The Bear on Hulu Deep Dive Walkthrough Explanation. It’s rare that my brain lights up quite this much over a show. I’m not a huge fan of the commitments and effort necessary to watch the entirety of a serial. But, I have a buddy, who began opening, and then closing every text something like this. “Have you watched The Bear yet? Hey, how’s it going? Do you want to catch lunch on the 22nd when I’m in town? By the way, have you watched The Bear yet?” And that is how he started his full-court press, it only got worse from there. And, literally, to get this guy OFF MY proverbial back… I watched one episode. Well, with The Bear, if you watch that first nitroglycerin filled first episode? Yeah, there’s no looking back. It’s out of control. And I just couldn’t get enough. I think I watched all 8 eps over the course of 18 hours. Sleep? Who needs any of that? So, be careful, and strategic if you decide you need to watch ep1, because it might just wrecking ball your life.
But dang… I loved everything about it. Did you watch Fleabag season one and two? I mean. Fleabag had a taste and feel all its own. Really hard, and extremely edgy. But if you can identify with that kind of entertainment… which, man, can I? Yes please, and thank you. But it’s not going to be for everyone. That is FOR SURE. I will be very careful about who I recommend The Bear too, as I am careful about who I recommend Fleabag to.
The Bear season 1 walkthrough and discussion…
Episode 1 – System
We open the show with Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) returning back home to manage the family’s restaurant, The Original Beef. Why? It isn’t immediately clear, but soon we realize that Carmy’s brother committed suicide and left the restaurant to him in his will. And this is really problematic solely because Carmy won the James Beard Award, and is a world-renowned chef in his own right. But his new restaurant is a seedy, backwater, local spot, and it is totally different than the way he has learned to make food. The team at his new restaurant are not interested, at all, whatsoever. “Don’t change what ain’t broken.” and they hate him for his insensitive intrusions. Enter Sydney Adamu, an enormous fan of Carmy’s who is determined to help him in his goal.
Episode 2 – Hands
As the episode opens, we see via flashback, Carmy working at an ultra-elite fine dining restaurant in New York. But we also watch as his boss belittles him perpetually – and the chaos and hellscape that that experience must have been like. Post nightmare, we see that the staff at his new restaurant are still angry at the changes he is attempting to make. Carmy’s sister, Sugar, makes an effort with Carmy but he just can’t have any of it. When a surprise health inspection ends up giving them a C rating, everything spirals the drain. Everyone assumes that it is Richie’s fault for leaving his smokes out. To top it off, Carmy starts to realize just how poorly his brother had been managing his restaurant financially. When it proverbially rains, it proverbially pours. Cicero, who holds $300k of debt on the business, offers to buy it, but Carmy refuses… and in so doing agrees to pay back his brother’s debt.
Episode 3 – Brigade
Sugar has been pressuring Carmy to attend an Al-Anon meeting due to the ripples and chaos of their brother being a drug addict. And so he finally goes. And Molly Ringwald makes an appearance, I have no idea what she said, or why she said it, I was so starstruck to see her again. Anyway, back at the restaurant, Carmy introduces a new system entitled a Brigade, which requires Sydney to run the line like a military general, which sends her over the edge. After initial failures, surprisingly, little by little, the staff begins to connect to their new roles, particularly Marcus, the passionate baker. But even so – Carmy and Sydney continue clashing over how to best run the restaurant.
Episode 4 – Dogs
Carmy and Richie cater a children’s birthday party for Cicero. In the funniest twist of the entire season, Carmy creates a homemade Ecto cooler… which accidentally gets spiked with Richie’s Xanax and puts all the children to sleep on the lawn. (You’d think someone would check pulses or something? hahah.) But thankfully, Cicero just laughs it off. Meanwhile, Sydney bonds with the restaurant staff and begins to earn their respect. Marcus becomes passionate about his new chocolate cake program… which is good for the restaurant.
Episode 5 – Sheridan
Carmy and Sydney agree to create a new dinner menu to decrease costs and hopefully drive up profits. And just as they are preparing to open – a toilet explosion wipes out the entire restaurant in a flood. Fak, a general handyman, helps fix the problem as he does with any mechanical break at the restaurant… but he ultimately wants to become a chef. So Richie interviews him and it ends up in a fight that Carmy has to break up. And at the end of it, Fak tells Richie that he’s been selling cocaine out back. Richie’s position is that the drug money got them through Covid… but you know. And he promises to stop. When Marcus’ cake push blows a fuse, everything stops. A $5k bill requires Carmy to let Richie sell drugs out back one final time to cover it.
