Table Talk: The Bear Season 3
Anton: I watched The Bear Season 3 over the summer, and I thought it was so artistically complex that we needed to talk about it for the site.
I also want to address some of the complaints about Season 3 I see going around, summed up pretty well by Nicole Gallucci at Decider. Basically, it seems that critics and audiences are no longer in love with the show that won them over with Season 1 and scored big at the Emmys. In real life, I know fans of the earlier seasons who were left cold by Season 3.
Talking about these negative reactions to Season 3 is important because I think many of the complaints about the latest season articulate the state of streaming TV and audience expectations. With Season 3, I see creator Christopher Storer trying to push the envelope of what is acceptable storytelling and editing for TV. It would seem that in spite of all the talk about how streaming has allowed all kinds of shows to flourish and claims that TV can be just as creative as cinema, the medium still seems to be very much trapped by the conventions of mass entertainment as well as marketing-cultivated audience expectations about “watchability” and “bingeability.” In short, I admire Season 3’s refusal to go with the flow of streaming today.
Anders, what’s your take on the show thus far? You came to the show later than 2022, right? What did you think about Season 3 and its relationship to the earlier seasons?
Anders: Yes, I watched the first half of the first season back when it first debuted on Disney+, but then realized it was something I needed to share with my wife. We just didn’t get around to watching Season 1 and Season 2 until this past winter. Thus, my relationship to the show is less shaped by the critical discourse and fan responses than if I had been watching along with the rest of the critical community from the beginning.
And honestly, it’s for the best, I think. For all the ways that Season 1 and 2 seemed to speak to the critical musts of the moment—a diverse cast, characters dealing with trauma, etc.—I think that reactions to Season 3 show that people might just not have understood what exactly Storer is trying to do with this show.
Anton: I agree. Some of the reactions out there point to what kept me from immediately checking out The Bear when I saw the initial waves of praise in 2022: I was worried the show was another Ted Lasso, a comedy-drama series with a veneer of psychological depth over its sitcom humour that targets all “the feels” of the audience.
(Side note: I admit to, and don’t regret, liking Season 1 of Ted Lasso, but as it went on it revealed itself to be cheaper and more emotionally manipulative than its tinges of authenticity had suggested.)
Both shows are notable for being pretty generous to most of the characters (Ted Lasso became noticeably less generous to everyone as it went on). But The Bear is not Ted Lasso in the kitchen, and Season 3 shows that it’s not really a show just about the challenges of starting a new restaurant in Chicago. What makes The Bear great cannot be summed in a short plot description.
Anders: Comments that identify a lack of “narrative progression” as the problem with Season 3 imply that television is still simply a serial vehicle for storytelling, rather than “cinematic art” in the larger sense. Now, I understand that serialization is the name of the game, for industry folks and fans alike, but to me that also would mean that television is inherently limited as a medium for exploring the human experience. And while I think sometimes Storer is a bit too fancy with the needle drops and crisp cinematography, he’s actually trying to make something that will survive past the unveiling of narrative novelty.
Anton: Exactly. Season 3 shows that Storer has legitimate artistic ambitions. The goal isn’t simply to move the viewer through the episode (and thus capture their screen time).
Anders: Honestly, and coming from me this is big praise, I think The Bear is closer to something like Mad Men in its characterizations and deep sympathy for its characters, born not out of their talismanic identities but out of a desire to see them fleshed out as realistic characters. I’m not sure the show always perfectly succeeds, but I think that Season 3 shows that this is the goal of the show.
Anton: Well put. It’s definitely more Mad Men than Ted Lasso. Think about how, as Mad Men developed, certain episodes veered away from trying to please in a conventional narrative sense. With Mad Men, Matthew Weiner not only generously fleshed out the different supporting characters, but he also dug deep into the psychological make-up and personal history of his central character. Who is Don Draper? Who is Chef Carmy Berzatto? What makes these striking protagonists tick? They are men with potential greatness as well as intense flaws and emotional baggage, and we get to know them as full and varied human beings. They are like the protagonist in a good novel.
And remember, Anders, Mad Men is the king of needle drops. Ahem, “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
Anders: Oh man, that might be among the greatest uses of a pop song on television, along with The Sopranos and “Don’t Stop Believin’”!
Anton, you commented to me in a real-life conversation on the first episode of Season 3, “Tomorrow,” and how it achieves a nearly “Malickian” whorl of memory in its elliptical editing and doling out of information. That’s a great example you could expand on.
Anton: In case anyone doesn’t get the reference, I’m talking about the films of Terrence Malick—who made Days of Heaven (1978) and The Tree of Life (2011), among other works— whose lyrical style uses cross-cutting beyond its basic narrative function. Sometimes, Malick moves so far away from conventional narration that he alienates most viewers, such as with To the Wonder (2012) or Knight of Cups (2015). Both of these films I quite admire.
