It speaks volumes about the creative self-confidence of the makers that they didn’t start with a big bang after a break, but instead paused for a moment: exactly one year ago, the second season of the restaurant series “The Bear” aired and ended in a fiasco that left many questions unanswered. Over the course of ten episodes, head chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and his crew transformed the family barbecue joint in Chicago into an upscale restaurant, and encountered numerous crises and conflicts in the process. A loan taken out from Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) was supposed to finance the relaunch, while Carmy and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) worked together on the elaborate menu, supposedly on equal terms. But then Carmy was increasingly distracted by his rekindled childhood love for Claire (Molly Gordon). In the end, the newly designed restaurant, renamed “The Beef” to “The Bear”, was inaugurated with a dinner for family and friends. But without Carmy, who remained locked in the cold storage room and, full of self-doubt, complained loudly about how his relationship was preventing him from focusing on his calling. Claire heard this through the locked door and left the store in tears. Sydney’s panic attack and several missed calls to Marcus (Lionel Boyce), the pastry chef, who was worried about his mother’s health, provided further cliffhangers.
© FX/Disney
After a year, “The Bear,” one of the best series currently, is now entering its third round on Disney+. And showrunner Christopher Storer is taking his time to pick up the loose ends. Released from the cold, Carmy apologizes to Sydney for letting the team down and to Richie (Ebon Moss-Bacharach) for his outburst of anger, but large parts of the first episode are elliptical and almost dialogue-free flashbacks to Carmy’s training period. The conclusion that Carmy draws from all this is a list of “non-negotiable” points for the functioning of the restaurant. Among them: a new menu every day. This leads to clear opposition from the staff, ambitious and idiosyncratic as ever, and Carmy’s perfectionism soon leads to new excessive demands, humiliation and chaos, as feared. Above all, Carmy’s pregnant sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), who is responsible for finances, raises the alarm about the exploding costs.
While the first two seasons, which won numerous Emmys, were marked by upheavals and often set a dizzying pace, the new episodes repeatedly set retarding moments without losing any of their fascination. Even if there is no outstanding episode like “Pisces” a year ago, the series manages to create a delicately balanced menu of workplace drama with perfectly staged food porn, brilliantly written monologues and verbal battles, time loops and variations that delve further into the pasts of individual protagonists and thus weave an increasingly fine-grained network of motivations and neuroses, talents and traumas.
© FX/Disney
There is also a successful experiment on another level. Lead actress Ayo Edebiri moves behind the camera for the first time and directs an episode. In Napkins, the focus is on Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and her past as an unemployed person before she was hired by Mikey as a cook.
»The Bear« is also setting new standards in terms of the cast. The second season featured half a dozen guest stars, from John Mulaney to Sarah Paulson to Bob Odenkirk. Jamie Lee Curtis played the manic-depressive mother Donna and Olivia Colman the head chef of the fine dining restaurant »Ever«, who first takes Carmy and later Richie under her wing. The current season now offers a stage to real star chefs. In the flashbacks that tell of Carmy’s training in world-class restaurants, the chefs themselves appear: René Redzepi (»Noma«, Copenhagen) and Daniel Boulud (»Daniel«, New York) as well as Thomas Keller (»The French Laundry«, Napa Valley), who teaches Carmy how to prepare a chicken to star level.
© FX/Disney
The third round is more about the actual preparation of food, after the focus in the previous season was on the renovation of the restaurant. So back to the stove, where in numerous small moments “The Bear” becomes an elaborately produced tutorial for kitchen techniques and recipe ideas.
The series, a sustained cultural phenomenon since its U.S. premiere in summer 2022, has long since inspired countless online discourses, memes and Tiktok videos in which fans and amateur chefs comment on every detail, from Carmy’s perfectly fitting white T-shirts to the best place to buy Italian beef sandwiches to step-by-step instructions for Carmy’s chicken piccata.
Disney+ is now making all ten episodes available simultaneously from August 14. Whether all at once or in small portions: “The Bear” is a delight even in the third course. True fans watch several times anyway to savor all the nuances. And a second helping is already being prepared. Season 4 is set to start next year.
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