“You did this,” Donna Berzatto (Jamie Lee Curtis) kvells to her daughter Natalie (Abby Elliott), offering praise in the middle of a particularly stressful day. (Though in this family, all days are stressful days.) She’s referring to the restaurant that bears — pun intended — a shortened version of their family name, and which serves as the namesake of the FX drama “The Bear.” It’s a full circle moment for this fraught mother-daughter relationship: a sign of how far Donna has come in performing basic parental tasks like expressing pride in her children’s accomplishments, and a reminder to take a beat and admire what the Berzattos are typically too overwhelmed to appreciate. Natalie accepts the compliment, but also corrects it: “We all did this,” she says.
The acknowledgement is long overdue, and comes just under the wire. For two seasons, “The Bear” has all but abandoned its supporting cast to spend long stretches wallowing in the trauma-borne misery of Natalie’s brother Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), the brilliant and ambitious chef who took over the family sandwich shop after eldest Berzatto child Mikey (Jon Bernthal) died by suicide and transformed it into a fine dining restaurant. Natalie’s statement isn’t quite a mea culpa, but it is a noted adjustment from “The Bear”’s prior M.O. And it comes just as “The Bear” prepares to close up shop for good.
This creative slump, which was reflected in a complete shutout from last year’s Emmy wins, was baffling in part because the choices that produced it ran directly counter to the show’s own themes. Carmy invested in Mikey’s employees by retraining them instead of hiring new staff — so “The Bear” ignored those characters in favor of flashy cameos by famous actors and real-life chefs. Countdown clocks and mantras like “every second counts” put a rigorous emphasis on time and pace — so “The Bear” squandered any sense of momentum by drifting along in an aimless malaise. Carmy struggled to break the cycle of abuse he learned from both family and past mentors — so “The Bear” reinforced his narcissism by putting his feelings first, even at the expense of more interesting players like his collaborator Sydney (Ayo Edebiri).
Season 4 at least culminated in a promising development: Carmy decided to step away from The Bear, bequeathing the restaurant to a three-way partnership of Natalie, Sydney and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Mikey’s best friend turned feverishly devoted front of house manager. This twist was followed by the unsurprising — and frankly, not unwelcome — announcement that Season 5 would be the series’ last. Practically, the schedules of the increasingly in-demand stars could only align for so long between Marvel tentpoles and Broadway stints. Emotionally, “The Bear” had already spent down much of the audience’s goodwill from its first two installments; the remainder might buy one last chance to wrap up the story, but not much more.
In the end, “The Bear” can’t let Carmy go entirely. To keep him around, in fact, creator Christopher Storer slows down time. Season 5 picks up almost exactly where Season 4 left off, and its eight episodes — reduced slightly from the previously standard 10 — play out over the course of a single day, tracing the build-up to and duration of a single, fateful dinner service. (Critics were shown all episodes apart from the series finale in advance.) This means the season also takes place in the narrow space between Carmy announcing his intention to leave and actually leaving. The protagonist of “The Bear” is still there; he’s just a ghost in his own kitchen, unsure of what to do with himself as he attempts to pass the baton. Ironically, this is also the most sure “The Bear” has felt of what to do with its albatross of a main character in some time.
Carmy’s imminent departure isn’t the only existential threat looming over The Bear. It’s the restaurant’s first night of operation since the deadline imposed by chief investor Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) for the restaurant to fund itself, and the place is hardly any closer to turning a profit. An epic rainstorm is battering Chicago, putting deliveries and reservations in jeopardy. The plumbing is acting up. The booking system is on the fritz. As previewed in “Gary,” the standalone flashback episode released last month, Richie gets in a car accident on the way into work. Just as each season of “The Pitt” focuses on a particularly hellacious day in the ER, Murphy’s Law proves a productive story engine.
The structure of Season 5 is not without its drawbacks. A side plot that sees Uncle Jimmy, his number-crunching colleague Computer (Brian Koppelman) and their new, much younger sidekick Cheese (Elsie Fisher) drive around Chicago in a desperate search for a new revenue stream comes off as both tangential and artificially compressed to match the season’s concept. That the entire storyline relies on the trio’s ignorance of Ebra’s (Edwin Lee Gibson) proposal to franchise The Bear’s more casual beef sandwich window — and plays out while Ebra gets little to do during this nightmare shift except keep watch over the silverware — proves the show’s issue with serving its whole ensemble equally remain at least partially in place. And on a series where repetition is already an issue, blowing out the premise of Season 1’s 20-minute, mostly single-take episode “Review” into an entire season risks spreading an already stretched concept too thin.
But evoking Season 1 also accurately forecasts a partial return to form. “The Bear” broke out with a rigorous focus on the kitchen, introducing the audience to an insular world’s rhythms and norms. Season 5 restores that emphasis, excising much of the extra weight that bogged it down. Flashy guest stars are nearly nonexistent; hourlong detours, like last season’s wedding-set “Bears,” have been excised; Claire (Molly Gordon), Carmy’s one that got away, is nowhere to be seen. (Gordon is a skilled actor, but Carmy’s love life was never where “The Bear” did its best work.) The final act of “The Bear” is not, in the strictest sense of the term, a bottle season — there are other locations besides the restaurant, though they’re sparingly used. In spirit, however, the last hours of “The Bear” are about The Bear and pretty much only The Bear, which is as it should be.
By returning to its core characters and throwing them into the fray, “The Bear” is able to re-sync the style and substance that became so unmoored at its nadir. Rather than absorbing the agony and ecstasy of restaurants through glimpses of Carmy’s time at Noma, we get Natalie explaining that The Bear can’t afford to close for the storm, a handy illustration of the Catch-22 facing so many hospitality workers. Rather than Sydney endlessly mulling whether she’s ready to strike out on her own, we get Carmy’s former sous actually testing her ability to be a better, calmer leader than her soon-to-be-ex-boss in some of the toughest possible circumstances. Rather than Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) plating pasta or Marcus (Lionel Boyce) toying around in R&D, we get both budding chefs ditching the sidelines and joining the fight to stretch a finite food supply into a luxury experience. Even Natalie gets on the line.
This unity of purpose is amplified by a newly uniform soundscape. In lieu of Pearl Jam, Wilco and other ‘90s rock standards, a pounding electronic score by Hans Zimmer provides the music. (Zimmer is evidently the composer of choice for once-red-hot, now diminished TV shows aiming to go out on a high note.) The heart-pounding, Reznoresque theme instills a sense of urgency in the viewer to match that of the kitchen crew.
Even an unqualified triumph might not be enough to restore “The Bear” to its former level of acclaim, and Season 5 is not exactly that. The show continues to lean on its preferred crutches: catchphrases like Mikey’s old adage “let it rip,” clichés about the redemptive power of feeding others and a cloying sentimentality that started to grate once the spell wore off. But for those who’ve stuck with “The Bear” through its low point — and anecdotally, I know many one-time fans who have not — these final episodes may cement a memory of the show that’s more than its worst moments. Like Carmy’s effort to make his final act at The Bear an example of the humility he otherwise lacked, “The Bear” seems aware that last impressions are what can lock in a legacy. “The Bear” can’t fully shake off two full seasons of subpar storytelling, but at least it can improve while it’s still around.
All eight episodes of “The Bear” Season 5 will be available to stream on Hulu on June 25 at 9pm ET, with episodes airing weekly on Thursdays on FX.
Leave a Reply