Josh Reviews The Bear Season Three

I loved the first two seasons of The Bear and was eager for season three to arrive!  (Click here for my review of season one and click here for my review of season two.)  Season three picks up soon after the tumultuous soft-opening of the Bear, the new high-end restaurant that Carmy and Sydney have created.

Many of my friends and family who watch The Bear complained to me about season three.  Nothing happened!  None of the characters made progress.  It’s just wheel-spinning!

Ha, maybe, but what glorious wheel-spinning it is!!  It’s true that I was rooting for many of the show’s characters (particularly Carmy) to demonstrate more growth and make better decisions.  But the beautiful humanity of these flawed characters, who often don’t grow and don’t make the best decisions, is what this show is all about, isn’t it??  (Also, for anyone who says these characters don’t grow and change, just look at Richie!!  I found him hateful and endlessly frustrating in season one; now he’s easily my favorite character and the one I’m most desperately rooting for to find some success and happiness.)

Yes, this season was an exploration of characters spinning their wheels, characters who feel stuck.  But what a beautiful exploration it was!  I was immediately hooked in by the season premiere, “Tomorrow”, which was basically just one long dreamy montage, jumping around in flashes through Carmy’s memories, of his life and his friends and his family, of various kitchens in which he’d worked, etc.  I can understand why some viewers might have found this boring or frustrating, but I was captivated by this tone poem of an episode.  I thought the jumping-around montage was an effective way to put us right into Carmy’s head in a way I rarely see on TV.  Creator/writer/director Christopher Storer used this device throughout the season, and I found it to be very powerful.  The use of extreme close-ups of the characters’ faces, plus these montage sequences that seemed to take us right inside their heads, kept the show feeling very intimate to me.  I loved it.

I also loved that the second episode, “Next,” was such a strong contrast — basically one long scene as most of the show’s main characters walk into the Bear’s kitchen one by one and encounter a frustratingly stubborn Carmy and his list of “non-negotiables”.  That one-two punch of episodes was a thrilling introduction to this new season, and I was completely hooked into the show’s wavelength.

It’s painful watching Carmy, who so clearly wants to do better but seems unable to do so.  Jeremy Allen White continues to be powerfully magnetic as Carmy.  We see Carmy’s brilliance and we understand why others want to follow him.  We also see how difficult a person he is and how frustrating her can be, particularly for Sydney.  Without meaning to do so, Carmy is passing many of the traumas he’s received working in restaurants on to Sydney.  Ayo Edebiri continues to do wonders as this character.  Sydney too was frustrating to watch this season — her inability to commit and sign the papers to officially be a part of the Bear was sad to watch, as was her indecision at the end of the season when she’s offered an exciting new opportunity working somewhere else.  But wow does Ms. Edebiri allow us to feel what Sydney is feeling; her hopes and her fears and her anxieties.  (The near-silent scene in the finale, in which Sydney has what appears to be a panic attack in the hallway of her apartment building, was an acting tour-de-force.)  Then there is Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richie.  I could devote this whole blog to how much I love Richie.  Mr. Moss-Bacharach is endlessly watchable.  He’s both so funny, and so emotionally raw, in his performance!  It’s incredible.  I love how he and Mr. Storer have modulated Richie so that he’s still a stubborn pain in the ass, but now we have so much empathy and understanding for him.  (I loved the scenes in the finale of Richie’s hanging with the kitchen crew at Ever, the restaurant that was closing.)

I wish Lionel Boyce had a little more to do this season as Marcus.  In the early episodes, we see Marcus grieving the death of his mother, but as the season progressed we didn’t get too much more of him.  There were a lot of shots of his working on new desserts… were those actually getting made and served at the Bear?  I hope we get more of him in season four.  On the other hand, I was thrilled that Liza Colón-Zayas as Tina finally got a spotlight episode!!  That episode, “Napkins,” was such a fun surprise and a delight — an episode-long flashback showing us how Tina wound up working at the Bear.  (I loved that they brought back Jon Bernthal to play Mikey for that critical scene of when he and Tina met.)

They really leaned into the Faks this season, and I couldn’t be happier!!  Matty Matheson was comedic gold as Neil Fak, and I loved his bickering pairing with Ricky Staffieri as Teddy Fak.  I could not ever get enough of those two!  And then we also got John Cena as Sammy Fak?!  So fun.  I loved it.  (After watching the season I discovered that large portions of the internet seem to be angry at John Cena’s appearance.  I don’t know what their problem is.  I loved it.)  I was also happy to see Abby Elliott’s Natalie (“Sugar”) get some time in the spotlight this season, as the show explored her nervousness about becoming a mom (and simultaneously keeping the Bear afloat).  She got a wonderful spotlight in episode eight, “Ice Chips”, and she crushed it.  I was also thrilled to see Jamie Lee Curtis back as Natalie’s difficult mother Donna for that episode.  It was a risky move to put all the other characters aside to create this two-hander episode focusing on Natalie and Donna, but I thought it worked very well.  (Though I do wish I understood where the heck her husband was all that time!!)  It was very moving to watch Natalie and Donna attempt to work through some of their issues.

Oliver Platt was great as always in his appearances as Uncle Jimmy, who’s bankrolling the Bear.  I was happy to see Will Poulter back as pastry chef Luca (who mentored Marcus in season two; Luca got a bunch of juicy scenes in the finale, which I loved).  Olivia Colman was wonderful in her appearances as Chef Andrea Terry, a rare non-awful chef in the world of the show.  Conversely, Joel McHale was a wonderful bastard in his brief appearances as chef David Fields.  I really enjoyed Molly Gordon’s work as Claire in season two, and I was sad to see her and Carmy’s awful breakup in the season two finale.  I’m glad they continued to give us some glimpses of Claire in season three (even though they’re still keeping us waiting for Carmy and Claire to actually have any sort of in-person interaction post-breakup).  (That scene in which the Faks visit Claire to try to convince her to get back together with Carmy was so much fun.)  I was happy to see Gillian Jacobs again briefly as Richie’s ex-wife Tiffany.

I’d read that they’d made and shot seasons three and four of The Bear together in one shot, so I wasn’t stunned that the finale ended with a “To Be Continued” card, with the content of the much-awaited Chicago Tribune review of the Bear still a mystery (not to mention larger character arcs like which restaurant Sydney is going to decide to work for).  (It’s hard to imagine her leaving the Bear, but if she stays, I’m interested to see how the show chooses to have her character navigate that.  I could also imagine a scenario in which the show allows her to be working at a different restaurant and in a different environment for a season.  That could be interesting!)  I didn’t mind the cliffhanger, which seemed about at the same level as the ending of season two, even though there was no “To Be Continued” card there.  (In general, I hate when streaming shows end on a cliffhanger, but because I know they’ve already been working on season four for a while, I’m open to giving the show a little more leeway here than I usually would.)

Overall, I thought season three of The Bear was another terrific, compelling, emotionally intense episode of this great show.  Bring on season four!

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