The Bear on FX: aka HEARD! aka YES CHEF! aka Ketamine Gene Wilder cooks for u

Nah, I like REM, but I don't need to hear Strange Currencies three times in one season for no real reason.

mawkishness of the soundtrack was precisely of a piece with the mawkishness many other aspects of the show. quality was all over the place, xmas dinner and richie episode ruled, other parts were like idk gilmore girls but restaurant workers

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Thursday, 6 July 2023 23:58 (one minute ago) link

hard agree

richie ep was a cool anime, john mulaney was real good

the bear would be really funny w/ the gilmore girls soundtrack tho

My John Mayer tolerance is much higher than many have, but the bouncy "Last Train Home" ending an S1 episode felt corny especially, as others say of the cues, turned up so loudly.

But still, I had never heard "Oh My Heart" before S1 and now it's one of my favorite R.E.M. songs (have always been a passive listener more than a big fan).

i generally think they do a pretty good job with music on this show but they do way too much of it

Honestly the music barely registers with me, negatively or positively, and usually it's just, "Hey, that sounds like Michael Stipe."

i enjoy the music in the show - especially the music this season compared to s1 which was def v wilco-heavy as noted upthrwad

but also obv its general music preferences, how you prefer to watch things with or w out musuc and what kind

i’m a fan of popular music needledrops, i like when songs i know & enjoy end up in shows, like REM or Replacements or a random late-period Pearl Jam song. But also i absorb a lot of dadrock classic rock normcore music & i regularly think of it in terms of soundtracks, constantly music-supervising my own mental soundtrack i guess idk not that that makes me special lol tl dr

xp same here, Leee!

the music doesn’t really jump out at me, it’s more of a “hey I kind of recognize that” 90% of the time and I feel like it’s almost used as… comfort food?

Finished s2, this is such a weird show. Obviously there's a lot to like, but half the time it feels like watching a WB show. When there's not kitchen yelling happening, it's often cloyingly sentimental with really corny dialogue (just shot in a gritty hand-held close-up that makes it feel arty).

Also can't count how many times they did this non-sequitur dialogue tic:

Person A: "This really important restaurant thing needs to happen, if we don't take care of it we're fucked."

Person B: "Did you know I have a girlfriend?" or "What was your relationship with your mother like?"

So much Eddie Vedder too, definitely felt the music drops got cornier near the end.

The chef in Denmark is unnervingly good looking.

Definitely a glow-up from Midsommar.

someone tell those girls they're cookin stupid

otm

had to do a double take when i saw whose review this is. she’s so real for this pic.twitter.com/n5GzLIamuB

— c (@toodamnbright) July 12, 2023

lol
she rules

She's a writer/producer on "What We Do In The Shadows," "Big Mouth" and "Dickinson," isn't she? Must be exhausting to be on strike with so many unions.

The Durutti Column track on episode 3 of season 2 was a jam! How have I never heard Fidelity before... It's like something I wish Slowdive made after Souvlaki

Didn't think this season quite lived up to the first - so many separate episodes and less time with the crew together it was less cohesive. Some of the music cues were overblown (literally, in the mix) but mostly inoffensive.

simultaneously thinking it needed 3-5 more episodes vs. it didn't really need to exist at all because the first season worked so well as a self-contained narrative

Watched the last two episodes last night, and I was consistently amused over this season by how much flak Carmy takes from himself and Sydney over allowing himself to get into a relationship when he has so many people depending on him and so much important shit going on. Meanwhile Claire is being a fucking Chicago ER doctor and still managing to get places on time and get dolled up for her boyfriend's restaurant opening.

Anyway, I loved it, it was all fantastic.

It's funny how we have so many threads about bears that it's easier to search for this one using "ketamine".

lol

It's funny how we have so many threads about bears that it's easier to search for this one using "ketamine".

new borad description

Meanwhile Claire is being a fucking Chicago ER doctor and still managing to get places on time and get dolled up for her boyfriend's restaurant opening.

Yeah, I thought something similar. Funny that she wasn't as high-strung or distracted by her job as he was.

I think that was all intentional, wasn't it? We see everything from Carm's all-in martyr perspective, more or less, but Claire exists to show that there is another way, it is possible to balance a high stress job and life.

Yes, I suppose it must be an intentional comparison. Obviously Claire's profession has some extremely high bars to entry, and you don't get to the point where you are an actual ER doctor unless you've proved that you can handle stress. Whereas we've seen in the show (and some of us have probably a million stories from our real lives) that it doesn't take much to get your foot in the door of food service, and you can be all kinds of fuck-up and still keep making progress. As long as the final decisions are someone else's, you can hide your fuck-upedness for a very long time, too.

Definitely intentional, there were a couple different moments where direct comparisons to their professions were made and where they acknowledged they were both extremely talented, hard working people, but of course, leave it to Carmy, right at his moment of triumph, to utterly tank the relationship despite all his friends constantly reminding him how lucky he is to be with Claire. The Christmas episode makes it clear that they've all experienced some considerable emotional growth in the ensuing years, but Carmy remains closed off and confused about how to relate to other human beings.

Also, am I the only person who finds it strange that Carmy and family refer to each other as Bear, but everyone also calls her Clair Bear. I know that's also intentional, but it's just weird to me.