Anyways, Christopher Storer writes and directs the first episode of Season 3, “Tomorrow,” which almost has no plot in a conventional sense. Instead, he intercuts different periods in Carmy’s life, not just moving back and forth between conventionally constructed scenes but also between moments, images, memories. This is where the Malick connections deepen, as the editing starts to incorporate patterns and rhythms and then what’s being achieved is not simply narrative advancement—we aren’t getting more information, per se. Instead, new connections are being formed—parallels, comparisons, contrasts—and so our understanding of what we know starts to change. We see moments of joy that Carmy holds on to, and moments of pain that haunt him. All of these key shots are repeated in the final episodes to underscore the key themes in the season, such as how Carmy has, in ways, become the chef he feared and hated, but also how cooking, as an act of service, can give joy to other people.
Anders: I would also point to a less formally daring but just as important example of how the show resists the kinds of cheap characterization I criticized above, and how it resists using out of character moments for plot contrivances or to score easy points with the audience. In Episode 8, “Ice Chips,” directed by Storer himself, we don’t see Carmy and instead focus on Natalie’s birth experience and her troubled relationship with her mother, played once again with a heart wrenching mix of pathos and bathos by Jamie Lee Curtis. The episode eschews the most obvious tragedy—my wife and I both were on tenterhooks in fear that Donna wouldn’t call Natalie’s husband Pete—but in the end the episode resists a full or unearned resolution. Nevertheless, small steps are made by the characters. For me, that shows Storer's willingness to take a real risk in terms of storytelling and characterization.
Anton: Yes, that’s a great example of how this season rarely takes the cheap or easy way out. Storer also seems to be saving resolution for Season 4. But how much will we get even then?
Anders: Ultimately, I can see how this season seems to spin its wheels a bit—I’ve heard that Storer only wanted to do three seasons, but Disney asked for four when it became a hit.
Anton: I could see this season originally being half of a season expanded, filled in with a few episodes focusing on supporting characters.
Anders: Honestly, for me, one of my favourite things about Season 3 is the opportunities to hang with these characters and delve into their pasts. One such example is in the episode “Napkins,” which features a flashback focused on Tina and how she met Michael originally and started working at The Beef. The final conversation is a showstopper that verges on becoming overly poetic and theatrical, but is a stand out for me in the whole season. We finally get a glimpse of why everyone loved the brother.
Anton: To end things off, I think we shouldn’t forget to discuss some of the performances, as the acting does a lot to make the show work. While fan favourite Richie, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, still has some nice moments in Season 3, his character isn’t allowed to really progress beyond what we saw happening and changing in Season 2. Honestly, the lack of Richie might factor in for a lot of fans’ disappointment.
At the same time, that extra moment with Jon Bernthal was great. I continue to enjoy Oliver Platt’s Uncle Jimmy and I liked the new side character, Computer, played by Brian Koppelman, who is Jimmy’s no-nonsense numbers guy. It was also nice to bring Will Poulter’s Chef Luca, a friend of Carmy from Copenhagen, to Chicago. Man, there are so many little performances I enjoy.
Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy and Ayo Edebiri’s Sydney continue to have great chemistry, or should I say, anti-chemistry. Edebiri’s way she scrunches her face and holds back what she wants to say is a perfect visual contrast to the intense staring and relative silence of White’s Carmy in this season. We can see and feel the tension between them and the stalled relationship.
I personally also loved the little jokes about “haunting” that the Fak family is always discussing. For me, there weren’t too many scenes with the Faks. It’s also a humorous device to comment on the way that those around us can really get under our skin, such as the way that Joel McHale’s Chef still haunts Carmy. And Anders, you must have appreciated the cameo.
Anders: Oh yes, having John Cena as Sammy Fak offered some of the best laughs of the season and confirmed Cena’s great comedic sense. The show really offers a wealth of acting talent and enjoyable characters. Of course, ending the season at the “funeral,” or final seating, for the restaurant of Olivia Colman’s Chef Terry is really kind of perfect, providing a natural way of bringing the various characters together.
Anton: It was enjoyable to just hear the different chefs chatting about their philosophies of the kitchen around the table at the party.
Anders: So, clearly we disagree with the critical consensus. Like a great restaurant itself, The Bear seems to be challenging viewer’s palates, asking us to go beyond just the pleasures of consumption (or serialization) and appreciate some of the smaller things that go into great art.
The Bear, Season 3 (2024, USA)
Created by Christopher Storer; starring Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, Abby Elliott, and Matty Matheson.
