Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmen (Carmy) Berzatto in The Bear. Season 4 picks up after the crew of the Chicago sandwich shop-turned-fine dining establishment receives a lukewarm review in the Chicago Tribune.FX/Supplied
I’ve had relationships with people like the one I have with The Bear.
Three years ago, when the first season debuted, I was all in. It was novel. It was sharp. It was fast and exciting and genuinely got my heart racing. Season 2 did the same – maybe even moreso. And then Season 3 landed like a plate of cold, overcooked ravioli: flabby, soggy and barely palatable. And it pains me to say this, but Season 4 is no better, to the point that, looking back, I find myself wondering if The Bear was ever really that good, or if it was just, well, there.
When this newest season opens, we find the crew of Chicago sandwich shop-turned-fine dining establishment the Bear – chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), front of house manager Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce), sous chef Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and others – reeling after a lukewarm review in the Chicago Tribune. Investor Jimmy (Oliver Platt) gives the team an ultimatum: Turn the place around, or he’ll shut it down.
Thus, the season’s newest character is revealed: a giant digital clock, which is counting down the exact number of hours, minutes and seconds the restaurant has to make a 180. It’s a ticking time bomb that should add a layer of urgency to the season – the same layer, perhaps, that underpinned its infectious first episodes or ran as a throughline in Season 2. But somehow – and this is, frankly, almost a feat in and of itself – constant callbacks to an enormous doomsday clock only make the show feel like it’s moving slower. Get on with it, you may find yourself thinking. Just kill this thing already.
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The main issue with The Bear, the show, is frustratingly, the issue the Tribune had with the Bear, the restaurant: inconsistency. Early episodes featured complex, thoughtfully realized characters; Seasons 3 and 4 see those same characters spinning their wheels so hard in one place, it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever get out of the ditch – or that you’ll care when they do. The adrenaline-pumping back-of-house action that characterized the show’s early success has been mostly replaced by personal dramas treated with such superficial attention, they’re impossible to believe – to the point that, when the final two episodes’ big twist is revealed, it feels more like a birthday candle than a bombshell. And when everyone starts yelling over each other, or when the script finally, finally focuses back in on the kitchen, the tone shift is so jarring, you may find yourself wondering if you accidentally switched back to Season 1.
The dialogue, meanwhile, is full of so many watered-down platitudes about the power of restaurants, it’s like someone fed the scripts for the first season of The Bear into ChatGPT and asked for a summary of key points to be repeated and rephrased often enough to fill a 10-episode season. Or, I should say, partly fill: There’s something about this season that gives the impression that the writers were short on word count, so instead of – sorry – beefing up the scripts, they filled each episode with interminable pauses in conversation, punctuated by a character’s brow slowly furrowing, head slowly turning, or lip slowly quivering.
None of this is the fault of the show’s cast (least of all Edebiri who, in addition to doing the most with a script that offers the least, directed the season’s best episode). Everyone, including star Canadian chef Matty Matheson, Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis, all back for memorable bit parts, is working their absolute hardest to keep this thing afloat. Abby Elliott as Sugar is a surprising season standout, balancing new motherhood with her family’s continued dysfunction.
In relationships, as in life, as in restaurants, evolution is the key to survival. But The Bear’s evolution suggests a creative team that has simply lost its spark. And it’s a shame, really – we used to have something truly special.
