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

Not sure about this season overall. It felt somewhat slight compared to the seasons 1 and 2. Episodes 3 and 6 are excellent, though. They better wrap this up with one more season, though. Too many loose threads.

Did I write “though” enough?

Pretty sure S4 is set to be the final one, and I believe they’ve already finished filming it.

ep 3 was indeed really good
watching Tina at the farmer's market shopping to Spinning Away, less so (to be clear -- I LOVE TINA)

after finishing s3 and knowing s4 is in the works it seems like this season will function as a bridge to s4 … this season felt like more of an exploration of the impact of s2 finale and looking more closely at the emotional web holding everyone at The Bear together

i think it works in terms of what it actually ~is~ vs what we expected it to do

speaking of, the convo about the dead moms club absolutely killed me. keep in mind that i work in a restaurant.

not long ago it was fathers' day and all of us scheduled to work were coincidentally members of the dead dads club, which we joked about endlessly until we were presented with a gigantic cake our coworkers had made for us with pics of our dads on it. mine was a photo i took of my dad when i was 12, he was looking straight at me/the camera. i also made a pie for us bc i felt like i had to do something. two of the deaths were within months, mine was just over a year ago, and the fourth guy lost his dad about 13 years ago. from the kitchen to the hosts, we all ate cake and pie and talked about our dads and i haven't had that kind of camaraderie in my life...ever? this ep reminded me of that.

That’s lovely, LL.

xpost This makes sense now that I’ve learned S4 is in the can.

wow yeah that is beautiful LL! thank u for sharing

After my dad passed, one of my good friends wrote me a very sweet message that ended by welcoming me to the "dead dad's club". Probably the first time I laughed after he passed. I didn't know it wasn't my friend's original joke until this episode, but I suppose it's the kind of joke you only hear when it happens

Indeed - a requirement for initiation

Not sure who the market is for a $395 Matter of Fak work jacket.

(secretly me)

(no shade -- that's OK!)

LA Times has a good piece that hews more to my general feelings about the show and why I like it so much

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2024-06-28/alcoholism-addiction-the-bear-season-3

The show seems to exemplify a saying that a friend of mine use to quote to explain why he dropped out of the super-competitive high level junior chess world at 14 years old: “In the search for perfection lies the root of neurosis” …

(However, when I search online for the saying there’s has no record of it….)

I heard on the Ringer Watch podcast that i guess The Bear was originally only going to be 3 seasons and at some point after s3 was written that FX or whoever discussed extending to a 4th season for like 18 total episodes

thus now stretching s3 to bridge into whatever happens storywise in s4

which explains why it felt very uh bridgey lol

i kinda said as much upthread but that gives a bit more real-world explanation

four episodes in and yeah this show is really good and dynamic. every actor is bringing it—i’m especially loving how lionel boyce has come into his own as marcus. “doors” is exactly what i want from this show, and the cousin-centric episode 4 made me well up a couple times

if its main flaw is over-ambition, is that really so bad?

i think the disappointment lies in how dynamic the first 2 seasons were in moving characters forward & story arcs etc and this season isn’t doing as much of that and it is def a vibe shift

but yeah i agree!

oh and btw i dont think i shouted this out but

Ep6 “Napkins” is perfect and great and wrenching and TINA!!! is the fucking best. Liza Colon-Zayas kills it. just beautiful acting.

goddamn i loved it so much

directed by Ayo too!

Just watched that one. God this show is so fucking sentimental. I did appreciate the two Genevieve Artady drops though. :)

almost done with the season. I do feel some disappointment at the vibe shift vg describes but there's still things to enjoy, chiefly the acting. I also haven't found what little comedy there is very funny this season - John Cena's cameo was... bad. feels like they're trying too hard to keep comedic elements in there

damn there is no restaurant scene that stressed me out as much as ep8 Donna at the hospital with Natalie. the constant talking, the volatility, the hee hee hee -- jfc, could not take it.

Didn't realize until reading reviews after finishing the season that Josh Hartnett plays Richie's ex's fiancee.

reminded me of when my sister had her first baby, she was 19 and her mother in law was there with her and this woman is very DeeDee energy, SO intense & so keyed up and she had my sister stripped naked (no idea why, just YOU NEED TO DO THIS energy) and all this crazy shit and my poor sister was just beside herself & stressed out of her mind

luckily my Mum finally showed up & kicked the MIL out and got my sister covered up and calmed down

anyway

i did weirdly love how DeeDee was able to be of use and BE a mom to Sugar in some of those later moments, like she def has firehose energy but when you’re thirsty you can sort of chaotically get what you need if you point her in the right direction lol

Speaking of Ep6, I saw a story about it and how fans felt it revealed a plothole from S1 re:Tina initially being mean to Sydney by overstating her relationship to the restaurant and I think these people are saying that because they've never encountered someone being territorial before.

wow i totally did not recognize hartnett

wow S3E1 was incredible, I am totally on board for whatever they do next

Just watched episode 2, I can almost see the critic above’s point about the music. That Vedder needle drop felt like it lasted fuckin forever, but it’s pretty easy for me to ignore in the grander scheme.

