"The Bear" Season 3, Show Review
Well-earned hype marks rare and remarkable art, and season 1 of “The Bear” struck me from its first moments as being exactly that: the whirlwind of characters and Chicago it creates come on quick in a story as compulsively-watchable as it is delicious to look at, plenty gritty and frenzied and lush, but engaging enough that I wasn’t relieved when an episode was over, just too hooked in to want to watch anything else.
With this precedent set, season 2 blew the damn roof off.
The stakes only got higher, the heartbreak deeper, the twists ever more inventive and fresh. Among its many highlights, foremost was the monumental “Fishes” episode, one of the best entries in a story I’ve seen in any medium.
So, going into season 3, I’ll first say that it was a wise move to release every episode at once from the beginning.
I can appreciate both approaches of building hype with either incremental premieres* or giving people the choice of binging or sipping at their discretion.
As someone who is fairly busy and watches most movies and shows in sips over meals, I tend to opt for the latter, and it was everything I could do to pull away from any episode I started of the third season of “The Bear.”
Not that it started particularly strong.
Premiering with “Tomorrow,” the season’s first episode had me concerned with an approach that felt unmoored, the impression more music video over narrative, with perspective kept on imagery of past events gone over again, and again, back and forth, over a timeline that felt a bit too gooey-eyed and in awe of its own exploits.
Though beautiful, this was a bit frustrating, and my desire remained to get going with what was happening to characters I’d missed for a while.
Thankfully, the second episode, “Next,” brought a quick return to form, with first-season-levels of screaming and stress and conflict back at full bore, ending strong with Team Bear uniting around a significant low point, a poignant formula for pulling the characters together into one positive goal, while getting the audience to feel a lot for everyone involved.
From here, Ayo Edebiri’s Sydney Adamu vaults and Jeremy White’s Carmy implodes.
Success is taken with all of its requisite receipts and pressures at a dizzying whirl, engaging at a pace that feels as feverish and addictive as the world that these characters have to be intoxicated by as well, since every problem seems to be more than clear to everyone involved, but walking away just isn’t in the cards.
Indeed, Carmy’s prowess and team are so respected and in-demand in the restaurant world that any member of the family could likely do very well for themselves elsewhere.
But it seems each character is bound to finding too much loyalty or fun or both venture out of the storm for sunnier, greener pastures. Straight-up masochism is a likely factor in play as well, in my opinion, since these are people in pain who are used to pain and might, like many of us, feel they deserve more of the same.
Naturally, this is tragic to see in anyone you care about, and the care the creators of “The Bear” instill in their characters is nothing short of masterful.
And I’ll say that the real highlight of season three comes with extra time spent with these people, and the new depths that come with breathing room expanded beyond Carmy and his family.
In these explorations of hard conditions and personal tragedies that come on strong, we see “The Bear” veering boldly into side hustles and characters that, though still very much of a piece, work to draw more concern as the stakes rise even higher for more people we learn to love.
Case in point, and to return to the low point in episode two: Lionel Boyce’s Marcus Brooks, fully owning an arc that sees a deep loss while growing his development as a pure artist.
With the fresh airtime he’s given, Brooks inspires with the free rein he’s given to show us a progression in nourishing and exploring his craft, made all the more impactful in the midst of mourning a foundational loss.
And, in the signature ruthlessness of the industry he is in, the end of the season puts Brooks on a career-defining chopping block.
As the season progresses, the cleaver hovers above him.
It might drop.
We keep watching.
Mercy might win.
We keep watching.
And, like much of the season, certainty abstains from stepping into this region of the territory.
More on the season’s hard pass on resolution in a minute.
But first, more bouquets to Liza Colon-Zayas’ Tina Marrero, a character we know and love and, in an episode all her own, she absolutely, searingly devours the assignment.
Grappling with capitalism’s inherent brutality, we watch Marrero stare down the dire possibility of aging out of a system that has no need for anyone without a select few abilities, and far fewer niches.
Marrero does everything she can to meet the rules of a game that is, ultimately, one as lethal as it is indifferent to the players.
