Heather! Your writing! "emotional hoarder who cannot let anything go, ever, even if it’s starting to block the exits and emits a weird smell"
We are halfway through EP4 and I don't know that it improves that much! We liked S1, LOVED S2 - especially Forks and Marcus' ep - but these eps so far feel pretty lazy, like almost AI generated.
I liked the first episode. It felt like meditation to me. The second episode was way way way too stressful. I watched the first 3 episodes in one night and had to take a break after that, so.... YMMV.
I moved from Chicago to London a year and half ago for work, and that B roll during the opening credits in the second episode made me so homesick that I almost cried.
I feel like if they traded in some of those "fucks" for "jagoff" it would be even slightly more authentic.
I watched the whole season in two sittings - I didn't like the beginning but softened toward the end.
I agree with this completely: "I really think they could have made “Tomorrow” a five-minute prelude to “Next.”"
My husband and I literally stopped watching Tomorrow halfway through. The music had a strange vibe and I think was looped over and over? It just started annoying both of us too much. And I knew I'd have your awesome recap, so thank you!
The Non Negotiables thing bothered me because he didn't consult anyone else on them? I'm not clear on what the ownership terms are, but is he really above everyone else to just unilaterally decide all of that?
I am also pretty much always on Richie's side now. Stay out of his dojo!
The "Fishes" episode was so intense I actually used the 30-second skip forward several times. I am sure as a result I missed "good" stuff, but I just couldn't take it. I got the gist of what I was supposed to get, I think. I totally get having to wash that away with something like "Home Alone."
I know I'm the cranky one leading the "not a comedy" brigade, but the one thing I will say is that Ayo is a brilliant comedian in her own right - performance and writing. It's so nice to see her get so much dramatic depth on this show - and totally agree her ability to reflect calm and yet let you know she's spinning inside is masterful. And in Ep 2, per usual, it's so often her (she?) who gets the line that makes you chuckle, like the ladder quip Heather highlighted when Syd responds, "it's not." She gets to do this awesome dramatic work while still engaging her wonderful comedic timing and expression. (But still, this show is not a comedy. :) )
I am genuinely starting to wonder why there hasn't been more of a movement for a four-quadrant award system: longform comedy, longform drama, shortform comedy, shortform drama. It would allow for a much better system of recognizing people's work.
I am ever-grateful for your thoughtful and thorough recaps so I can enjoy this show without actually experiencing it! I can't take that level of stress.
Since this field is what I write about for a living, a few basic observations.
1) There absolutely are kitchens as stressful as this and chefs as awful as Joel McHale. That is definitely an old-school, militaristic, French-style approach where the chef is like a general. We all know lots of men and a few women like this.
2) That said, there are also kitchens run in a far more humane way, where staff input is welcome and the place is collaborative. Millennials and Gen Z don’t want to work in the old ways.
3) A person in Carmy’s position these days is as much a CEO/chief marketing officer as a cook. Sydney would play a much greater role in day-to-day operations. Even in making a transition, Carmy would be overseeing things, not micromanaging so much.
4) It’s nice to see Chicago. The places and people featured only skim the surface.
Since I finally have a place to discuss this, does anyone have thoughts on what social class we're supposed to believe the Berzatto kids grew up in? Between the roughness of The Beef, the idea that Carmy being a high-end chef was striving, and the general vibe of all of the family friends, I really thought they were working class. But the house in Fishes, especially for Chicago, seemed very middle to upper middle class. I guess in my mind it just changes the tone of where the kids are now vs where they started (did the three kids overachieve by becoming a professional chef, a restaurant owner, and a bank worker, or were they supported through everything by family (and "uncle") money?)
As far as the Beef goes, their father started it, then ran it into the ground financially and took off from the business and family — and Mikey took it over. (Carmy tells this to Sydney in S2.)
Yeah, I don't over-think it. My parents bought our modest home in a non-fancy suburb; it was nice but we could never afford to move, wasn't a lot of extra $, I put myself through college. But I had relatives who were "rich" from marriage or different career choices...it was a mix, which is how I read this family.
Chicago has never been an expensive place to live. They could easily have had family friends who were contractors and cut them deals. My grandparents were immigrants, but lived in a neighborhood with Frank Lloyd Wright homes.
But they very obviously live in the Evanston/ Wilmette border range, not in Oak Park. They're not even in Edgebrook, where my cousins now have an expanded-to-semi-palatial home via exactly that "family friends who are contractors" process.
This is like that scene in When Harry Met Sally where Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan drove in the wrong direction on LSD. People know the difference between neighborhoods and suburbs and the producers need to remember that.
I mean, and at least in that case everyone knew they did it for the good angle!!
In all seriousness, my suspicion is that the producer has Suburb Blindness and doesn't understand the nuances that people who have multi-generational roots in the area immediately see/ identify.
I saw somewhere that the house they used for filming was in Evanston, not Chicago proper. I'm not sure where it was meant to represent, but Chicago is a city that covers a pretty large geographic area, even more with the near suburbs. And house prices really vary over that area, so you can't really go off the overall appearance. My grandparents had a house that probably looked pricer than it actually was. I took the Berzatto family as squarely middle class and the fathers financial problems made things worse.
