The Bear is back and it may be better than ever. The first season, which became a quick mostly-word-of-mouth hit, ended when Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his motley crew had managed to come together as a kitchen brigade and (thanks to some tinned tomato-based plot chicanery that didn’t quite hold up to scrutiny but was obscured by the blazing brilliance of the rest) got the Berzatto family’s struggling Original Beef joint not only on its feet but planning a revamp, and a new name: The Bear, of course.
The new season starts with Carmy scribbling lists and costings on a pizza box, apparently after the venture has got under way. If anyone was wondering how the makers would replicate the stress and chaos of life in a working kitchen while the gang are on hiatus … this is how. Even after Carmy appoints his sister Sugar (Abby Elliott) as project manager, the discovery of various bone-deep problems with the building, the impossible timeline demanded by their new loan arrangements with Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) and the ever-volatile presence of Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) keep the screaming edge of desperation as keenly whetted as ever.
The kitchen staff members themselves are sent off to pastures new. In lesser hands, this would risk killing the heart of the show but here it only deepens their stories and ultimately their connection to each other and The Bear. Pastry chef Marcus goes to Denmark to learn new techniques, gather ideas and come back with inspired creations for the new restaurant. He makes careful arrangements for his chronically ill mother’s care before he goes, checking in every day without resentment even as the world opens up around him.
Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) are sent to culinary school, and their respective fates provide a deeply moving study of how small differences – in life experience, in attitude, in mental and physical capacities – shape our outcomes in ways we only sometimes have control over.
Meanwhile, the pressure is on the magnificent Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, still lighting up and punching up every scene she is in) and Carmy to create a new menu – one that will win them the Michelin star that Sydney craves, even after Carmy describes his response when he got his: panic “bypassing any sense of joy” and replaced only by the fear of losing it. That’s our boy.
If the first series was about processing trauma, coming to terms with loss and the even slower and more painful business of expiating guilt, this time round it wrestles with what comes next. “You ever think about purpose?” says Richie, who has been in the basement while the others are upstairs trying to make the figures on the pizza box come right, as Carmy nips down for some supplies. “I love you,” says Carmy. “But I don’t have time for this.” But the show does, circling round and round the question of nothing more or less than what makes a good life. Down in the basement, Richie is brewing the beginnings of an existential crisis, and his arc over the 10-episode series as he finds his own answer to the question is one of the most moving and compelling, as well as a testament to Moss-Bachrach’s subtle and intuitive acting.
Elsewhere, there is an episode that begins with Carmy telling his therapy group that he Googled the word “fun”. As a romantic interest distracts him from his work on the menu with Sydney, who is busy researching local restaurants to establish what works in culinary and practical terms, the episode effectively examines the definition of fun. It asks, too – not just here but throughout – if fun, however you define it, is enough. Can you be as happy fulfilling your professional ambitions as your personal or romantic ones? To work is no longer to pray in a secular modern world, but – as Sydney gazes in despair at the parade of potential staff recruits who don’t know what hard graft means – it is still … something.
The writing remains incredible. Fleet, funny (it’s one of the rare purveyors of convincing naturalistic jokes and jibes between friends and colleagues), and always moving seamlessly from light to dark moments and back again as only people as deeply connected as these can do, it never makes a false move. The apparent chaos is tightly controlled and there is a shining rigour to the structure beneath that we can only hope the second deep-clean of The Bear’s kitchen after the black mould is gone will eventually allow it to emulate. Until that gets done, I really can’t pay attention to anything else.
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