by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
The critically acclaimed series The Bear has returned for its highly anticipated fourth season to nearly everyone’s excitement. It brings our favorite culinary crew back for more drama, intense clock racing, and exquisite dishes that make even me — the pickiest eater I know — want to break from my safe place and try these exotic dishes.
Season Four picks up almost exactly where Season Three left us, with the crew waiting patiently for the Chicago Tribune to post their review of their restaurant, leaving everyone in their tensest state since opening night. It’s revealed that the review, while still praising the restaurant, calls the establishment messy, unorganized, and chaotic, to paraphrase. This sends Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) into a mental tailspin of guilt, feeling like his choices of constantly changing the menu and having no consistency buried The Bear’s chances of becoming great. This prompts Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) and his business partner known as The Computer to enter the kitchen with a countdown clock for three months, and preemptively tell the entire team that when that clock strikes zero, they either need to be in the green or the restaurant must close, and Jimmy will sell the entire property to recoup is initial investment.
As dour as that may sound, this season becomes way more fun than the season before. A lot of the criticism from Season Three was about the fact that it felt chaotic, even though I felt like that was the intention. We saw the chaos because that’s what Carmy was introducing us to. The chaos of his menu changing constantly, the restaurant finding its groove, and the different stories intermingling and coming to a head in this period of change. So if that Season Three was chaos, Season Four is the ensuing calm, because the story is far more concise.
A lot of it has to do with Carmy’s changed attitude post-review. He finds himself coming to terms with his poor decision-making, becoming more open to ideas that others bring to him, and even facing his demons that have been weighing on him for his entire life. It makes for a much more positive journey, and even brings back Season Two’s spark of happiness. But not everyone is finding peace in their decisions; Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) grapples with her struggle to tell Carmy about her plans to leave The Bear. It’s a problem she faces the entire season, and she obtains advice from the most unlikely sources.
This season also brings a lot of heart back into the show. Two episodes in particular bring the characters closer to people than they’ve been before, one of which takes the Season Two episode “Forks” and gives it a much more positive vibe, ending in one of TV’s most heartwarming ways in recent memory. Various episodes also bring back the familial characters from “Forks,” even giving us a surprise celebrity appearance, the same way John Cena surprised us in Season Three when he appeared as a Fak sibling.
Another couple of aspects of the show that I have loved since the beginning are its use of music and the scenery of the Windy City. The Bear’s soundtrack is outstanding, blending lesser-known music with that of more popular artists, like Oasis, Led Zeppelin, St. Vincent, R.E.M., Van Morrison, Pearl Jam, and Wilco. But mixed in with the stellar music choices is the way the show is perfectly overlayed immaculate cinematography of Chicago. With it being my hometown and happy place, this an aspect of the show I genuinely appreciate above most others. It encapsulates the city’s culture, the love people have for it, so much so that I often find myself venturing around Chicago to spots like where Mr. Beef is located, in tandem with listening to the music from the show — it makes everything feel so special.
As Season Four has come to a close, I do wonder about the future of The Bear, not just the show, but the restaurant itself, and the staff that manage and uphold it. With nearly every actor in the series becoming a huge name in the industry, and with White gearing up for a potential Oscar run playing Bruce Springsteen later this year, Ebon Moss-Bachrach joining the MCU as a member of the Fantastic Four, and even Edebiri gaining notoriety and rising through the ranks in Hollywood, not just as an actor but a writer and director, I think it is going to be tough for these actors to commit to more than one more season of this fantastic show. But despite that, The Bear continues to wow me with its character work, intense plot, and its smaller creative choices, and I stand by what I have said in the past about this show: There’s nothing quite like it.
Rating: Loved It
The Bear is currently streaming on Hulu
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