I have no idea! I'm only two episodes in as well. I thought there was a past reference in season 1 or 2 to his dad running the Beef restaurant into the ground and then leaving the family. And I took that to be an event that maybe reduced the family finances from whatever afforded them the house.
We should start a betting pool. I feel like Bill Murray has to have top odds, and it doesn't even ring false since Oliver Platt is playing about a decade over his actual age.
Oh but that would be way too weird after Richie and Mikey’s story about meeting him. But my god I really could see it being him or Dan akroyd or some other second city guy.
Ok I did a little digging and the house they filmed at is in Evanston (Thanks AHC!) and sold in 2016 for $1.1 million. I totally agree that the literal house/location is less important than the fact that the production team picked a pretty upper middle class house to film a pivotal "this is who this family is" scene. And socioeconomic backgrounds matter a lot in terms of the hierarchy in a kitchen - the show goes deep into the economic insecurity of a lot of the kitchen workers. I certainly know it's not the main thread of the series, but for me it adds some depth to the overall story to consider the background of each character.
The real answer, I think, is that the showrunner grew up in Park Ridge, which is not quite ever as nice as Evanston CAN be, but is more AVERAGELY nice overall, and thinks of itself as "Chicago" in the same way Evanston does, but befriended people from the actual city who worked at a similar restaurant to The Beef and liked their stories/ vibes and didn't really have the tools to parse out what was different between them. I genuinely don't think he understands that the characters he put on screen in the first season are slightly different people than the ones in season two.
I swear to god the show changed its mind between seasons and they didn't even realize it. The first season, the family was obviously comfortably blue collar brownstone-and-brick-bungalow Chicago-Chicago, fully inside city limits. The second season, they suddenly lived in Wilmette or the fancier bit of Evanston. They genuinely went from "doing slightly better than the folks on Shameless" to "side characters in a John Hughes movie." AND they got very squishy about Unc's being mob-connected, which he CLEARLY was in the first season, and almost as clearly WASN'T in the second.
Even more frustratingly, I can't find any acknowledgement in any interview that anyone involved in the show is even AWARE of having done it.
I did rewatch the first two seasons bc I'm obsessed with this show. Having said that, all of your points are entirely valid and I am on Team Richie for sure but he needs to leave the sandbox and emotional hoarding (excellent phrase), please. And my understanding from the Christmas ep was that Sarah Paulson and John Mulaney's characters are married, she invites Carmy to NY where she has "a couple of restaurants," and that's where he goes, gets his training at Daniel, stays at their apartment, and crashes like a redwood in their living room when he gets home, sans shower, etc. I had to watch the ep a second time before I reco'd Mulaney; I'm sure Paulson was too busy to cameo. Cactus Carmy is genius, btw.
Especially given that flashbacks are from Daniel (NY), French Laundry (CA), noma (Copenhagen), Ever (Chicago), and wherever that colossal asshole menace played by Joel McHale is; that's a LOT of chef-hopping!
I'm almost certain that McHale is meant to be in NYC and am considerably less certain he's supposed to have been Carmy's last stop before coming back to Chicago, but I'm not entirely sure why I think that, and the show may actually have changed its mind about it.
ALSO, McHale's character was at the Friends and Family dinner at The Bear in S2 finale, staring down Carm in the kitchen. Unless that was an apparition or something?
I thought McHale is meant to be the chef at the French Laundry in CA...The kitchen looks right for it, and I just looked it up and apparently McHale confirmed his character is based on Thomas Keller (owner of French Laundry).
Except that there is a lovely exchange in a later episode (no spoilers!) where Carm is taught how to truss a chicken by an absolutely lovely man who I've read is actually Keller.
It's pretty clear the Copenhagen stint is a stage (complete with the same house boat accommodations and cat-feeding that Marcus had last season), because in the same episode Chef Terry at Ever (Olivia Colman) asks Carmy, "Have you ever been to Copenhagen?"
Chef Terry had a previous place that closed before she rallied and opened Ever (as she explained to Richie when he staged there last season), so it's also possible that Carmy worked for her wherever that was. There really is little clarity!
On the question of The Bear being a comedy, I think it’s not but that also the categories also don’t fit how tv is made anymore. The Bear can be funny and also can also make you cry, and is often of the tensest shows on tv. Succession was a serious drama with similarly tense moments, but also made me laugh out loud plenty of times. I really think they should update it to half hour shows and one hour shows, or short form tv and long form tv. Just something that better encapsulates the way tv is made now.
