On Thursday, June 25, the final episodes of Christopher Storer’s The Bear dropped on Hulu, and nobody is more thrilled than yours truly. The show centered around Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and his ragtag gang of culinary misfits is finally getting ready to fire its final orders, and as someone who’s covered the show since well before its 2022 premiere, I’m feeling an overwhelming sense of relief.
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I can’t actually remember whether or not I volunteered to cover The Bear, a show that would come to dominate the pop culture-conversation surrounding restaurants, but I do remember feeling some excitement for it along the way. I am sure I thought that this kind of assignment would be glamorous. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to watch TV and spout off their opinions? (I was not alone in this endeavor — Chicago expert Ashok was busy doing his own binge-watch, trying to track down every single restaurant featured in the show, and staking out filming locations in between seasons.)
The reality of covering The Bear was decidedly less starry. I imagined in-depth interviews with White, fresh off of his Calvin Klein campaign, but the reality was a logistical clusterfuck. I was always waiting on the network about whether or not any of the show’s stars would deign to allow me to interview them, or nagging them for permission to access photos. Even if I was given advance screeners, a practice common in television criticism, I would typically receive them only hours ahead of the premiere. Which meant that I was stuck binge-watching 10 hours of the most anxiety-inducing, emotionally gripping television imaginable on my crappy laptop screen.
These are absolutely champagne problems, ones that other journalists would be excited to have. I understand that no one really feels sorry for me that The Bear stars I was most interested in speaking with only seemed annoyed by my presence during our brief virtual conversations. It isn’t a tragedy that covering The Bear journalistically made it feel like preparing for a test, with copious note-taking, fact-checking, and references to hunt down, but I know that experience is contributing to my relief at its departure.
What’s also contributing to that feeling is that, at this point, The Bear sucks. I do believe that, at least at one point, The Bear was a good show. In its first season, the show earnestly attempted to offer a realistic look inside the restaurant industry, one that was not quite as glamorized as the usual Food Network fare. There was something refreshing about its gritty approach to the reality of kitchen mundanity and emotional trauma simmering under the surface. It really nailed what it wanted to be: a complicated comedy about family, ego, and beautiful-looking food.
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I can also concede that my own neuroses have impacted my view of The Bear. This is a show deliberately designed to stress you the fuck out, a nod to the actually nerve-wracking world of working in restaurants, and it succeeds at that above all else. Its breakneck pace, unrelenting emotional weight, and soundtrack always seem to strike the most tender part of my last good nerve. Slamming all of those episodes in a row over four seasons often felt like being on the emotional equivalent of a rickety old wooden roller coaster, battered by constant panic attacks and parental guilt expertly portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis.
As much as The Bear set out to turn the notion of the tortured genius chef on its head, it ultimately succumbed to its impulse toward chef worship, and that’s been a real bummer to watch. The show once ruminated on the ways that the outsized egos of chefs have contributed to the physical and emotional abuse that many of the most prominent culinary titans (David Chang, Thomas Keller, René Redzepi, etc.) have either been accused of or copped to outright. But seeing the parade of big-name chef cameos in Season 3, including appearances by Keller and Redzepi, that stood in for a compelling story arc took the air right out of a show that insisted it was doing something different than all that had come before it. It felt like a giant load of virtue-signaling bullshit, as the credibly accused abusers and admitted tyrants lined up for their guest appearances.
I have written about this before, but it did for a moment feel like The Bear was actually going to say something about the power imbalances that make the restaurant industry possible, a task it totally whiffed. There are thousands of chefs doing interesting, innovative things both in their kitchens and with their business models that The Bear could have chosen to feature, but instead, we got yet another heaping helping of hero worship.
It is theoretically possible that this could still be rectified. Maybe Storer and the gang have written a truly revolutionary season, one that gives credit to the invisible labor that keeps the industry afloat while going much easier on the tortured chef apologia. (I remain annoyed that this show does not have a good dishwasher character, because everyone knows a good dishwasher is the backbone of a great restaurant.) I hope that it ends on a high note, but I’ve gotta admit that I won’t be finding out!
Getting laid off last year sucked in a lot of ways — especially the no-health-insurance kind of way — but it did liberate me from the expectation of covering The Bear one last time, and I am eminently grateful for that. I hope you all have so much fun biting your fingernails to the quick as you watch to see whether or not Carmy really, finally figures it out this time, but I’ll be blissfully ignorant of what happens next.
On Ravenous This Week
- Ashok dives into the wild and wonderful world of weird movie-themed popcorn buckets.
- Frances goes long in a beautiful essay about how navigating life with her picky-eating kids helped her better understand the way she eats.
🐦⬛ Bird Droppings
- Congratulations to Starbucks Workers United, the labor union representing thousands of baristas at the coffee chain, on winning its 700th NLRB election! In this anti-labor climate, this is a massive win.
- Our pals at Folly ran this great interview with the founder of Little Spoon, the only baby food I've ever wanted to eat, AND a stunning essay from our former colleague Mona Holmes on the power of the auntie.
- Ugh, Slate reports that A.I. robots are increasingly taking your restaurant reservations over the phone.
