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

Some of us are cursed with Resting Adoration Face, don't be a hater.

she was shot like the love interest in a 2012-ish indie romantic comedy, mumblecore after they moved up from camcorders

Lol otm. I felt like I was inadvertently watching that zoey daschunhouse (or whatever the hell her name is) and other starlight indie boy In the elevator talking about the shins or the smiths or whatever movie: like come on, I went my whole life trying to avoid this gunk and you hoist it upon me unawares in the middle of my safdie cooking show! Needed a trigger warning

I haven’t finished S2 yet, have the finale to watch tonight

The family episode was incendiary. The previous season’s stressful 20 minute episode was amazing. Also: this show makes absolutely no sense on any level

Show idea: the bear prequel where all the kids are in primary school together and bob odenkirk is the teacher trying to somehow get control of the classroom. Mikey and richie are screaming over each other about who farted, sugar is sobbing in the corner saying she’s never farted in her life, Carmy is desperately staring at Clair, trying to communicate with his eyes that even though he was the one that farted, it’s only because of his family and he can’t help it and he’ll change but he won’t. Meanwhile odenkirk is screaming over all of them, daring Mikey to fart again and see what happens (he will poop his pants)

the bear in the big blue (sad kind) house

The Cubs: A The Bear Origin Story

I like Zooey Deschanel a lot and I also disliked 100 Days of Summer. But I like her for She & Him and being on Rupaul's Drag Race and being thrifty with money when her divorce filings were made public and a lot of other stuff.

I asked my husband if he liked the Claire character. He said he wanted to, but he was told so much by the show that he wasn't supposed to like the Claire character that he guesses he doesn't like Claire. I felt it too. Odd choice.

I felt like the show was very pro Claire and that the message was that Carmy was a fool for not taking their relationship more seriously.

But have you asked Cicero and the Copenhagen ghost cat what they think of Claire?

They nodded toward "Carmy's shirking by hanging out with her," frustrating Sydney but they didn't really spend enough time on Sydney/Carmy friction to make it stick either way. (And even then she's not the bad guy.)

All tied into the unrealistic buildout timeline - if he'd promised Uncle Jimmy to be open in four months he could have had a couple of days to properly fall in love.

Uncle Jimmy pressuring Carmy to drop her seemed like a symbol of his corrupt influence over the entire venture

the discussion of claire kinda overlooks carmy as the manic depressive dream tattoo chef, rough around the edges but sensitive, abusive but only up to a point, just needs to be softened slightly to be perfect.

That plus a shit ton of therapy

those dreamy therapy monologues

I want to give you an award for “manic depressive dream tattoo chef”, omar

lmao that is top shelf omar shit <3

yeah i feel like claire isn’t framed as anything exactly, like she is to us a normal woman person - the disconnect is how she’s framed by the family/“cousins” & kinda carmy

The Thom Browne apron felt like a commercial — not sure someone in that world would care much about that brand, if they recognized it at all. Similar to Marcus in S1 wearing an Aime Leon Doré-branded shirt. (And I loved the show overall — those moments just didn’t work for me.)

Finale didn’t work for me, mostly because I have high expectations I guess. Food looked good tho!

What was “Terry’s” restaurant btw? Whiney ate there iirc? The most stars I’ve consumed was two at Corton over a decade ago

It was shot at Ever, which opened in 2021 and is aiming for three stars (currently has two, and is owned/operated by a team that created closed three-star Grace). The Denmark kitchen scenes were also filmed in Ever’s pastry kitchen.

Story-wise, it’s modeled on Alinea: been open 12 years, named World’s Best Restaurant on the Top 50 list. Having Olivia Coleman as Terry was such a good choice, rather than someone who looks like Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, Grant Achatz, etc.

god that was such great casting

After her dizzying array of parts I am lowkey certain that you could drop Colman into literally any role and she would quietly own it. She could do Hitler and I'd buy it.