Also, I don’t think you meant it this way at all, but I wanted to just gently defend that myself and many other people who ship Sydney/Carmy are capable of seeing men and women as friends. I love platonic male and female friendships. Abed and Annie. Harry and Hermione (when I read HP, obviously I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole now), Meredith and Alex. Penny and Sheldon. Don and Peggy. Phoebe and Joey. Toby and CJ. Will and Diane. Lucas and Haley. Leslie and Ron. Stefan and Lexi from the Vampire Diaries. Bojack and Diane. The Doctor and Donna. Sherlock and Joan from Elementary. I could go on, but all of these friendships are beautiful and wonderful and for me, purely platonic. I do see romantic chemistry between Sydney and Carmy and a connection that feels different to me than any of relationships I listed above, though no less rich or important. You don’t, which is great! TV is usually interpreted differently by people, that’s part of what makes media so fascinating to talk about and examine. I just wanted to gently push back at the idea that people who like this ship can’t see men and women as friendship or deserve the general mocking they’ve been getting in the press that they can’t conceptualize male and female friendship , because it’s important to me both as someone who has important ones in my own life, in her writing, and who has valued them in many different forms of media.
Sorry, rant over!! I’m so excited that you’re recapping The Bear. I love the show and your thoughts about the season. I can’t say a lot because I have watched the entire season, and I don’t want to spoil for anyone else he hasn’t, but I think that this is a great season for Marcus. I love what you noted
About his gentle energy, and his development and his relationship with the main cast really shined for me this season. I also think that Tina is wonderful this season, and I really love how they’ve developed character and her relationship with the community. I think I’m pretty mixed on this season overall, especially the back half, but there were also a lot of character moments and episodes I loved. I’m excited to hear your thoughts as we get further into the season.
Oh yes, I definitely wasn’t saying that all the people who love Syd and Carmy don’t believe men and women can be friends. I just a) love any and all excuse to bring up that movie, and b) I think it IS sadly a rare thing to see on TV, and since I don’t PERSONALLY see any romantic chemistry there, I don’t want them to force it because the friend/colleague chemistry is so good. -H
Yes! That makes total sense. It is unfortunately a lot rarer than it should be. Lol I think I was just feeling a bit defensive because of the many articles being like stop shipping them/you’re deranged for shipping them and it came out here, so apologies for that haha.
No apology necessary! And I would never want you to feel uncomfortable openly shipping someone here, so if I made you feel that way, I'm so sorry -- even if we don't agree, everyone please 'ship whoever you want!
Oh gosh, no, you didn’t at all! It’s definitely just the internet echo chamber and probably everything else not Bear related going on in the world getting to me lol
150 percent agreed with your rant. I think the whole thing is part of a push-pull as we settle into new social dynamics--there's completely rightful pushback on the concept that women and men can never just be friends, but then sometimes the pendulum swings too far in the direction of "why are you shipping them, can't you just let women and men be friends (eyeroll)." It's the same tension between "men should have deep, meaningful platonic friendships with each other, get rid of toxic masculinity" and "people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community don't get enough representation," both of which are true.
We need to have all of them: strong and healthy m/f romances, strong and healthy m/m romances, strong and healthy f/f romances, strong and healthy friendships between women and men and men and men and women and men and non-binary folks, all of it.
Props to the music supervisors on the show, because the music cues are great, especially this season (and they obviously splashed out a bit). Also, I don't know why it took me until the first episode of this season to clock that The Bear is another credit in Trent Reznor's long second act as film and TV composer.
I've watched the whole season (I'm rewatching two at a time before your recaps), and I found it pretty mixed, but enjoyed it overall. The cameo-palooza is even greater than in Season 2, and gets to be a bit much, and there are some parts that didn't work for me, but others I found effective, and affecting. (Incidentally, I rewatched the first two seasons before this one dropped, but I skipped "Fishes," the Christmas ep, because I hated it the first time; I thought JLC's performance was way too OTT, among other things.)
I agree! In fact, I think it was the score that made S3 E1 so unsettling. The music was placid and lovely, but there was a bass line full of minor key tension and urgency. It made me too nervous to look away!
You all -especially Heather and Jessica- are going to laugh at me for this, but the first episode sent me down a major research spiral over the weekend, because, nestled lovingly among all of the glowingly misted produce and herbs in Redzepi's putative culinary garden, the show gave us, at 11:16, a full on lingering closeup of what caused me to shriek, jolting the cat off my lap, "is that FOXGLOVE?!" (aka one of the first indications you might see that a friend is cultivating a "poison garden")
After 25 minutes of googling "flowers that can be mistaken for foxglove" and vice versa, and determining that, in fact, none of the common mis-identifications looked at all like what had been onscreen, I asked a friend of mine who's obsessed with high-end dining and has sous-chef'd (that looks weird) at a handful of Michelin 2-stars in Germany whether foxglove/ digitalis has some secret culinary (as opposed to medicinal) use I was unaware of, a la pufferfish. He laughed at me, and agreed the flower looked like foxglove. He DID note that it's attractive to pollinators, so it's possible that it would be included in a culinary garden to boost production of other plants.
