Put it on the specials board

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey
Reader Staff

Anyone who has worked in a restaurant should watch FX’s series The Bear. On the other hand, anyone who has worked in a restaurant maybe shouldn’t watch The Bear — or at least make sure they’re in a well-balanced mental state when they do.

Let me explain: As a part-time server since teenhood, I experienced a very physical reaction to parts of The Bear. This visceral feeling mounted and subsided throughout the eight-episode first season, now streaming on Hulu, which is set in a Chicago sandwich shop. 

One scene prompted me to actually hit pause and take a break from The Bear, during which the restaurant launches its online ordering system only to quickly learn that they forgot to turn off the pre-order option. This mistake, combined with a favorable review being printed in the newspaper that same day, results in orders for more food than the joint can possibly handle, let alone before expectant customers start lining up at the door.

Courtesy photo.

All hell breaks loose. Line cooks turn on one another. Frayed wits completely snap. The owner begins to scream a series of futile orders, telling his employees to fire food that isn’t even close to prepped. There may or may not be an accidental stabbing, and this all happens in a single camera shot.

This is the stuff of kitchen job nightmares, and the stuff of riveting television.

Billed as a comedy-drama, The Bear is only funny in the way that living a hard life can be when you make sure to surround yourself with people who are willing to laugh at it with you. It tells the story of Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Shameless’ Jeremy Allen White), who inherited his family’s sandwich business — The Original Beef of Chicagoland — after his brother, an alcoholic with whom Carmy had a strained relationship, committed suicide. 

Along with the brick and mortar, Carmy inherits a cast of disenchanted employees and resolves, with the help of young and driven sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), to put the place on the track to becoming a respectable establishment — a microcosm of the upscale restaurants where he has spent the past several years as a formally trained, award-winning chef.

The pair enact a French kitchen brigade system, and — not without growing pains —The Beef sees positive change. Along with this evolution is Carmy’s evolution from wounded black sheep to not-quite-healed-but-getting-there restaurant owner. White gives a compelling performance and the actors around him — in particular, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as pseudo-cousin Richie — push and meld his character into a better-developed person by the end of the first season.

While most critics have given The Bear rave reviews (the show has a 100% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes), some have been quick to bash the “genius white male chef” trope furthered by the creation of Carmy. This would be valid if Carmy were the show’s only protagonist, but he is only one of many. He is one cog in a diverse story.

As for the ending of Season 1, some critique its neatness. It’s true: The Bear’s first season ends abruptly and happily, which seems a small reward for the grease-coated, heart-pounding anguish the story inflicts on its viewers up to that point. I’m all for it.

“Charming” might be an odd word to use to describe a show mostly shot in dark kitchen corners and centered on a family trauma that none of the characters have the tools to properly process, but charming is what I’ve landed on. Under the French brigade system, all employees — from cooks to dishwashers — begin calling one another “chef” to show respect (spoiler: it seems to work). On one side of the setting’s dichotomy we have foil-wrapped sandwiches and loud, thick Chicagoan accents, while on the other there is a sense of culinary elevation, pride and the soft, sure love of chosen family.

On a human level, we come to relish the fact that the chefs of The Bear are just as worthy as their Michelin-grade counterparts, but also poised for an alley fight. These characters are exactly the kind of people I’d want in my kitchen.

Stream Season 1 one of The Bear on Hulu.