TV Review – The Bear Season One

The Bear Season One (FX)
Written by Christopher Storer, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, Karen Joseph Adcock, Catherine Schetina & Rene Gube
Directed by Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo

I felt obligated to watch this one, but I knew it would be good. I can’t say The Bear was what I expected. I knew it was about a restaurant and starred Jeremy Allen White, but I was under the impression it was set at an upscale restaurant. Definitely not. And the first half of season one didn’t stand out as anything overly special. Ariana & I talked about how much the show used a premise akin to something like Cheers. If this had been made in the 1980s or 90s, it would have been a three-camera comedy-drama, probably with a “will they, won’t they” plot stringing the audience along for multiple seasons. We even have a Carla in the form of Tina, but even that character conflict is resolved relatively quickly, and the show moves on.

Carmen Berzatto (White) returns to his hometown of Chicago following the suicide of his older brother, Michael (Jon Bernthal). He is taking over a rundown restaurant his brother ran in River North, clashing with the old-school employees while bringing in Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), a CIA-trained chef, to help fix the place. Carmen struggles with the debts left behind by his brother and tries to understand why Michael took his own life. Sydney wants to showcase her culinary skills but often gets stuck in the procedures & protocols the old employees have followed for years. Clashes are frequent with cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the restaurant’s manager and best friend of Michael. Throughout the first season, Carmen figures out how to work with the old-school people while staying true to his standards. 

I can’t say that the hype surrounding The Bear was warranted after watching the first season. The first half of the season felt like a well-written dramedy, but I kept wondering where this praise came from. I would say the last two episodes of the season were where I really sat up and realized we were watching something exceptional. I can’t say that the earlier episodes were unnecessary because they develop the characters and establish relationships. They are well done, just not something I would have considered worthy of the heavy praise the show has gotten. It’s far better than anything on network TV and solidly in line with the best prestige cable shows.

One area where the series nails it is in portraying chefs at various stages of the industry. Carmen works with an intensity that has been forged in Michelin-star restaurants. Sydney has the anxiety you expect from a young chef hungry to make a name for themselves. Marcus (Lionel Boyce), the restaurant’s bread baker, becomes quickly enamored with the books Carmen brings and begins pursuing a gourmet dessert career. He has the wide-eyed wonder of someone who suddenly discovered incredible new ways of doing things. Then you have Tina, who is used to the old procedures & methods and pushes back aggressively when asked to look beyond what she knows. The script gives everyone a lot of grace, even if the characters clash loudly. I appreciate that instead of making Sydney & Tina’s antagonism a multi-season gag, the writers allow it to happen and develop the characters past that point authentically.

The Bear uses Carmen’s troubling dreams to fuel the emotional spine of the series. His brother’s death haunts him, mainly because there is no suicide note. He has to believe that his brother would have given him some final words; all the remains of the deceased are piles of bills and poorly organized books in the back office. Richie is just as emotionally devastated as Carmen but doesn’t exhibit it similarly. Carmen has been afforded experiences that allow him to feel his emotions and see food differently. Richie’s background doesn’t let him be vulnerable, or else he would be targeted by the tough guys in the neighborhood. The clashes between these two are like those you’d see with brothers from a dysfunctional family. Over the episodes, we learn how much Michael was the glue that held everything together, which is why his sudden death sent shockwaves through everyone.

I get the sense we have only scratched the surface of exploring Carmen’s family. So far, we’ve seen Michael in flashbacks and spent some time with Natalie (Abby Elliott), the only daughter. We know their father has passed, but their mother is still alive and, from bits of dialogue, sounds like a significant force in their love of cooking. Similarly, Sydney comes to the show having had to dissolve an unsuccessful catering company. She’s living back home with her father, who is heard but not seen in season one. I inferred some tension between Sydney and her father. I would guess he’s not particularly happy with her failing in one version of her dream to be a chef, only to keep it going in a different form. I would expect that to be developed in the next season or further.

Jeremy Allen White seems to have a penchant for playing Chicago wunderkind (see Shameless), but he does an excellent job of it. I never doubted his authenticity in this role; almost everyone else is doing equally good work. Some moments lean more into sitcom scenario territory; the birthday party for Cicero wraps up in that way. The final third of the season delivered what I had been initially looking for, which makes me excited going into season two with this momentum hopefully being carried over. The show will change, and we are just now beginning to see what creator Christopher Storer has planned. It looks to be a solid character-centered show about working-class people, something we rarely get from the States.