Television Watch: The Bear (Seasons 1 and 2)

Initially, I wasn't overly interested in The Bear.  It looked like "quality TV", but leaning into a type of character we've seen a few dozen times over the past 20 years - a self-destructive guy, likely with chemical dependence issues, and likely has sex a lot.  Watch him fuck up over and over.  Look, Don Draper *owns* that, and you're not going to top that writing or performance, but people keep trying. I figured the show would be in a high-pressure world of a field everyone kinda thinks maybe they could work in, but knows that the real winners are genuine artists.  And, sometimes I get very worn out less by the existence of high end cuisine, but how "foodies" can be in general.*  

But (a) that is not what the show is about.  And (b) they added Jamie Lee Curtis.  So.  You know.

Over time I'd also figured out:  the show is not about a high-end restaurant - yet.  It's about a Chicago-area Italian Beef sandwich shop, and our lead has no addiction issues to make them edgy.  At least no chemical addiction issues.

At its heart, this is a show about two families, who are almost a circle on a Venn Diagram - the Berzattos, and the employees of The Beef, the aforementioned sandwich shop.  All are in shock after the suicide of owner and eldest sibling of the Berzatto family, Michael.  Who has left the resaturant to his brother, Carmine, who fled Chicago and the family to become a world-renowned chef in New York.

Season 1 focuses on the sandwich shop, barely making it and in deep debt.  And Carmine's hope to slowly turn it around and make the place run like a Michelin Star restaurant even as they sling lunchtime meals for the working classes of Chicago.  

The cast of characters feels...  very specific and very real.  

Carmine is played almost inscrutably by Jeremy Allen White, a man obsessed with work because it keeps everything else out.  Former stand-up and comedic actress Ayo Edebiri is wildly believable as the chef who dreams of what could be for herself and for the resaturant, and is seeing the illusion she put in her head of Carmine chipped away in small and large chunks.  Ebon Moss-Bacharach is middle-aged loser Richie, who only knows how things work at The Beef and is doing what he can to preserve it while everything changes.

There's an extensive kitchen staff, mechanics, and others who drift in and out.  

The show in the first season can be hard to watch just thinking about crushing debt, loss of a relative and needing to keep moving, both on a daily basis paired with the rush of feeding too many people in a short window of time in order to make it all work.  Carmine's arrival and the subsequent arrival of Sydney (Edebiri) open doors to the kitchen staff who never thought they'd do much more than what they were shown on their first day, no matter how long they've stayed.

The first season ends with the discovery that the loans Carmine's brother was taking from their Uncle Jimmy (a perfectly cast Oliver Platt) weren't going into a drug habit - Michael had been planning to stow enough money to start a restaurant with Carmine.  And, as the season ends - Sydney, Carmine and Sugar (Abby Elliot) go to Jimmy to get yet more capital to open the new place on the bones of the old.

Second season follows the staff as they work to open The Bear, taking on new roles and fighting a decaying building as they refurbish it into the top tier restaurant they want it to be.  Meanwhile, Carmine re-associates himself with a high school crush, Claire (Molly Gordon) who is back in Chicago as an ER doctor - someone whose stressful work actually has consequences beyond someone having a disappointing dinner.    

On paper, I think The Bear is kind of a hard sell.  Does anyone really care about the trials and tribulations of a kitchen staff?  It lacks the inherent sexiness and high dollar stakes of Madison Avenue ad agency in the 1960's.  The show is not about who is banging who, it's not soapy.  It's a show in mourning and rife with anxiety it feels like the people feeling it could easily walk away from.  

But, on one level the show is about wanting to do something well, and bring people along with you who are not quite so inclined.  Not to get too personal, but this rang some bells with me.  And it felt very, very true.  People who can't even imagine what you're suggesting is possible, and are afraid of how it will change their world - it takes *years* sometimes, and sometimes people can't or won't come along.  And that you're asking them to do it well possibly at some cost to themselves - but with a payback of delivering a job well done.

On another level - and the one that gets the press - is the family drama that is not melodrama.  It is real and it is hard and it's frankly amazing to see on screen.  You'll hear about the Christmas episode, and you should.  It's a bottle episode and possible to watch on its own, but 100 times richer as something that informs everything you've seen to date and everything you'll see going forward.  And it's stacked to the rafters with some amazing talent.  I mean, they got Sarah Paulson for a role with like fifteen lines.  Sarah Paulson!!!  and she absolutely kills it.  Because she's Sarah Paulson.

But, yeah, that's the one with guest stars:  Bob Odenkirk, Paulson, John Mulaney, Gillian Jacobs, John Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis.  And as great as Curtis is in everything before... y'all.  

How they assembled this cast, and how rehearsals went... I cannot imagine.  

But that's the thing.  These people are marquee stars, guesting.  The main cast - most of whom you've only seen in one or two things before, are astounding, and natural and buyable.  There's not a character I don't think is brilliantly conceived and executed.  

All of it hinges of Carmine, who barely speaks, who is often inscrutable, but he's a swan gliding, his feet kicking furiously below the water.  And it's an ace of a performance.  Just as is everyone's.  

I've been deeply pleased by what the show has chosen to do and not to do - to not go for the obvious melodrama of kitchen sex hijinks and we start the show with the tragedy of addiction rather than having yet another main character go through a drug problem over a season - there's something much more endemic at work.

Anyway - I can't really recommend enough.  The writing, direction, design... it's just one of those shows we'll still be making comparisons to in fifteen years.

*There is nothing wrong with high quality food, a great dining experience, etc...  but there's no need to be insufferable about experiencing it, and it doesn't actually make you a special person to enjoy fine dining anymore than someone is morally superior for paying for seats at the opera.  The interesting person here is the kitchen and staff, not you.