Finale also didn’t work for me, and also because I had high expectations (I blame certain posts in this thread). Episodes 4-7 the real golden run of this season

Yeah I would pay-subscribe to watch Isabella Rossellini and Olivia Colman in a video series of just them peeling veg and chatting

Very briefly scanned that as "a video series of just them peeing."

lol @ HP's Muppet Babies spinoff pitch.

guys what about the t swift "love story" music cue in the Richie ep, though

i love this show. in the christmas ep, i loved how even bit characters seemed fully realized. i trust that everyone's got a story.

claire seems like the exception to this, and i can't help thinking it's on purpose.

only complaint: i want 700% more Sydney. more Sydney all the time.

Robert Townsend looks great btw

(i love the "love story" music cue to be clear)

agree, that was effective

The amorphous character of Claire is why I think romance storyline weakens this show — it’s not that it’s a distraction for Carmy but it’s a distraction for the show-watching audience if they don’t make Claire into a person rather than a moony childhood friend who got educated and hot.

However I did like how it soured due to walk-in situation.

i love the "love story" music cue to be clear

The "I love Taylor Swift, too, I just needed a break" line resonated hard in this household.

LL otm, also the one-inch-away closeups are also distracting for the audience imo

halfway through episode 2 of this season and the brief "sometimes i look like february" feels like a secret handshake moment

"I'm not like this because I'm in Van Halen. I'm in Van Halen because I'm like this."

Fans of everyone's fave ketamine depressive dream tattoo chef are directed towards the upcoming indie flick Fremont where JAW stretches his repertoire a little by playing a depressive dreamboat tattoo ... auto-mechanic.

one thing I'll say for this show is that it revitalized my son's interest in cooking; he made that omelette this morning, complete with sour cream and onion chips.

You know what else I hate? The “feel awkward after asking someone out and them not immediately realising so now we both talk over each other and to reassure that this wasn’t a dating proposal and we feel awkward and we keep talking over each other and this is awkward and hahaha do you get it” trope. Please remove this from all future televised media. And I love Sydney and Marcus! Great characters! Great chemistry! Why do you have to put that awful scene in there?

Ctrl+F "I wear suits now"

ha yes I loved that

Finished this morning and broadly loved it. I finished S1 and thought anything else was unnecessary but discovered that I did want to spend more time with these characters after all.

I found the Christmas episode too much, tbh. When it finished, I was pretty vocally like 'I don't know that I needed that in my life!' I got they were fucked up but jeez, I don't know that I needed my nose rubbing in it. (Not questioning the performances though. Some extraordinary acting.)

I'm interested in how it fetishes work and the work ethic, but at the same time seems to want to disassociate that from actual money, which seems very abstract to everyone involved - to the point that it's hard to work out how everyone actually survives day-to-day. The final scene of S1, where there is literally a mound of magic money seems to speak to this. I guess it's partly a commentary on the characters' attitude to their 'art' and lack of business acumen.

Richie "i wear suits now" reminded me of It's Hard-era John Entwistle

https://imgur.com/a/r5kGIDZ

ha!

A friend from New York (we went to school together in Chicago) was in town with his kids last night, and he wanted to get Chicago style pizza. I picked Pequod's, which he had totally forgotten was in The Bear, so he and his daughters watched the Richie episode again a couple of nights ago in preparation. No joke, within a minute of walking into the place, this young staffer starts up a quick conversation with my friend (who was wearing a very New York shirt), asks him if he's seen The Bear, and then proudly tells him the pizza's place in the show. Then, several minutes later, this young guy stops by again to talk about the filming, how there were 30 crew stuffed in this place, but how he got picked to be the guy who hands Richie his pizza. And *then*, several minutes *later*, the guy comes back *again*, totally earnest, totally proud, with the youtube clip cued up of him handing Richie the pizza. My friend loved his enthusiasm, and got a picture taken of the guy posing with the pizzas at our table and, held in his hand like a first prize trophy, his own phone, with his claim to fame episode cameo freeze-framed on the screen.

We figured he must do this all the time, but we loved it.

I hope you kept the moment going with many post-story questions about the experience. In all sincerity, that is really sweet

Ha, that's kinda sweet but cringe. I talked to a friend who waited tables there for years, and she said that she didn't recognize that guy. :)