I then sent a screengrab to a friend who's a botanist for L.A. County, who thought the flower was likely to be foxglove, but "doesn't specialize in ornamentals." I then turned to a college classmate who's a botanist at the NY Botanical Garden. She agreed that the flowers looked more like foxglove than anything else, but that the arrangement on the stem was odd (this is true, it looks like someone removed every other bloom). She is planning to survey her colleagues this week to see if anyone has a solid identification (her theory was "they bought some generic garden footage and screwed up, it happens all the time").
All three people suggested that it was an indication of an upcoming plot point, which (SPOILER ALERT) it is not, unless said plot will occur in season four.
EDITING TO UPDATE: Officially confirmed by the broader NY Botanical Garden botanist staff as indeed being foxglove.
Anyway, all that aside, I absolutely agree that Carmy and Syd have basically zero sexy chemistry, and quite frankly, neither do Carmy and Claire. I want Carmy to get his shit together, but that does not really include his romantic life at this point, because frankly he's still just a time bomb, emotionally speaking.
Aw. Likewise! Thank you for indulging my perplexed irritation. I just expect the narratives that advertise themselves as having fetishistic attention to certain kinds of details to actually HAVE that fetishistic attention!
Oh my god, my German friend (whom Jessica has met) just messaged me, since I told him the NYBG had confirmed our thoughts: 'I asked Redzepi himself and he says he has to go watch The Bear now again because he missed that. Called it "dangerous.'"
Amen on your thoughts about Carmy and Claire. I hate any time a show acts like a love interest can "fix" what's wrong with a character. Frankly, even if I thought that Carmy and Claire are a compelling couple, she deserves so much better than him at his worst. He has got to get his shit allllllll together before he should even think about pursuing her again, not because he doesn't deserve love, but because they both deserve to be in a relationship that is on better footing.
A+ research. Plants are fascinating but it never even occurred to me that there might be something NEFARIOUS afoot and now I want to spin out an entire alternate show where Carmy secretly poisons a celebrity chef each week.
Long running joke in my family that if there's ever a question about something weird, I always know someone to ask. Oh, this little carving we found in my grandma's stuff is supposedly a kingfisher? I have an author who wrote a whole book on kingfishers, let me ask her about it. I admire that you took this question to multiple specialists. Real commitment!
"I want Carmy to get his shit together, but that does not really include his romantic life at this point, because frankly he's still just a time bomb, emotionally speaking."
I'm a Sydcarmy shipper and I completely agree. There's a spoiler spoiler spoiler thing that happens later on (he doesn't do anything bad to her, to be clear!) that really proves that Carmy needs to work on himself before he hooks up with anybody.
(Side note: more competent successful therapists on TV and in movies, please!)
(Also, apologies if "he doesn't do anything bad to her, to be clear!" was itself spoilery, I just wanted to emphasize that there's no trigger warnings ahead or anything.)
I'm probably in the minority, but I loved Ep 1. This show does these sort of tone-poem episodes so well. And seeing young Carmy very clearly ENJOYING himself and being awed by what he gets to do and also so very good and capable that he's working in all these great places - my friend and I were laughing that he would obviously kill it at the Top Chef Mise en Place relay challenge - puts the current state of the restaurant and Carmy's flailing about to reinvent the menu right away in such contrast. Having seen the whole season, I think it sets up the thematic elements really nicely.
But man, I feel like every character on this show needs to find a therapist. And then everyone needs to hug Marcus.
Yeah, I was torn because it was a well-executed tone poem (I like that phrase), but I wish they would've spent that time teaching us something we didn't already know from both other seasons. Or at least not spending so MUCH time re-establishing things they had already pretty effectively baked into him. (And also obviously I haven't seen the whole season, so that retroactive context is missing for me.) But I agree it was beautiful. That first shot of the empty El tracks and then the train rushing down one side... even that was striking. -H
I also really liked the way they turned the FX logo into a gas flame- it was fairly subtle, but it was a nice... IDK, mindset-adjuster? click... click... FOOSH!
Heather! Your writing! "emotional hoarder who cannot let anything go, ever, even if it’s starting to block the exits and emits a weird smell"
We are halfway through EP4 and I don't know that it improves that much! We liked S1, LOVED S2 - especially Forks and Marcus' ep - but these eps so far feel pretty lazy, like almost AI generated.
I liked the first episode. It felt like meditation to me. The second episode was way way way too stressful. I watched the first 3 episodes in one night and had to take a break after that, so.... YMMV.
I moved from Chicago to London a year and half ago for work, and that B roll during the opening credits in the second episode made me so homesick that I almost cried.
I feel like if they traded in some of those "fucks" for "jagoff" it would be even slightly more authentic.
I watched the whole season in two sittings - I didn't like the beginning but softened toward the end.
Why is this show so stressful? ??????
It’s food!
Love you fug girls ❤️
I agree with this completely: "I really think they could have made “Tomorrow” a five-minute prelude to “Next.”"
My husband and I literally stopped watching Tomorrow halfway through. The music had a strange vibe and I think was looped over and over? It just started annoying both of us too much. And I knew I'd have your awesome recap, so thank you!
The Non Negotiables thing bothered me because he didn't consult anyone else on them? I'm not clear on what the ownership terms are, but is he really above everyone else to just unilaterally decide all of that?