Throughout the episode, we wake up and lay awake with her, walk vacant streets and enter sterile, less-than-welcoming lobbies with Marrero, haunted as she is by the search and tumble and lottery that is the job hunt, immersed in an atmosphere anxious and abuzz with items ordained by door-keepers half her age, side characters who have to be embroiled in their own desperate holds on employment, but can’t be troubled to inform applicants on how to do likewise, or when, or where.
A surprise visit, but surprising no one with another remarkable performance, Jon Bernthal’s Mikey nails his vital role in the helping hand he lends Marrero’s journey in this episode. His ultimate fate weighs even heavier for the love he shows and gets from those around him, including the audience, as even more complexity is heaped onto the character with this appearance.
In turn, getting to visit the Beef world pre-Bear is a thrill as well, giving us one of the best episodes so far in the series, and a personal favorite of the season.
That said, season three does not aim for anything as catastrophic as “Fishes” in the second season.
This feels like a choice, and it’s a smart strategy, with discernment well-placed when the popular and easy default is to aim for spectacle at higher volume to one-up previous efforts.
But, as with any new entry in a series, be it artwork, sporting events, political campaigns, etc., one has to answer an authentic “why?”
If the answer is to increase one’s popularity or viewership, profit has taken the wheel.
Which is what it is. Guaranteeing quality, it does not.
For “The Bear,” this choice would likely compromise the character-driven greatness this season, and the franchise as a whole, has delivered so well.
Another strong example of solid priorities on character comes with Joel McHale’s David Field, a villain of one of the most effective and worst types: a success, atop a self-justified master of his craft.
The if-then rationale at play is as fascinating as it is sadly common. Owning his place at the top of his industry, the logic he promulgates to Carmy is one that, in his eyes, gives him ammunition to deduce that his approach of brutality and dehumanization is am effective tool.
He is as free to fire these shots as he pleases. Many get away with it.
But is one choice among many, many more, including higher and more effective calls to respect and encourage the best in others, which in turn betters oneself as a result and in practice.
Field’s motivation, by will or stupidity or both, misses this self-awareness.
And to see Carmy confronting Field, in essence the launch point of so much pain in his life, is to see a man who is at least as myopic as his bully. In this moment, he is desperate, unequipped to respond, and ultimately reflects the same myopic state as McHale reveals a character that is as consistent as he is awful.
When Carmy demands justification or at least explanation for how horribly Field treats people, Field works a routine of mental gymnastics that, interestingly, makes for a fine definition of capitalism and bullying itself: if monetary and/or career-based success results from being awful, then what’s the problem?
Well, being a good person is better.
If we’re paying any attention to anything worthwhile, it is obvious that the strategy of abuse as a teaching instrument leaves no violence off the table.
And “The Bear” underlines this case in a way wonderfully indirect, gifting us with Olivia Colman’s (absolutely no weak links in the casting game) Chef Andrea Terry, who guides with an expertise that is very direct and positive.
She is without softness, sure, but is never less than deferent, sharpening the talent around her with her own edginess, and opening perspectives and technique among everyone she works with in her kitchen.
With all of these strengths in play, in the end season three doesn’t lend satisfaction to its storylines.
To be sure, the best things make us want more, and the creators behind this season slam doors shut on parties and fires and kitchens we want to open again soon, as soon as possible, please.
Still, the ride getting to the end of the penultimate “Forever” absolutely rocked.
Season 3 of “The Bear” was not subtle, but the focus put on meditation and exploration of character and principles was, for me, as strong and brave a choice as any the series has made.
The lack of closure we get on pretty much every conflict our characters are going through seems to be its own comment on the pressures that go along with the world of “The Bear,” which is our world, too.
Like them, we see much in free fall, critical matters that need answers, but are still falling, wavering in chaos before landing in one place or another.
We anticipate where things will go next, constantly.
And I have a hunch “The Bear” is going to keep going to great places.
*I’m old enough to fondly recall when this was the only way anything was watched, when you would set up the VCR to record on a new video cassette or tape over an old one with the movie or show you would miss otherwise, and then rewatch it, over and over, with the distinct pleasure of getting to fast-forward through commercials, which wasn’t available during live viewing, oh, the 90s.