The Bear Part 2 - Created by Christopher Storer
Despite the amount of its runtime dedicated to the heat, the stress, the yelling, and the emotions of a restaurant kitchen, The Bear very often steps away from reality and into the realm of fantasy. Though the series is never fantastical it does often ride the lines of dreams or at the very least wish fulfillment.
The first season found the ridiculously talented chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) in his hometown of Chicago running his recently deceased brother Michael’s (Jon Bernthal) sandwich shop. The series became an instant hit with its dirty, profanity filled kitchen and a terrifically frenetic directing style to match. That season followed Carmy as he navigated everything from balancing a horribly mismanaged budget to teaching a fine-dining kitchen brigade mentality to a skeptical crew. After some truly harrowing moments the season ends with a deus ex machina. Before Carmy’s brother’s suicide, Michael had hidden hundreds of thousands of dollars in tomato cans, saving the shop and allowing his younger brother to open the restaurant of his dreams.
In its second season, The Bear (also the intended name for the dream restaurant) focuses on the transformation of the sandwich shop into Carmy’s vision. Just like a hole in the wall suddenly morphing into a fine dining establishment so too does the second season develop into a bigger, better, and more satisfying series. The first season poses the question: what can an ambitious, dedicated, and inspired team do with enough money? The second season answers that question warmly: nurture their talent.
Right from the jump Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Carmy’s second in command, is in a creative rut. Opening The Bear is all she’s ever dreamed of but even with the cash infusion she’s now under the weight of coming up with a menu that’s as good as they want it to be. For both chefs, but mainly Sydney, that means food that will earn them a Michelin star. When they start workshopping ideas she keeps messing up. Food that’s too salty. Food that’s unbalanced. Food that Carmy spits out. After a handful of tries Carmy suggests they need inspiration in the form of going around Chicago and eating the city’s best food for inspiration. Sydney goes to Kasama, Avec, Margie’s Candies, Pizza Lobo, and Publican Quality Meats (all lauded real-world Chicago restaurants) before heading home and attempting a ravioli dish of her own.
She ends up having what she’s cooked but her enjoyment of gathering inspiration and trying to apply it is the mission statement of The Bear’s second season: Nothing is more important than nourishing the staff’s gifts. They send Marcus (Lionel Boyce) to Copenhagen to learn expert level dessert skills. They send Carmy’s cousin Richie to one of the best restaurants in the world to learn and understand attention to detail and staging. They send Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) to cooking school. The joy on Tina’s face when Syd makes her her sous chef is what The Bear is all about. Talent and inspiration are a precious resource. Through the background noise of the season’s restaurant renovation, pricing dishware, or figuring out how to pass the fire safety test, there’s never a question about if it’s worth it to make these people better at what they love to do.
Much of The Bear’s first season concerned the idea of troubled genius. Carmy was simply good at what he did to worry about anything else. He left Chicago and his family to focus on honing his craft and he did so to the point where he wasn’t taking care of himself. When he finds himself running the sandwich shop he has to reckon with the idea that if he isn’t ok he won’t be able to be ok for any of the people that rely on him. The second season takes that idea a step further by showing that talent isn’t always an individual endeavor. To grow as a person can take a community (or a team). From Sydney to Marcus to Tina to the famed Chef Terry (Olivia Colman in a terrific cameo) the season’s throughline is that all of these remarkable people need people in their lives to nurture their gifts.
This idea is specifically evident in the episode “Honeydew” where Carmy and Sydney send Marcus to Copenhagen to study under the icy but talented pastry chef Luca (Will Poulter). Luca is firm but shows Marcus how to create painstakingly plated desserts that are absolute works of culinary art. One example is a scoop of ice cream that needs to be properly caressed out of the carton to meet the standard of the restaurant’s presentational reputation. Marcus’ dedication impresses Luca enough that he tells Marcus a story about a chef (maybe Carmy) that was so good it forced Luca to realize he’d never be the best. Luca explains this revelation isn’t sad but bittersweet. Knowing he’d met his match unburdened him from the pressure he was putting on himself and instead Luca was able to simply focus on being the best he himself could be. Luca found community in competition but also learned that talent doesn’t mean someone else winning means that you lose.
Tina’s storyline sees her sent to culinary school where she thrives. She relishes the opportunity to improve her skills. In season one Tina’s fierce loyalty was to the sandwich shop and to her old team. Now that loyalty has shifted to Carmy and Syd because they see something truly great in her. There is a small moment in episode five of season two where Carmy lets her bring his chef’s knife to culinary school. This small but thematically momentous show of trust and confidence in Tina sets her loose. She knocks her curriculum out of the park. Tina has the skills all along but needed someone else to show they see those skills.
In probably my favorite episode of this season has Richie staging for a week at the best restaurant in the world. He spends most of that week polishing forks. He hates every second of it and is convinced this is some kind of Carmy orchestrated punishment. As the week progresses though Richie learns from his new team that being able to change someone’s day for the better is truly wonderful. It clicks for him then that you can be as talented as anyone has ever been but without discipline that talent can’t be aimed in the proper direction. He watches the restaurant’s servers communicate in secret code, detailing diner’s stories, lives, eating habits and allergies. He watches Jess (Sarah Ramos) expedite like an orchestra conductor. All of this thrills him and he doubles down on actually trying to learn and grow there. Near the end of the week, he can blind taste test every sauce the restaurant has. Richie finally learns the joy of being part of a successful team. It’s a huge moment for him because he realizes he has to push himself to be the best version of himself. On his last day he runs into Chef Terry (Colman) cleaning mushrooms. After peeling some with her Richie apologizes to Terry for his early behavior and thanks her for doing Carmy the favor of letting him work at her restaurant. She tells Richie it wasn’t a favor and that she took him on because Carmy told her he believes in Richie. She also tells him that it’s never too late to start over. She had crashed and burned in the past and needed a reset too. She points out a sign in her kitchen that reads “Every second counts”. It’s an homage to her late father and through the story of the clock we’re once again reminded of this season’s message: without a family or community, greatness can’t survive. Without Terry’s father or her staff, without all these helpful people, she wouldn’t be the most successful chef in the game.
About halfway through the season we get a flashback episode to a family Christmas at Carmy’s mother’s house. Here we see what we’ve suspected all along. His family is acidic, toxic, and a hindrance to his natural talent. It makes even more sense that the environment that Carmy has worked to create for himself is the exact opposite.
Sadly, this is the most fantastic, wish fulfilling aspect of the series. Bosses don’t regularly send their employees around the globe to nourish their souls and ignite their inspiration. For most people jobs don’t tap into deep set passions or skills and instead are simply a necessary evil to afford food and shelter. But that’s why we need shows like The Bear. To remind us of the best parts of life and the best reasons to make connections with others. Recognizing and loving others for their best attributes and trying to help them work around or hone their worst tendencies is a purely human act. Some may call this overwhelming sense of warmth for others unbelievable, and I won’t argue with that opinion. But what’s wrong with setting our sights a little higher and shooting for the best versions of not only ourselves but everyone we know and care about?
Of course, this is all a fantasy.
Bosses don’t usually send their employees to Scandinavia to nourish their souls and ignite their inspiration. A fantasy where our jobs make us better and recognize our brilliance and diligence is even more appealing as we’re living in a reality suffering from burnout and the threat of AI replacement. The restaurant world — as The Bear is keen to show us — is a different universe. And even then, The Bear is more of an exceptional exception and not the norm.
There’s no guarantee that these characters will make good on their talent or that their talent will somehow lead to the success of Carmy’s restaurant. That’s ultimately up to the fickleness of a cruel industry. But I can’t help but hope that it does.