I am also pretty much always on Richie's side now. Stay out of his dojo!
The "Fishes" episode was so intense I actually used the 30-second skip forward several times. I am sure as a result I missed "good" stuff, but I just couldn't take it. I got the gist of what I was supposed to get, I think. I totally get having to wash that away with something like "Home Alone."
I know I'm the cranky one leading the "not a comedy" brigade, but the one thing I will say is that Ayo is a brilliant comedian in her own right - performance and writing. It's so nice to see her get so much dramatic depth on this show - and totally agree her ability to reflect calm and yet let you know she's spinning inside is masterful. And in Ep 2, per usual, it's so often her (she?) who gets the line that makes you chuckle, like the ladder quip Heather highlighted when Syd responds, "it's not." She gets to do this awesome dramatic work while still engaging her wonderful comedic timing and expression. (But still, this show is not a comedy. :) )
I am genuinely starting to wonder why there hasn't been more of a movement for a four-quadrant award system: longform comedy, longform drama, shortform comedy, shortform drama. It would allow for a much better system of recognizing people's work.
It took me a week to get through that episode, it stressed me out so bad!
I am ever-grateful for your thoughtful and thorough recaps so I can enjoy this show without actually experiencing it! I can't take that level of stress.
Since this field is what I write about for a living, a few basic observations.
1) There absolutely are kitchens as stressful as this and chefs as awful as Joel McHale. That is definitely an old-school, militaristic, French-style approach where the chef is like a general. We all know lots of men and a few women like this.
2) That said, there are also kitchens run in a far more humane way, where staff input is welcome and the place is collaborative. Millennials and Gen Z don’t want to work in the old ways.
3) A person in Carmy’s position these days is as much a CEO/chief marketing officer as a cook. Sydney would play a much greater role in day-to-day operations. Even in making a transition, Carmy would be overseeing things, not micromanaging so much.
4) It’s nice to see Chicago. The places and people featured only skim the surface.
Just a friendly note - it's Carmy with a M, not a N.
Yes, Autocorrect had fun with his name.
I 100% described Episode One to my sis as an extended ‘Previously On’. Heh.
I liked it as a way to ease back into this world.
Thanks for the recaps!
Since I finally have a place to discuss this, does anyone have thoughts on what social class we're supposed to believe the Berzatto kids grew up in? Between the roughness of The Beef, the idea that Carmy being a high-end chef was striving, and the general vibe of all of the family friends, I really thought they were working class. But the house in Fishes, especially for Chicago, seemed very middle to upper middle class. I guess in my mind it just changes the tone of where the kids are now vs where they started (did the three kids overachieve by becoming a professional chef, a restaurant owner, and a bank worker, or were they supported through everything by family (and "uncle") money?)
As far as the Beef goes, their father started it, then ran it into the ground financially and took off from the business and family — and Mikey took it over. (Carmy tells this to Sydney in S2.)
Thank you for this detail! I had totally forgotten the order of events with the original restaurant.
Yeah, I don't over-think it. My parents bought our modest home in a non-fancy suburb; it was nice but we could never afford to move, wasn't a lot of extra $, I put myself through college. But I had relatives who were "rich" from marriage or different career choices...it was a mix, which is how I read this family.
But their house is absolutely in a fancy suburb. That is not an in-city-limits house. The show retconned their situation between seasons.
Chicago has never been an expensive place to live. They could easily have had family friends who were contractors and cut them deals. My grandparents were immigrants, but lived in a neighborhood with Frank Lloyd Wright homes.
But they very obviously live in the Evanston/ Wilmette border range, not in Oak Park. They're not even in Edgebrook, where my cousins now have an expanded-to-semi-palatial home via exactly that "family friends who are contractors" process.
This is like that scene in When Harry Met Sally where Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan drove in the wrong direction on LSD. People know the difference between neighborhoods and suburbs and the producers need to remember that.
I mean, and at least in that case everyone knew they did it for the good angle!!
In all seriousness, my suspicion is that the producer has Suburb Blindness and doesn't understand the nuances that people who have multi-generational roots in the area immediately see/ identify.
I saw somewhere that the house they used for filming was in Evanston, not Chicago proper. I'm not sure where it was meant to represent, but Chicago is a city that covers a pretty large geographic area, even more with the near suburbs. And house prices really vary over that area, so you can't really go off the overall appearance. My grandparents had a house that probably looked pricer than it actually was. I took the Berzatto family as squarely middle class and the fathers financial problems made things worse.
Oh dear, is the dad’s return imminent? Don’t answer that if you already know! -H
I have no idea! I'm only two episodes in as well. I thought there was a past reference in season 1 or 2 to his dad running the Beef restaurant into the ground and then leaving the family. And I took that to be an event that maybe reduced the family finances from whatever afforded them the house.
I feel like the show is going to pull out some epic stunt casting for Papa Bear and I am already dreading it.
