REVIEW: A beginning and possibly an end in sight with 'The Bear' Season 4
FX’s culinary dramedy The Bear has always had viewers on the edge of their seats. It shouldn’t even be called a dramedy, rather it really ought to be on the same genre of soul-crushing and gut-wrenching laughs of the movie Whiplash with pressure creating laughter.
Bingeing a series this stressful and within less than two days should also come with its own medical warning. That said, it was a real pleasure to experience the highs and lows, to see how series creator Christopher Storer and cohorts would top their performance in Season 3 that’s been feted with so many Golden Globes and Emmys.
It’s a good thing Season 4 does not disappoint.
Up front, like the saying in Chicagoland restos go, there will be more Faks than you can handle. The family with the phlegmatic disposition and loud affections is like the narrative mascot of the series. More caricature Chicagoans than actual people. These creatures of the city are emblematic of the kind of folks that orbit around the Berzattos, that make them walking dysfunctions.
The arc of the series is almost too neatly summed up in Episode 5, with a plant-watering anecdote.
One of Chef Carmy’s sobriety buddies relates a story about her brother who is hyper-focused on one task to the utter chaos and harm of everything else. She asked him to remember to water the plants while she was away for a few days. She then came home to a thrashed house with druggies everywhere. But the brother reassures her: “Don’t worry. I watered the plants!”
Translation? Everything in your life can be a mess as long as you focus on doing beautiful work. Later on, Carmy seconds this metaphor of showing by telling someone directly that "Outside of the kitchen, I don't know what I'm like."
In the previous season, we saw how birthing The Bear took everything out of Chef Carmen Berzatto, including blowing up his life and any promising relationship with Claire. When Season 4 opens, a bad review in the “Chicago Tribune” (citing “culinary dissonance”) sets them back, letting everyone know how much the symptoms within are now visible signs to customers and critics.
To be fair, Carmy has had his pride in the high winds. He’s been changing the menu every day and his ego has become so out of control that even the customers know it. Plus, they’re bleeding money. The stakes are now high as they come now that there’s just a bit under seven months of financial runway to curtains.
Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), their main financial backer, has this deadline concretized by their accountant The Computer, who installs a clock with days, hours, minutes, and seconds counting down to D-Day. Or C-Day. As in cease operations. This clock, like the ghost of Carmy’s brother Mikey (John Bernthal), is very much a felt presence throughout the season, exerting an anxious force on all characters.
This notion of how the whole thing can just come crashing down even with the best restaurants was beautifully set up in Season 3, when Chef Andrea Terry (Olivia Coleman) retired, shutting down Ever. It juxtaposes how real a fall from this cliff of no return is, how death's scythe is always just a swing away in an industry where there’s a 60% rate of fail within the first year.
Why Chef Terry closed Ever is one of the most discussed things on forums. I am in the camp that it was basically a decision with deeply personal reasons. That because it was definitively her own, from the menu right down to the décor, and because she no longer wanted to be at the head of all these and neither did she wish to pass on the baton to someone else, she would rather end it on her own terms. That the idea of retirement is possible but also eminently feasible is what she conveyed to Carmy on their curbside talk in the previous season.
Now though, the quest to both thrive as a business and to get two Michelin stars is on for The Bear. The season is all about breathing life into various storylines and everyone gets their fair shake.
We saw that Chef Sydney (Ayo Edibiri) wanted to leave for another resto in the previous season. Her character has always been indecisive and until now she’s still mulling over whether to sign her partnership paperwork at The Bear or to jump ship to be at the head of Chef Adam’s (Adam Shapiro) new resto. Trying to figure out how to explain her situ comes to a head when she hangs out with Chantal, her hairdresser (also her cousin). She ends up babysitting Chantal’s pre-teen and it’s a gem of a scene where vidoegame metaphors come into play as she articulates her own mind.
In the meantime, Richie Jerimovich and his ex-wife, Tiffany, are deep into their separation but she's getting married to Frank (Josh Hartnett) and he’s invited. In fact, what might be this season’s “Fishes” analog comes to a head on Episode 7 (which incidentally runs to 70 minutes) when Tiff and Frank get married. Imagine the inevitable collision of Berzattos and ancillary families. Imagine the emotional catastrophe. You can bet your viewing pleasure that new faces and old grudges will come to fore. One of the cousins quips: "There is no warning that will sum up what this is going to be" and this dire note rings oh so true.
Speaking of old faces coming back, Richie has also hired his ex-colleagues from Ever to help out with the service crew—including Jessica (Sarah Ramos). Plus, the return of Will Poulter as Chef Luca working stage on dessert duty adds a cool dynamic, a robust, genteel Euro vibe to the team. All while Marcus Brooks (Lionel Boyce) struggles with his absentee father who wants back in his life, now that his mother has passed.
One of the more interesting arcs is how the sandwich takeout counter is thriving, in direct opposition to how the fine dining component is floundering. Ebrahim (Edwin Lee Gibson) has a tight crew but wants to upskill the takeout infra, to “create opportunity” within the two-hour window of lunch service. He brings in a consultant to help optimization and possibly expansion in the person of financial and productivity consultant Albert (Rob Reiner) and—of all things—an automated AI robot for nearby deliveries. The robot’s name is Chuck and he is just killing it.
Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto (Abby Elliot) whom we saw as very pregnant in Season 3, finally gives birth to Sofie, while Sweeps, their resident sommelier, is having trouble getting his vintages straight and turns to the Faks for help. Ted and Neil are happy to oblige and I must note that real-life Chef Matty Matheson (who plays Neil and is a producer on the show) is really coming into his own as a character actor.
By now it’s an open secret that Storer modelled the lead role of Carmy and the restaurant after legendary Chicago Chef Curtis Duffy. Duffy was behind one of the first three Michelin star restaurants in Chicago called Grace. He’s well known for his dour and intense personality and how the death of his father by suicide eventually led to Duffy becoming such a madman in the kitchen. It was a way for him to stop running, to exorcise his demons.
Season 4 is all about confronting these devils that plague you. Whether it’s Sydney’s indecision and wishy washiness, Ebrahim’s shrinking violet response to pressure, or even Tina’s frustrations at her own limits, we are treated to a front row seat of these uglies trying to get resolved into purgation.
Episode 9 is a particularly powerful one where Carmy chooses to stay and battle his issues instead of walking out. Also, that Tina's rise from cook who can barely make a sandwich to elite level fine dining cook is one of the best, most satisfying arcs on here.
Like the restaurant’s operations itself, there is an incredible amount of overlapping details, from the montages of ingredients to how they inform and complement the nuanced interactions between characters who normally never have moments together. It’s this attention to detail that adds up and eventually affects crucial, intense, and high stakes moments for The Bear.
Mikey's ghost hovers above all of this, haunting the Berzattos, the Faks, the Jerimoviches, and all their cronies. The dead former owner is their Holy Ghost. An apparition to be conjured at times of trouble and a talisman to put your faith in when you are plagued by doubt. He is both immaculate ideal of the good ole bad old days and a cautionary figure of what happens if you stray too far off the straight and narrow.
Episode 10 will be a shock and a triumph to any longtime fans and viewers. It’s the kind of denouement that will rock you to your core but is arguably an outcome that just had to happen this way. It's a season finale that has been percolating since the first season. It has finally come to a boil and ready to explode, maybe for the last time.
It is, as you can imagine, a most stressful and perhaps final high note in what’s been an incredible run of tears and laughter. Don’t flinch but chew on all of it before you swallow.
Watch all seasons of The Bear on Disney+.