Every time I stack my leftovers in the freezer and put their little tape labels on them, I think how angry Carmy would get with my tearing over cutting.

I still can never get the hang of how time moves in the restaurant. Maybe that's deliberate. Do the front-of-house guys really show up eight hours before service all suited and booted just to take in deliveries and shout at each other?

finished S3 -- if i hadn't been sick as a dog i would have gotten more irritated about the nonsense of Big White Cloud playing for no reason while Syd and Shapiro talk about her potential new job in a wine closet. Thought the confrontation between Carm and his abuser was actually quite effective and good. Like VG (or someone else?) upthread, I never need to hear "Laid" ever again in my life but I thought it was sort of cute that everyone was enjoying it at the party.

Also I thought the convo between British chef (can't remember his name, the pea-picker) and Syd about their siblings/only child status was interesting, if somewhat unrealistic.

i didn't believe for a minute that any of those people would be into Laid (this song was an extremely minor alternative rock radio hit in the US, I think it's a much bigger thing in the UK) but I am a big fan of the song so it didn't bother me.

"Laid" has had a decent afterlife over here appearing in movie trailers and it still gets decent airplay on the SiriusXM '90s/Alternative nostalgia channels.

Related to the British chef, I saw The Revenant last week for the first time and saw that he played Tom Hardy's sidekick.

Also agree with LL that the Carmy's confrontation was especially well done. Also, Thomas Keller did great in his cameo, as far as not being able to tell if he had a script or was just improvising.

Something I'm still thinking about: S1 felt like it was based in a world where "fine dining" was a toxic, rotten system; but by S3, especially with all the chef cameos, it feels like it shows Joel McHale as being the one bad apple in a system based on kindness and discipline. This trajectory works well if it's the Al-Anon-type narrative of families feeling toxic until someone does the work to get over that; but we don't really see Carmy figure out if he can be a fine-dining chef without being an abuser.

Not yet…

i feel like that’s coming

that confrontation with McHale was so good, like even just that Carmy hadnt thought much past “Fuck you” felt very real

and then McHale justifying the abuse and taking the credit for making Carmy who he is… real as fuck and so devastating to hear/receive

but also how seeing much space Carmy’s given in his brain to this guy, how enormous they become in your mind, to where Carmy’s at that amazing dinner with all those stories & he’s literally not present, not even in his own body because of this guy

so so good

I would say "SPOILERS!" but it's been obvious that was on the horizon. (I'm through S3E4)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LvIlPvrjGk

"Laid" got a big push from the American Pie movies and trailers - I think a lot of my friends who aren't into music would at least recognize it. Almost 200m plays on Spotify

ha, I completely missed the american pie phenomenon (I think I saw the first one).

i would have gotten more irritated about the nonsense of Big White Cloud playing for no reason while Syd and Shapiro talk about her potential new job in a wine closet.

Seems like this was part of them doing a diegetic "elegiac mood" playlist designed for that night's dinner.

Maybe? Gideon’s Bible would have been a better choice from that album tho imo.

The show The Bear is good but if a cheap sandwich shop in the city where I could get a big pop, fries, and a hot dog shut down bc a white man moved back home wanted to turn into a high end restaurant I would pray for that restaurant’s downfall everyday.

— لارا (@NormalArabGirl) June 30, 2024

The food certainly doesn't look appealing...when Tina had that big bowl of roasted cauliflower and brussel sprouts and Sydney was like "here, let me help you with that" and put four of them on a tiny plate of sauce, I died a little inside.

When Tina is making dinner at home she's got a big plate of maduros in front of her. You just know she has some killer P(uerto) R(ican) arroz con habichuelas going on in one of those pots. Would watch a show with her making that stuff.

Arroz con gandules!

yeah I want a big bowl of whatever’s in Tina’s crockpot

the number of times I'd idly wish they'd just make an italian beef grew with every episode

but they do make italian beefs -- isn't that the store by day via the window and then it's fancy at night? unless i completely misunderstood that.