We should start a betting pool. I feel like Bill Murray has to have top odds, and it doesn't even ring false since Oliver Platt is playing about a decade over his actual age.
Oh but that would be way too weird after Richie and Mikey’s story about meeting him. But my god I really could see it being him or Dan akroyd or some other second city guy.
I mean, If Bill Murray is playing a dude, he's not Bill Murray, he's just a dude who LOOKS like Bill Murray!
Why did I think the Dad was dead????! - J
I mean he might be! I was thinking about flashbacks!
Ooooooh that makes a ton of sense. It IS weird that we've never seen him. - J
Gene Wilder would be epic stunt casting
Ok I did a little digging and the house they filmed at is in Evanston (Thanks AHC!) and sold in 2016 for $1.1 million. I totally agree that the literal house/location is less important than the fact that the production team picked a pretty upper middle class house to film a pivotal "this is who this family is" scene. And socioeconomic backgrounds matter a lot in terms of the hierarchy in a kitchen - the show goes deep into the economic insecurity of a lot of the kitchen workers. I certainly know it's not the main thread of the series, but for me it adds some depth to the overall story to consider the background of each character.
The real answer, I think, is that the showrunner grew up in Park Ridge, which is not quite ever as nice as Evanston CAN be, but is more AVERAGELY nice overall, and thinks of itself as "Chicago" in the same way Evanston does, but befriended people from the actual city who worked at a similar restaurant to The Beef and liked their stories/ vibes and didn't really have the tools to parse out what was different between them. I genuinely don't think he understands that the characters he put on screen in the first season are slightly different people than the ones in season two.
I swear to god the show changed its mind between seasons and they didn't even realize it. The first season, the family was obviously comfortably blue collar brownstone-and-brick-bungalow Chicago-Chicago, fully inside city limits. The second season, they suddenly lived in Wilmette or the fancier bit of Evanston. They genuinely went from "doing slightly better than the folks on Shameless" to "side characters in a John Hughes movie." AND they got very squishy about Unc's being mob-connected, which he CLEARLY was in the first season, and almost as clearly WASN'T in the second.
Even more frustratingly, I can't find any acknowledgement in any interview that anyone involved in the show is even AWARE of having done it.
I did rewatch the first two seasons bc I'm obsessed with this show. Having said that, all of your points are entirely valid and I am on Team Richie for sure but he needs to leave the sandbox and emotional hoarding (excellent phrase), please. And my understanding from the Christmas ep was that Sarah Paulson and John Mulaney's characters are married, she invites Carmy to NY where she has "a couple of restaurants," and that's where he goes, gets his training at Daniel, stays at their apartment, and crashes like a redwood in their living room when he gets home, sans shower, etc. I had to watch the ep a second time before I reco'd Mulaney; I'm sure Paulson was too busy to cameo. Cactus Carmy is genius, btw.
I would love to get a glimpse of Carmy's CV to understand the timeline of this show better.
Especially given that flashbacks are from Daniel (NY), French Laundry (CA), noma (Copenhagen), Ever (Chicago), and wherever that colossal asshole menace played by Joel McHale is; that's a LOT of chef-hopping!
I'm almost certain that McHale is meant to be in NYC and am considerably less certain he's supposed to have been Carmy's last stop before coming back to Chicago, but I'm not entirely sure why I think that, and the show may actually have changed its mind about it.
IMO, his vibe is way more NYC than NoCal. ??
ALSO, McHale's character was at the Friends and Family dinner at The Bear in S2 finale, staring down Carm in the kitchen. Unless that was an apparition or something?
Yeah no that was Carmy having a freak out. They show that table again when he's not mid panic attack and it's another guy entirely.
I thought McHale is meant to be the chef at the French Laundry in CA...The kitchen looks right for it, and I just looked it up and apparently McHale confirmed his character is based on Thomas Keller (owner of French Laundry).
Except that there is a lovely exchange in a later episode (no spoilers!) where Carm is taught how to truss a chicken by an absolutely lovely man who I've read is actually Keller.
It's pretty clear the Copenhagen stint is a stage (complete with the same house boat accommodations and cat-feeding that Marcus had last season), because in the same episode Chef Terry at Ever (Olivia Colman) asks Carmy, "Have you ever been to Copenhagen?"
Maybe he came back from NYC to work at Ever and Chef Terry sent him to Copenhagen like he would later send Marcus. HUGMARCUS.org
Chef Terry had a previous place that closed before she rallied and opened Ever (as she explained to Richie when he staged there last season), so it's also possible that Carmy worked for her wherever that was. There really is little clarity!
On the question of The Bear being a comedy, I think it’s not but that also the categories also don’t fit how tv is made anymore. The Bear can be funny and also can also make you cry, and is often of the tensest shows on tv. Succession was a serious drama with similarly tense moments, but also made me laugh out loud plenty of times. I really think they should update it to half hour shows and one hour shows, or short form tv and long form tv. Just something that better encapsulates the way tv is made now.
