[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The Bear Season 2.]
The Pitch: “You ever think about purpose?”
It’s a question FX’s hit show The Bear puts in the mouth of its biggest loser, motor-mouthed fuckup “Cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), but it may as well be on the minds of everyone at the restaurant. At the end of Season 1, hothead young chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White, bleary-eyed and self-loathingly hot) received a miracle — some might say a contrived one — in the form of a stash of money hidden in cans of peeled tomatoes.
It’s a parting gift from his late brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal), and it’s enough to save the business, a failing Italian beef joint in River North Carmy’s struggled to run all season. Not just that, but it’s enough money to reinvent The Beef as a fine-dining restaurant that matches Carmy’s Michelin-star ambitions and those of the stalwart staff he’s come to know and respect over the course of the first season.
And so, The Beef becomes The Bear, and Season 2 of The Bear becomes, in turn, about that transformation: not just of the place, but of its occupants and their individual and collective sense of purpose. With six months to open and eighteen to pay back Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) for the money he’s putting up to assemble the place, the pressure is on to get the place and the people ready for service.
Michelin Impossible — Bread Reckoning: While Season 1 of The Bear was a compelling watch, it was also pretty uneven. There was the glaring dissonance of its Chicago setting, the thin scope of the show leaving secondary characters on the back burner, the shaky nature of its premise (Can you turn Mr. Beef into Avec? More importantly, why would you?). Though blessed with a performer as brittle and complex as White, Carmy was still the prototypical tortured genius we’d seen a million times before on TV.
The Bear (FX/Hulu)
But like all good restaurants, there’s always a shakedown period, and Season 2 seems to have worked out most of the bugs. For one, Carmy glides a bit more into the background, and so do the more Sam Esmail-y fits of showiness: no hallucinations about bears on the Chicago River, no daytime cooking show meltdowns. Creator Christopher Storer (who directs many of the episodes) grows his visual style even more adeptly, alternating between casual, thoughtful ’70s-style slow zooms and probing closeups of his actors during crucial moments. The show’s more prix-fixe focus means more longing, pornographic shots of Chef’s Table-caliber dishes, and more emphasis on the agonizing patience it takes to assemble them.
The season’s structure also allows its characters to breathe and grow outside the confines of the restaurant’s four walls. Due to the active construction (and endless permitting; thanks, Chicago bureaucracy) required to give The Bear the reinvention it needs, the bulk of the season follows our team as they hone their craft, conceptualize dishes, and deal with personal traumas. Ambitious sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) takes an eating tour of Chicago, dropping by popular restaurants like Avec, Giant, and Kasama to find inspiration (Storer visualizes her process as a slate-black plate, blank until pastas, sauces, and components flash subliminally onto it). Marcus (Lionel Boyce) hones his dessert craft in Copenhagen under a zen master played by Will Poulter. Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) go to culinary school, each of them taking away very different experiences.
The season hones in on each of these journeys largely over the course of a single episode, making The Bear’s structure very easy to digest. Marcus’ journey, a relaxed, endearing half-hour directed by Ramy Youssef, is a welcome respite from the high-pressure exploits of Carmy and crew: frenzied calendars with “FUCK MY LIFE TO DEATH” written on them, hurriedly scribbled budgets on the back of a cardboard box, mold infestations, live wires, a fire suppression exam that they can never seem to pass. But these contrasts make the show feel much more balanced, demonstrating for us the terrible joys and exhilarating risks that come from the restaurant business. “You love it,” Richie snaps to Carmy in one episode. “That doesn’t make it fun.”
The Bear (FX/Hulu)
Every Second Counts: For as much as The Bear Season 2 hones in on the logistics of opening a high-end restaurant, and the kind of sports-game thrill that engenders (we’re basically watching a team train in the offseason, but with chef’s knives instead of kneepads), this journey to self-actualization is deeply personal for each of them.
For Carmy, it’s the chance to prove his doubters wrong and do what he loves; for Sydney, it’s making her father (the very welcome Robert Townsend) proud of her, and shaking off the terrifying trends of post-COVID restaurant closings. Tina, Marcus, Fak (Matty Matheson, as hilarious as ever) and the rest? They see the potential in the restaurant, as foolish as that hope may be.
But it all comes back to purpose, and the wild things you do once you’ve found yours. Sugar (Abby Elliott), relegated last season to the role of “Carmy’s worried sibling,” stumbles her way into running the restaurant, and finds meaning in the mind-numbing logistics of it all. Richie gets bitten by the purpose bug most acutely of all; the seventh episode, in which he stages at a Michelin-star restaurant, feels like Full Metal Jacket but for waitstaff, a transformative experience that helps him see the vision Carmy has for The Bear, one beyond a mere extension of his late brother’s foolish pursuits. That The Bear keeps its eye on this most satisfying prize, even as the frenzy of opening threatens to upend all of that hard work, makes the season a thrilling watch.
The Bear (FX/Hulu)
The Verdict: For as winsome a late-pandemic watch as The Bear was last year, it got rightly dinged for its fantasy version of Chicago. Commutes didn’t make sense; Moss-Bachrach’s accent occasionally lapses into Tommy Wiseau playing Mike Ditka; the glitzy River North lacks the rundown South Side aesthetics the show is going for. And an Italian beef restaurant has no business shooting for a Michelin star (“just one,” Sydney warns; it’s prestigious, but still keeps them down to Earth).
But frankly, we’re not here for accuracy — The Bear is an aspirational fantasy, one as elegantly and compellingly constructed as any underdog sports movie. It’s not about who or what you are now, but what you want to be and the work you must put in to achieve those ambitions. The dream may not even work out, we don’t know; Season 2 only takes us up to The Bear’s opening night. But even if your dream fails, you’re a better, more fulfilled person for the trying. “You can spend all the time in the world in here,” Poulter’s smoldering chef instructs Marcus during his residency. “But if you don’t spend enough time out there…”
It was such a good move for Storer and co. to lean into what works, into the complicated but ultimately sentimental space that a culinary dramedy like this functions best in. Carmy falls into the background with the rest of his chefs, and they step up to engage in richer, more narratively fulfilling quests for self-improvement. It’s a beautiful second course, one more assured than the amuse-bouche that came before. It’s a shame FX is laying down the whole meal at once (releasing as a binge-watch on Hulu) rather than pacing each course appropriately. Good meals like this deserve time to digest.
Where’s It Playing: Every course of The Bear’s chaos menu streams Thursday, June 22nd on Hulu, courtesy of FX.
Trailer:
