Given the plot structure of season two’s “Friends and Family,” it would have been easy to assume that each episode of season three would document the restaurant’s growing pains. But instead of going big, Christopher Storer and his writers have downsized. Yes, most episodes feature life at The Bear to some degree, but instead of cameras dancing between the front and back of the house, the writing plumbs the depths of each character’s soul.
“Friends and Family” went about as well as it could have. Executive chef Carmy (a phenomenal Jeremy Allen White) built an environment in which people explored their talents and came together—despite previous, uh, disagreements—to right the ship when it threatened to go under. But due to the sheer depth of his trauma, he became figuratively (and literally) trapped and didn’t witness his achievement. Season three begins the morning after “Friends and Family,” with Carmy walking to a window in his apartment. As dawn creeps over Chicago, apprehension stills Carmy. The thought bubble over his head is almost visible: “Did I dream it? Do I really have to go back?” What follows is the best 31 minutes of television I’ve seen this year, and something quite unusual for “The Bear”: A visit through Carmy’s memories, in what almost feels like a video essay. Sentiment abounds, backed by one in a series of needle drop bangers — Nine Inch Nails’ “Together.” However, as Don Draper once said, just because it has sentiment doesn’t mean it’s sentimental.
We flit through the good: Carmy’s eyes aglow in wonder and joy at the beets and bees and carrots in Noma’s garden, a gentle smile hovering on his lips; impressing a boss with his persistence and gorgeous drawings; Claire, before and during their relationship), the troubling (abuse, familial and workplace, equally destructive), the loss (saying goodbye to his sister when he left for New York, learning of Mikey’s death). Sure, Carmy is a tortured artist, but it’s also not that simple. Fine dining can be an odd collaborative environment. You work in unison with many other people, yet silence often pervades, each person wrapped up in their task and their heads. No wonder he broods—it’s all he’s ever done. He carries with him immense hope, striving to be better, wanting to convey through his food what he cannot verbalize, but he thinks he can fill the void in his heart with perfection because then the pain and loss will have meaning. Carmy’s fatal flaw is that he does not know how wrong he is.
Season two was about (mostly) achieving the harmony required to open a restaurant. Season three is about running the restaurant. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) got a hero edit last year (“Forks” is a shining achievement in television storytelling), learning to respect his work and himself, ascending new heights as a front-of-house shaman. Inner zen, however, isn’t a panacea. Gaining it is one thing, but preventing old habits from infecting it is quite another. Despite Carmy apologizing for his vicious screed from the walk-in, Richie cannot forgive him, and they spend the season at odds, only to blame each other. Sydney (the magnificent Ayo Edebiri) attempts to mediate, but playing referee to many decades of professional and personal agony is taking a toll on her, too. Sugar is nearing her due date and wonders whether the physical pain is harder to endure than the risk she is taking of trying to be the parent her mother wasn’t. The Faks, of whom there are many this season, provide much-needed comic relief, but even their silly banter proposes some pretty grim theories about why everything is so goddamn hard: what if someone is haunting you? This puts season three’s Proustian memory explorations in a new, frankly grim, light. Is Claire haunting Carmy? Is the restaurant toilet possessed? Is Mikey haunting Richie? Or is it the failure of his marriage to Tiffany, whose marriage to Frank is nearing?