This was the first show on television where I thought the creator, the writers, and the actors had too much talent.
The Bear is a drama on FX about a top-tier chef coming home to his grief-stricken family to take over and ultimately transform the beef sandwich shop his deceased brother left behind.
I had mixed feelings about this show through its run. The start was phenomenal. Then the show built up toward several bravura set-piece-style episodes. One was a rush of orders online. Another was a dysfunctional Christmas family dinner. Like a lot of viewers, I appreciated earlier ones and began to check out later.
There were problems with the series at a structural level. 1) The series seems to begin as a story about “Carmy” and his obsessive pursuit of excellence and what that costs him in sanity and relationships. But as a series, the story seems to lose interest in him over time. He’s still a sad bastard in the end, just one whose accomplishments are recognized and supported by others, rather than fully undermined. The series effectively finished his story when he confronted a former mentor, Chef David Fields, played brilliantly by Joel McHale. Carmy tries to take Fields to task for making him a self-doubting workaholic and obsessive. Fields makes it quite clear that Carmy benefited from his hard tutelage, and has become great. Fields thinks Carmy should thank him. A lesser series would unambiguously take the side of Carmy, but The Bear bravely lets the audience decide for themselves, and allows you to conclude, as I did, that Carmy’s torture is self-inflicted and needless even if it is deeply habitual and now ineradicable.
2) The story and the series turn their love toward the most effective actor on the series, Ebon-Moss Bachrach’s “Ritchie.” Ritchie is just a late-to-discipline former loser who finally turns his fundamental bonhomie into a gifted host for the restaurant. By the end of the series, viewers love Ritchie, and barely tolerate the sullen, artsy Carmy. The series gives very rich supporting work to Ayo Edebiri as Chef Sydney, and others besides.
This was the first show on television where I thought the creator, the writers, and the actors had too much talent and put too much of it to work too often. I felt, as the series aged, that it desperately needed traditional “suits” working for the station, reining people in. There was just too much melodrama, too much scene chewing, too much acting talent oozing over everything. Episodes would end with a too-well-chosen obscurity from 90s rock, and you would think, “I bet the guy who chose that track sniffs his fingers five times a day.”
Well, joke’s on me. The final season of The Bear takes the preposterousness of the show up a level further and mostly delivers and redeems everything that preceded it. Seven of the final eight episodes focus on ONE epically rainy night of service at the new hip restaurant these characters have built together. Seven full episodes covering from daylight to closing shop on a night when the crew wrongly believes they are being visited by a Michelin Guide food critic. The ensemble’s push for this star, while a subplot about the parlous financial state of the enterprise enfolds in the background, is a genuine television achievement, and pays off any investment you’ve made in the show, even if — like me — you were ready to cash in and forfeit two seasons ago.