Also, I don’t think you meant it this way at all, but I wanted to just gently defend that myself and many other people who ship Sydney/Carmy are capable of seeing men and women as friends. I love platonic male and female friendships. Abed and Annie. Harry and Hermione (when I read HP, obviously I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole now), Meredith and Alex. Penny and Sheldon. Don and Peggy. Phoebe and Joey. Toby and CJ. Will and Diane. Lucas and Haley. Leslie and Ron. Stefan and Lexi from the Vampire Diaries. Bojack and Diane. The Doctor and Donna. Sherlock and Joan from Elementary. I could go on, but all of these friendships are beautiful and wonderful and for me, purely platonic. I do see romantic chemistry between Sydney and Carmy and a connection that feels different to me than any of relationships I listed above, though no less rich or important. You don’t, which is great! TV is usually interpreted differently by people, that’s part of what makes media so fascinating to talk about and examine. I just wanted to gently push back at the idea that people who like this ship can’t see men and women as friendship or deserve the general mocking they’ve been getting in the press that they can’t conceptualize male and female friendship , because it’s important to me both as someone who has important ones in my own life, in her writing, and who has valued them in many different forms of media.
Sorry, rant over!! I’m so excited that you’re recapping The Bear. I love the show and your thoughts about the season. I can’t say a lot because I have watched the entire season, and I don’t want to spoil for anyone else he hasn’t, but I think that this is a great season for Marcus. I love what you noted
About his gentle energy, and his development and his relationship with the main cast really shined for me this season. I also think that Tina is wonderful this season, and I really love how they’ve developed character and her relationship with the community. I think I’m pretty mixed on this season overall, especially the back half, but there were also a lot of character moments and episodes I loved. I’m excited to hear your thoughts as we get further into the season.
Oh yes, I definitely wasn’t saying that all the people who love Syd and Carmy don’t believe men and women can be friends. I just a) love any and all excuse to bring up that movie, and b) I think it IS sadly a rare thing to see on TV, and since I don’t PERSONALLY see any romantic chemistry there, I don’t want them to force it because the friend/colleague chemistry is so good. -H
Yes! That makes total sense. It is unfortunately a lot rarer than it should be. Lol I think I was just feeling a bit defensive because of the many articles being like stop shipping them/you’re deranged for shipping them and it came out here, so apologies for that haha.
No apology necessary! And I would never want you to feel uncomfortable openly shipping someone here, so if I made you feel that way, I'm so sorry -- even if we don't agree, everyone please 'ship whoever you want!
Oh gosh, no, you didn’t at all! It’s definitely just the internet echo chamber and probably everything else not Bear related going on in the world getting to me lol
150 percent agreed with your rant. I think the whole thing is part of a push-pull as we settle into new social dynamics--there's completely rightful pushback on the concept that women and men can never just be friends, but then sometimes the pendulum swings too far in the direction of "why are you shipping them, can't you just let women and men be friends (eyeroll)." It's the same tension between "men should have deep, meaningful platonic friendships with each other, get rid of toxic masculinity" and "people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community don't get enough representation," both of which are true.
We need to have all of them: strong and healthy m/f romances, strong and healthy m/m romances, strong and healthy f/f romances, strong and healthy friendships between women and men and men and men and women and men and non-binary folks, all of it.
(Also I'd add Jake and Rosa to that list!)
Not entirely on the subject, but I just want to say I've had a crush on Oliver Platt since forever, ad I wish there were more scenes with him.
I too have a crush on Oliver!!
Ditto. He's like a more elegant John Goodman.
I also adore John Goodman! And yet, my ideal man remains a young Keith Richards. Must be the energy.
Props to the music supervisors on the show, because the music cues are great, especially this season (and they obviously splashed out a bit). Also, I don't know why it took me until the first episode of this season to clock that The Bear is another credit in Trent Reznor's long second act as film and TV composer.
I've watched the whole season (I'm rewatching two at a time before your recaps), and I found it pretty mixed, but enjoyed it overall. The cameo-palooza is even greater than in Season 2, and gets to be a bit much, and there are some parts that didn't work for me, but others I found effective, and affecting. (Incidentally, I rewatched the first two seasons before this one dropped, but I skipped "Fishes," the Christmas ep, because I hated it the first time; I thought JLC's performance was way too OTT, among other things.)
I agree! In fact, I think it was the score that made S3 E1 so unsettling. The music was placid and lovely, but there was a bass line full of minor key tension and urgency. It made me too nervous to look away!
You all -especially Heather and Jessica- are going to laugh at me for this, but the first episode sent me down a major research spiral over the weekend, because, nestled lovingly among all of the glowingly misted produce and herbs in Redzepi's putative culinary garden, the show gave us, at 11:16, a full on lingering closeup of what caused me to shriek, jolting the cat off my lap, "is that FOXGLOVE?!" (aka one of the first indications you might see that a friend is cultivating a "poison garden")
After 25 minutes of googling "flowers that can be mistaken for foxglove" and vice versa, and determining that, in fact, none of the common mis-identifications looked at all like what had been onscreen, I asked a friend of mine who's obsessed with high-end dining and has sous-chef'd (that looks weird) at a handful of Michelin 2-stars in Germany whether foxglove/ digitalis has some secret culinary (as opposed to medicinal) use I was unaware of, a la pufferfish. He laughed at me, and agreed the flower looked like foxglove. He DID note that it's attractive to pollinators, so it's possible that it would be included in a culinary garden to boost production of other plants.
