The Bear: Season 3: The Off-Balance Review.
Every second counts.
The Bear’s third season was released in its entirety on June 26th. You can find it on Hulu and Disney+.
This review will discuss the season in detail. If you haven’t seen it just yet or are still working your way through? Please consider this your spoiler warning.
As always, thank you for reading Off-Balance!
Until next time,
Ryan.
Throughout its first two seasons?
The Bear achieved a balance that many projects boosting similar prestige can often struggle with, even as it, rightfully, lived up to its immediately-earned reputation as one of the most stressful watches on television.
Contrasting the frantic day-to-day operation of a restaurant (and later, its reinvention) with more reflective character studies, totally unafraid to let the cast and the audience both linger within its world.
Whether it was confronting and unraveling (or maybe just avoiding) long unaddressed trauma, past experiences informing the present or the joy that can come with finding a new path forward where you least expect it.
The show’s third season, however, which debuted in its entirety late last month has become a hotly-contested item in the always-online discourse: The Bear, continually pushing up against its creative boundaries with a confidence that only a multi-time Emmy winner can pull off.
The question though, as is usually the case, remains the same: is it successful in doing so?
As the season begins, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) may be out of the freezer but he is, to nobody’s surprise, still in a prison of his own design.
His emotional outbursts towards both Claire (Molly Gordon) and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) during the second season finale, creating scars, for all three, that are unlikely to heal anytime soon.
And while his immediate solution is to avoid Claire entirely, he doesn’t have as much luck with Richie, who despite a kinda-sorta apology, has no trouble immediately calling his “cousin” out on his bullshit, more so, when Carmy digs in further: creating a list of incredibly demanding “non-negotiables” everyone must follow if The Bear is going to receive a Michelin Star, right as the Chicago Tribune prepares to review the restaurant.
It is a lofty (and frankly unachievable) goal but as Carmy continues to spiral, down his dark rabbit holes of abuse, self-loathing and obsession, everyone else must simply try to keep up.
Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) has been offered a partnership stake in the business but when Chef Adam (Adam Shapiro) from Ever brings her a new opportunity, she struggles to make a decision.
Starting fresh, on her own terms, while wanting to stick by what she has built with Carmy even as he seems totally unwilling to actually consider her input, Edebiri, capturing Sydney’s inner conflict to a tee.
Richie, meanwhile, may have discovered his professional purpose but is still looking for the same meaning in his personal life, as his now ex-wife, Tiff (Gillian Jacobs) is getting remarried: trying to reconcile his still-there feelings while understanding he must let her go if they are to be effective co-parents to their daughter.
It is, as always, strong work from Ebon Moss-Bachrach (and the larger creative team) turning a character who was at one point the closet thing the series had to a proper antagonist into someone you can’t help but root for.
At the same time, Natalie (Abby Elliott), alongside Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), is doing everything she can to keep The Bear afloat, as it bleeds financially.
But as her delivery date looms, she must face the possibility that she’ll end up having to do what her brother actively refuses: confronting her past, in this case, the trauma inflicted upon them by their mother, Donna (a returning and always excellent, if somewhat overbearing, Jamie Lee Curtis).
And while these plot points are the season’s main threads, they’re also, in the big picture sense, the only ones too - despite the work done on the supporting side, albeit, limited in scope.
Maybe it is within Marcus’ (Lionel Boyce) plot-line or the Tina-centric (Liza Colón-Zayas) flashback episode, Napkins, which traces her journey prior to the series’ beginning.
To when she arrived at The Beef, met Mikey (Jon Bernthal) and forever entangled herself in the chaos that is the Berzatto family (both blood related and extended).
Ultimately, despite this, season three of The Bear, as a whole, lacks the clearly-defined, overarching arcs that previously bridged the character work to something more material. And while you don’t always need Capital-P plot, necessarily, at least not in the traditional sense, that looser structure still must have a firm foundation.
Character development (or exploration, more accurately) has always been the show’s first priority but without any concrete through-line, these ten episodes are more openly experimental, more lackadaisical, when compared to their predecessors.
Growth, if it comes at all, will be piecemeal at best.
It tracks, however.
Because for better or worst? The planet for which everything on The Bear orbits around is Carmy.
And our titular bear isn’t doing too well, unwilling and unable, for virtually the entire season, to escape the mental hell for which he continually subjects himself.
From the outside looking in, there is no disputing his culinary genius but any joy he found in the kitchen was lost a long time ago: seemingly ignoring all the positive lessons he learned from his many former mentors, namely Olivia Colman’s Chef Terry (for one, that they remember the people, not the food).
Instead, he almost exclusively hones in on the vicious hazing he received under Joel McHale’s Dave Fields during his time in New York: self-doubt, inadequacy and straight up abuse dominating his every decision.
Unable to trust his own work or that of those closet to him, many of whom, in one way or another, wouldn’t be where they are without his occasionally-insightful mentoring.
But there is everything else too: his continued grief over Mikey’s suicide (for which it is revealed Carmy didn’t attend the funeral), his fractured personal life, knowing he is entirely at fault for ending his relationship with Claire in the worst possible way.
If anything, it seems that the approach in tackling this material is what has caused the most discontent in the online space: the season spends a great deal of time probing around the edges of Carmy’s psyche, moving slowly through extended flashbacks sequences (some with Claire, some without), montages and musical accompaniments, working to truly deconstruct just what makes this particular Berzatto tick.
Yes, it can be monotonous at times (and often veers into repetition) but it is never truly boring either, successful, mostly in part because of what Jeremy Allen White and the behind-the-scenes creatives bring to the screen, a reminder that life is often full of unanswered questions and difficult choices.
Come the season’s end, no, Carmy doesn’t apologize or reach out to Claire. His relationship with Richie is still strained. Richie himself is still searching for a greater personal purpose and Sydney remains undecided on her future.
And up until the season finale, where at least some threads are resolved - namely Carmy confronting Chef Fields and receiving some words of wisdom from Chef Terry as she closes down Ever - it doesn’t seem like The Bear is all that interested in providing any definitive closure whatsoever.
By design, no doubt (with the final image of the season being, aptly, a “To Be Continued” screen)
The show’s fourth season was filmed in tandem with the third, bringing that chosen approach into clearer focus - the reality of taking one season’s worth of storytelling and stretching it into two instead.
The Bear’s third season stumbles more than the previous two, carrying both expectation and poor creative decisions on its shoulders (for one, as amusing as they are, the less we see of the Fak Brothers? The better) but it isn’t without its high points either.
Although maybe the fourth season will have better luck.
Bringing both the creative excellence that has become the show’s calling card (by way of its storytelling, eclectic presentation and character work) but something this season often lacked: resolution.