The Radical Reinvention of 'The Bear'

The second season of Hulu’s hit show explores its ensemble’s ability to embrace change, to profound effect.

FX

This article contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of The Bear.

Silence can be rare on a show like The Bear. The hit dramedy about the staff of a beloved Chicago Italian-beef-sandwich spot runs on the pitter-patter of overlapping dialogue, immersing viewers in the stressful reality of working inside a kitchen. In such an intense space, dishes fall apart, egos clash, and bodies collide. Fires must be put out, literally and figuratively, all the time.

In a scene from the second episode of Season 2, which began streaming today on Hulu, the wunderkind chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (played by Jeremy Allen White), who inherited the restaurant from his late brother at the start of the show, teaches his sous chef, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), a gesture to cope in those times of tumult. After overreacting to a failed dish the pair had tried to perfect, he balls his right hand into a fist and draws circles over his heart. In sign language, the motion means “I’m sorry”; in the kitchen, Carmy uses it to convey something akin to a promise to listen and do better. “Two of my old chefs used to do it,” he explains. “You know, if they were angry, fighting on the line, it helped. It was, like, their version of ‘Let’s talk about this later.’ It didn’t matter if one tore the other one apart. It always got them through service.”

The signal is thrown up again and again as Carmy and Sydney follow through on their vision to transform the Original Beef of Chicagoland into The Bear, a would-be fine-dining establishment. The renovations lead to a radically changed show, one that is far more ambitious in scope. For much of the second season, members of the FX series’ ensemble are flung off into their own subplots. One episode takes place in Europe; another, at an Alinea-like restaurant. Carmy begins dating his high-school crush, Claire (Molly Gordon). And prolific guest stars abound: Oscar winners, A-list comics, local culinary stars.

Moving The Bear, a show widely praised for depicting life inside the kitchen, to the world beyond is risky—yet the result is a rich and profound reminder that a workplace is not a home, and an occupation is not a personality. In its first season, The Bear focused on the clash between tradition and modernity, as Carmy, with his history of working at Michelin-starred restaurants, installed a strict “brigade” system at the Beef, to the consternation of its veteran cooks. This season, the staff’s shared goals allow the show to probe their inner lives more acutely, and raise a flurry of introspective questions. Why do they continue to do a job that tends to bring them more despair than joy? What do they believe in about their work and themselves? Unlike so many prestige projects, The Bear pivots away from merely examining the bleak and toxic power struggles that occur within a hierarchical industry. Across its second season, it views its characters with empathy, exploring how they learn to adapt, communicate, and depend on one another to build something truly new.

For most of the team, that means stepping out of their comfort zones. Line cooks Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) attend culinary school, while pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) heads to Copenhagen to shadow a former colleague of Carmy’s. “Cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the crew’s enfant terrible, spends a week working a stage (an internship, essentially) at a fancy restaurant. Sydney goes on a tasting tour through Chicago to reset her palate. An optimistic buoyancy courses through these scenes, but The Bear also takes care to show how disorienting the learning process can be. Frenetic camerawork accompanies the breakthroughs: When Sydney is inspired to create a new dish, a montage shows an empty plate filling up with the appropriate ingredients. When Richie begins to appreciate his staging work, his days seem to quicken, leading to my favorite needle drop on TV this year so far. But when these unfamiliar experiences yield dead ends, the pace slows. In a wordless scene in Episode 5, Ebraheim sits alone by the lake, unable to head back to class, where he feels his skills can’t compare to those of his much younger classmates. The thrill of discovery, the show suggests, never seems to last as long as the crush of defeat.

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Among the characters, doubt clings most stubbornly to Carmy, and The Bear takes its biggest swing this season with a flashback episode about his family. “Fishes” follows the Berzattos as they gather at Christmastime, during which Carmy’s mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), oversees the kind of kitchen that would give Gordon Ramsay nightmares. The installment runs more than an hour long and features an ensemble of recognizable faces, but it never feels bloated or overindulgent: It’s precise in capturing how Donna’s fears over her abilities to parent her children have calcified into a misguided belief that no one cares for her. Like “Review,” the much-lauded one-take episode showing the Beef’s kitchen in real time in Season 1, “Fishes” is propulsive, claustrophobic, and essential to understanding Carmy’s self-destructive tendencies. He grew up in a household in which love was expressed through food, made by a mother whose affection otherwise manifested as cruelty and disaster.

No wonder that, in the present, he never seems to believe that his relationship with Claire can work. As idyllic as it seems—their initial reunion this season is so sweet, it could cause a toothache—Carmy struggles to strike a balance between his devotion to the restaurant and his love life. By the season finale, his anxiety leads him to conclude that any failure, personal or professional, comes from him. Though he’s motivated the staff to get the Bear off the ground with him, he reserves little faith for himself.

Yet the pleasure of watching The Bear comes from how it doesn’t let Carmy off the hook. The show portrays Carmy’s convictions as narrow-minded but deeply human, surrounding him with characters who are on similar journeys to move beyond their preconceived notions of themselves. Some, like Richie, evolve. Others, like Carmy’s sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott), hesitate to take the next step. But all rely on one another for guidance—a truth that the show suggests Carmy knows subconsciously. During a panic attack, he cycles through images of Claire, of his family, and then finally of Sydney arriving at the Beef in the first season, wanting to learn from him. Their refreshingly platonic relationship, a source of tension and revelation, is a grounding force for the show, keeping it from ever coming off too trite or saccharine. Instead, The Bear remains a remarkably confident study of growth, treating its characters with a tender generosity as they mature. It’s a fist held over a heart, drawing a circle, reminding its viewers that in time, clarity can come from chaos.