The Bear serves up its best dish for season two – a deep dive into its inimitable characters
It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses... Hit it.
The famous lines from 1980’s The Blues Brothers pretty much encapsulates the intensity and frenetic whirlpool of emotions in The Bear’s second season.
So when anxious chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his fiery-tempered “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss Bacharach) recite the lines from the iconic Chicago-based film, as they forge ahead with building a new restaurant in record time, it’s perfectly in place.
Because ask anyone who’s ever run or worked in a kitchen; or someone who’s built a restaurant up from scratch, for that matter. Boiling point is around the corner. The hits don’t stop coming. And the only thing you need to say in response: “Yes chef!”
In case you need a refresher, the first season of The Bear dropped us right in the middle of a chaotic sandwich kitchen in Chicago, with chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto having left the fine dining world behind to run the family shop after his brother’s suicide.
Faced with a mountain of debt and an obdurate staff to lead, Carmy is also dealing with demons in his past – until he finds stacks of cash his brother had hidden in tins of crushed tomatoes.
The second season is a very different beast right from the get-go. With The Beef now closed, Carmy and newly promoted chef de cuisine Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) put plans in motion for a new fine dining venture: The Bear.
As the show reveals the fundamentals and headaches – “wait, why can’t we get the permit again?” – of setting up a new joint, Season Two does a great job of slowing down just a notch to delve into the characters’ personal lives. The Bear is, after all, grounded in its bizarre but-oh-so likeable characters.
It’s not just the main cast that get a healthy introspection. Line cooks Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebrahim (Edwin Lee Gibson) are sent to culinary school to sharpen their skills (and finally their knives). While one embraces it, the other retreats into uncertainty.
Pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) leaves his comfort zone and terminally ill mother in the hospital and heads to Copenhagen to hone his dessert-making craft. Marcus is a perfectionist, but in Denmark, he meets an even more serious one.
Even real-life chef Matty Matheson, who plays utility guy Fak, gets a meatier cut of the beef this time around.
Meanwhile, the hot-tempered and self-destructive Richie, arguably the show’s most dynamic character, shows another side to him as he faces his insecurities. Unable to offer anything in the kitchen, he fears he’ll be left behind when the new place gets up and running. But for everyone’s benefit – including us viewers – he’s reassured that he won’t be cut out.
One of the best episodes is all on him, in fact, when he's sent to an upscale fine dining restaurant for a week-long education. Sceptical and defiant at first, Richie soon notices how dedicated the staff are to their diners, and he falls in love with the intricacies involved in the front-of-house. The episode – “Forks” – is a great change in pace and tone from the rest of the ongoing mayhem.
But if The Bear does end up bagging an Emmy for a particular episode, it’ll undoubtedly be for “Fishes”, which goes back in time before the events of Season 1 to a traumatic Christmas dinner at Carmy’s childhood home.
It features notable guest stars playing various Berzatto family members and friends. Jon Bernthal returns as Carmy’s late brother, while Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Paulson and Bob Odenkirk are stellar additions, as the show writers establish some much-needed exposition into everyone's psyche.
After all the ebb and flow amid the transformation – not just of the restaurant – but of the characters themselves, The Bear culminates in opening night. Beneath the frenzied calm, can everyone hold it together?
We hope so, if for nothing else, then at least another season of this riveting, sumptuous dramedy.
- The Bear Season 2 is now streaming on Disney+
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