Episode 6 – Ceres
Now, ever the planner, Sydney creates a risotto for their new dinner menu. Carmy thinks it’s good, but it’s not ready yet… he rejects it. So Sydney hands it out to a random customer (which comes back to haunt them next episode). Sugar’s house is on the line with regard to the business’ back taxes, and so she comes looking for the details around salary details. Marcus moves on from cakes to doughnuts, but it causes all his restaurant responsibilities to fall behind. The restaurant has its windows shot out by stray gunfire, and Richie asks the local gangsters to find out who did it. Later, the gangsters get into a scuffle, which Sydney breaks up by offering them leftovers; Richie feels left out and unneeded because of Sydney’s success and ultimately he calls the cops on the gangsters.
Episode 7 – Review
Ebraheim reads aloud a new review of the restaurant which gives it a good appraisal, with especially high regards for the risotto dish which Sydney gave to the reviewer as a kind gesture. This one detail sets EVERYONE off and now Sydney is to blame for everything that goes wrong in this episode as a result. Tina’s son got suspended so she brings him to the diner to learn culinary skills. The pre-order machine got left on, that and the good review they got, blow up the orders for the day and sends everything into a downward spiral. Marcus? He’s still working on his doughnut holy grail… and as a result, Carmy blows up on Sydney and Marcus. And in a hilarious turn, Sydney accidentally stabs Richie in the butt, and ultimately announces that she quit. And Carmy? He’s spiraling the drain mentally.
Episode 8 – Braciole
Carmy attends another Al-Anon meeting and shares how he got into the restaurant business because his brother never let him work at The Beef. It is a phenomenal, single shot take, and is really the pinnacle of the season from actor Jeremy Allen White. Sydney and Marcus hang out together to discuss their futures after they both suddenly quit in the previous episode. At the restaurant, they host a bachelor party that explodes into a fight, and ends up with Richie being charged with aggravated assault. Which, is lucky, because there was a chance it would have been manslaughter. Marcus comes back to his role, and Carmy apologizes.
Earlier in the show, Carmy told a story about previously causing a stove fire at another job, and how for a split second, he just stood there watching… thinking that if he let it burn, all his problems would burn up with them. And here it happens again, he starts a fire at the restaurant and he just stands there transfixed, as other people put it out. Richie breaks down and hands Carmy the letter that he found from Michael to Carmy but didn’t give him. In it – he is told that he loves him – and gives him the family’s spaghetti recipe. When Carmy starts to make it, he opens the specific sauce cans that Michael recommended he use, and in it, he finds a large wad of bills. Carmy closes the restaurant and they spend the morning opening cans and finding more money. In the middle of the scrum, Sydney returns after Carmy had apologized to her via text. He then recommends she needs an acid for her risotto dish. A sign that he is willing to run her dish in the dinner menu. And as the season ends, Carmy puts a sign up in the window announcing The Beef is closing, and that they will be opening a new restaurant entitled The Bear soon.
The Bear Season 1 Discussion
What flips my switches about shows like this one is the existential crisis’s that arise in the midst of the chaos expressed here. Do I let it all burn down? Or do I put the fire out? When I put the fire out, am I making the situation worse? Or is it getting better in some small way? Why am I struggling so horribly in this situation? Is it really worth it? What am I doing here, and could this possibly get any worse than it already is?
We know that the show is about a restaurant. But the thing that this show is LEAST about, is the restaurant. What do you do when you know that the thing you are discussing isn’t the thing that you are discussing? That is what is going on here with The Bear. Carmy is running for his life… running for acceptance. Running for love. Diving into the arms of pretty much anything he can that will get the eye of his brother whom he adores. And that guy? He committed suicide. So NOW WHAT? So now? He’s going to show his dead brother, and his cousin, and his brother’s employees, that he can not only win in New York… he can also win with these people that loved his brother. It’s really quite sad. But it is the human condition. It is our lives. Sure, we might have just accidentally almost burnt our business to the ground… but we are trying to impress someone for some reason, and we probably don’t even know that we are doing it.
Anyway, I connected with the angst, the drive, and the existential crisis that this show blossomed in my chest. It is a perfect show and the only negative I can even think of mentioning about it is that it was only 8 episodes. But I am hearing that Season 2, which is due out in June, will be 10. I think so anyway and which, I cannot wait for. If however this isn’t your dish, know that I understand! Trust me. I get it. And consider yourself lucky for not being tormented by these particular demons.
I will say this, there are two other things I’d recommend if you really enjoyed this. 1. The Menu. More meta than The Bear… but really flaming good. and 2. Boiling Point. Both about food, and both hard edged just like this show. Oh, and 3. Fleabag, but I already mentioned that.
Edited by: CY
