The Bear recap: "Dreams Are a Son of a Bitch, Aren't They?"

Closing out season three with episodes 9 and 10

It’s possible season three of The Bear will be one of those I look back on more fondly when I’m not in the middle of it, as there have been some astonishing and adept moments. Certainly things came to a head right at the end here in ways that feel like the hit a better balance between the show’s artsier impulses and its original DNA. At the moment I still stand by what we’ve probably said every week: A lot of the slower episodes and detours in The Bear would work better in a season that, itself, didn’t feel like a slow detour. I’ve read the stuff about them shooting two seasons back-to-back — it was 18 episodes total; we’ve seen 10 of them — and the prevailing sense is that Hulu ordered extra episodes to stretch out its hot commodity after the strikes. Thus, this batch may be fillers that weren’t in the original plan, and season 4 will take us where they originally wanted to go. I have a lot of thoughts. Two are:

a) Think of all the TV shows throughout history that were unexpectedly ha…