We finished S2 finally and basically liked it. Mostly for the characters and performances, a lot of the plot points were very "do you see" — especially the last episode, where the guy who's not good at opening up and letting people in spends the whole time literally locked in cooler.

It goes into the burgeoning category I call Therapy Drama — also including Ted Lasso, EEAAO, others I'm not thinking of right now — where the plot is basically "flawed people learn how to process their traumas and forgive themselves/each other."

shout out to Brockmire and You're The Worst for doing the flawed people trauma thing but they just remain terrible people

ketamine say hi to me

xpost while Brockmire himself remained very flawed, the character and the show were hilarious and dark. not really the vibe the bear is going for even if they put themselves in the comedy category.

Also, am I the only person who finds it strange that Carmy and family refer to each other as Bear, but everyone also calls her Clair Bear. I know that's also intentional, but it's just weird to me.

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Wednesday, August 2, 2023 1:35 PM

I thought it was sort of cute. But also he really shouldn't be so surprised that for a million dollars she remembers that it is also the name of the restaurant.

What I found confusing and possibly stilted were characters calling one another "cousin" frequently. Ok, for Richie it makes sense. But normally I see this as signposting to the audience that someone is related to someone somehow (does anyone address their sibling as "brother" or "sister" IRL?) but I just couldn't tell if this is a real thing people are supposed to do.

shout out to Brockmire and You're The Worst for doing the flawed people trauma thing but they just remain terrible people

Hey, who knows, maybe everyone on The Bear will stay their version of terrible. It's far from over yet.

especially the last episode, where the guy who's not good at opening up and letting people in spends the whole time literally locked in cooler.

I chose to find this funny instead of annoying, but you're fundamentally right. I don't think another show could have got away with it even a little bit.

It also turns out that the Clark Kent disguise would work on my husband, since he recognized neither Joel McHale nor John Mulaney without prompting, because they were out of context and wearing glasses.

What I found confusing and possibly stilted were characters calling one another "cousin" frequently. Ok, for Richie it makes sense. But normally I see this as signposting to the audience that someone is related to someone somehow (does anyone address their sibling as "brother" or "sister" IRL?) but I just couldn't tell if this is a real thing people are supposed to do.

I read it as a way of saying "family, or close enough." Maybe not a way "real" people talk but the way these people talk.

where the guy who's not good at opening up and letting people in spends the whole time literally locked in cooler.

the implausibility of them leaving him there and not even giving him updates bothered me

the writers breezily don't worry about implausible plot points (like the rich relative being okay with all the kids at his birthday party getting drugged)

and i'm like, maybe you should worry more

Also I think it's signposting the fraught nature of Carmy and Sugar's family life, and particularly Carm's fitful attempts at creating a better found family at work that in some ways fails because Richie is that thread that the work fam with the fam fam.

They didn’t just leave him in there, they had to get a guy to come ruin the walk-in with a Sawzall to get him out.

They were so deep in the weeds at that point he probably would have killed someone for coming over to update him instead of getting food out.

"WHY ARE YOU FUCKING ME RIGHT NOW? DON'T SAVE ME, SAVE THE FOOD!"

As someone who owns and manages restaurants/bars/clubs I have a love/hate relation with this series. It feels like they’re constantly drowning on a glass of water. Granted I’m not on michelin star levels but neither have them (atm) and I’ve been on situations where I have to manage 1000 drunk patrons in one night while also managing a to go bar that sells 3000 drinks in one day with 80 employees and it’s been super stressful but it’s nowhere the shitshow that I see here.

The amount of insane stress is way too histrionic is what I mean.

At the same time it feels way too real but it feels like taking the “bottleneck” moment of the night and amplifying it times 10.

Also I don’t understand the economics behind it, they have like 14 tables in there and 20 people working - apparently 12 hours a day - I know it’s to heighten drama but it feels overcooked.

Like per example: on season 1 making the meat sandwiches or whatever are a super time consuming thing to make and yet on season 2 they are apparently still selling them during the day and it’s brushed off as the side business that anyone can fill

Not sure I’d really be down with a show about a well run service, I mean the point is that these folks create their own drama.

I do like it whenever they visit somewhere that is well run, though. It's a nice contrast. It reminds me of the episode of Happy Endings where one of them starts dating someone who has a group of normal friends, not sitcom friends, and they just can't handle how ordinary and helpful and undramatic the other group is.

Idk season 2 worked better for me precisely because it expanded outside the dramatically stressful joint. The best ones were the family reunion, and the marcus and cousin focused episodes.

Season 1 is cool but it kept making me anxious. Like get your shit together, there’s like 10 of you and you’re selling fucking meat sandwiches

I’m sure they’re amazing sandwiches and all but this dude comes from a three michelin star restaurant and can’t handle a meat sandwich joint?

But yeah it’s true if the drama wasn’t as exaggerated there wouldn’t be a show… still those episodes were a nice change of pace and an interesting addition… the family reunion one did feel organically stressful and the other two were a much needed sort of wholesome break.

Thought this was a great, imperfect season. The sidequests and flashbacks were all amazing but they didn't quite leave enough space to see the restaurant/team come together - it went very quickly from "the roof is falling in" to "there's staff and a menu and it's ropey but basically there".

I feel it's important to point out that Claire is Triple-A from Booksmart.