
The way he delivers that one line sticks with you.
“… and I lost track of time. And he died.”
The Bear forces its characters to realize some things they may not have been prepared to realize about themselves, and takes you to that place with them.
It’s not flawless, but it’s outstanding, unique and worth your time. Just eat something before you watch it.
Intrigued enough based on reading this to tune in