I then sent a screengrab to a friend who's a botanist for L.A. County, who thought the flower was likely to be foxglove, but "doesn't specialize in ornamentals." I then turned to a college classmate who's a botanist at the NY Botanical Garden. She agreed that the flowers looked more like foxglove than anything else, but that the arrangement on the stem was odd (this is true, it looks like someone removed every other bloom). She is planning to survey her colleagues this week to see if anyone has a solid identification (her theory was "they bought some generic garden footage and screwed up, it happens all the time").
All three people suggested that it was an indication of an upcoming plot point, which (SPOILER ALERT) it is not, unless said plot will occur in season four.
EDITING TO UPDATE: Officially confirmed by the broader NY Botanical Garden botanist staff as indeed being foxglove.
Anyway, all that aside, I absolutely agree that Carmy and Syd have basically zero sexy chemistry, and quite frankly, neither do Carmy and Claire. I want Carmy to get his shit together, but that does not really include his romantic life at this point, because frankly he's still just a time bomb, emotionally speaking.
Morgan, I love you. -H
Aw. Likewise! Thank you for indulging my perplexed irritation. I just expect the narratives that advertise themselves as having fetishistic attention to certain kinds of details to actually HAVE that fetishistic attention!
I want to be clear that I, too, love Morgan! - J
RECIPROCATED FULLY.
Oh my god, my German friend (whom Jessica has met) just messaged me, since I told him the NYBG had confirmed our thoughts: 'I asked Redzepi himself and he says he has to go watch The Bear now again because he missed that. Called it "dangerous.'"
Amen on your thoughts about Carmy and Claire. I hate any time a show acts like a love interest can "fix" what's wrong with a character. Frankly, even if I thought that Carmy and Claire are a compelling couple, she deserves so much better than him at his worst. He has got to get his shit allllllll together before he should even think about pursuing her again, not because he doesn't deserve love, but because they both deserve to be in a relationship that is on better footing.
A+ research. Plants are fascinating but it never even occurred to me that there might be something NEFARIOUS afoot and now I want to spin out an entire alternate show where Carmy secretly poisons a celebrity chef each week.
The Bear/ OMITB mashup we didn't know we needed!!!
Long running joke in my family that if there's ever a question about something weird, I always know someone to ask. Oh, this little carving we found in my grandma's stuff is supposedly a kingfisher? I have an author who wrote a whole book on kingfishers, let me ask her about it. I admire that you took this question to multiple specialists. Real commitment!
I have Chicago qualities and Minnesota qualities, and one of my Chicago qualities is a preference for always Knowing A Guy (non-gender-specific), lol.
"I want Carmy to get his shit together, but that does not really include his romantic life at this point, because frankly he's still just a time bomb, emotionally speaking."
I'm a Sydcarmy shipper and I completely agree. There's a spoiler spoiler spoiler thing that happens later on (he doesn't do anything bad to her, to be clear!) that really proves that Carmy needs to work on himself before he hooks up with anybody.
(Side note: more competent successful therapists on TV and in movies, please!)
(Also, apologies if "he doesn't do anything bad to her, to be clear!" was itself spoilery, I just wanted to emphasize that there's no trigger warnings ahead or anything.)
I already watched the full thing (and not NOT to find out if the foxglove came back into play, lol), no worries on my account, at least.
The foxglove was SO obvious, but I didn’t clock that it was poisonous until you said so.
A very odd thing for "Redzepi" to have in his "culinary garden"!
you have cool friends!!
I do, I'm very lucky!!
I'm probably in the minority, but I loved Ep 1. This show does these sort of tone-poem episodes so well. And seeing young Carmy very clearly ENJOYING himself and being awed by what he gets to do and also so very good and capable that he's working in all these great places - my friend and I were laughing that he would obviously kill it at the Top Chef Mise en Place relay challenge - puts the current state of the restaurant and Carmy's flailing about to reinvent the menu right away in such contrast. Having seen the whole season, I think it sets up the thematic elements really nicely.
But man, I feel like every character on this show needs to find a therapist. And then everyone needs to hug Marcus.
Yeah, I was torn because it was a well-executed tone poem (I like that phrase), but I wish they would've spent that time teaching us something we didn't already know from both other seasons. Or at least not spending so MUCH time re-establishing things they had already pretty effectively baked into him. (And also obviously I haven't seen the whole season, so that retroactive context is missing for me.) But I agree it was beautiful. That first shot of the empty El tracks and then the train rushing down one side... even that was striking. -H
I also really liked the way they turned the FX logo into a gas flame- it was fairly subtle, but it was a nice... IDK, mindset-adjuster? click... click... FOOSH!