The Bear Season 3
Hey everyone and welcome, today we will be talking about season 3 of The Bear. Fun Fact, Matty Matheson who plays Fak and is a producer on the show is actually a chef in real life. This season came out in 2024 and stars Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach and was created by Christopher Storer. So without further ado let’s get right into it.
The Bear Follows Carmen aka Carmy aka Bear who is set on getting a Michelin star after turning his brother’s beef sandwich shop into a fancy restaurant. While dealing with this he is also dealing with family trauma and PTSD from working at some kitchens.
The Bear is a show that is classified as a comedy-drama and I often forget that there is comedy in it based on how stressed it makes me. It has similar vibes to Hell’s Kitchen, Succession, or Whiplash.
The Bear is a show that will stress you out, oddly enough it makes the episodes go by super quick. This season was all dropped in one day and my one complaint is I wish they stuck with weekly drops to spread out the stress and I feel like it gives the show more room to breathe and people more time to sit with the episodes.
Jeremy Allen White plays Carmy aka Bear, which I don’t know if that was made clear in prior seasons but the nickname Bear came up and I was like oh hence the title of the show. He is very intense and struggles a lot from past trauma and is trying to be the best but that still doesn’t justify his actions. He created a ridiculous list of non-negotiables that was just unrealistic, one of them was daily menu changes which did nothing but cause tension. I was actually surprised no one hit him with a pan this season with the way he was talking to people. He is the type of person that blows up on you and then apologizes but at some point, the apologies start meaning less and less. For his chefs they kind of take it and maybe push back but others, like Claire decide that it’s probably better to stay away from him.
I loved how the show let us see bits of his past and most of the time just gave us visuals without much dialogue to take it in and see how it affects him today. His family life more specifically his mom seemed to cause him so much mental stress because of her narcissism and you can tell how that was something that has been carried with him. From his past, we see how even though he is a great chef and uses skills he learned from other great chefs, he has also taken some of the bad habits from some of his teachers and mimicked those. I’m glad he confronts the Chef who caused him so much pain and the guy doesn’t even apologize but says he should thank him. Carmy is a great chef but this man needs to seek a therapist.
Ayo Edibiri not only acted as Sydney this season but also directed the Tina-focused episode. Ayo swept all the awards last year and watching this season proves why. Sydney is being pressured to become a partner in this restaurant and is given a contract to sign but is unsure if she wants to sign her life away. With Carmy’s constant blow-ups and the constant family arguing she understandably questions it and it doesn’t help that she gets an offer from someone else that is better but even with all the pain and stress of working at The Bear, it’s how she even got in a position to be able to field offers of running a kitchen and these ppl have become like a family to her. Sydney faces that dilemma where sometimes holding on just causes you more pain and the decision is stressing her out and in the last episode of the season she has a breakdown but we don’t know what the plan is for her future.
Natalie is Carmy’s sister and co-owner played by Abby Elliott who gets a lot of screen time this season. She is having a baby while handling more of the operations side of things which is difficult when Carmy has all these great ideas but doesn’t think of money and Nat has to make it work. For Carmy, I feel like Nat is not the stepmother but the mother who stepped up. Their mother failed them and in one of the sweetest scenes in episode one Nat gives him money and even though he refuses to take it she hides it in his jacket. You could always tell they were close because she looks out for him and in flashbacks, you see that she also called to let him know about his brother. It was sad that when she actually needed someone no one answered and as much as she hated it, she had to call her mother and it showed how nearly anyone else would have been preferred.
When Nat has her baby her mom Donna is there and that episode made me annoyed because Donna doesn’t know how to read the room, she only wants to listen to herself. Throughout the season we see how Nat doesn’t want her baby to be like her mom and that is one of the main stresses for her and it’s highlighted in this episode. Donna does have some good tips but she also stresses out Nat which in that moment the last thing you want is someone stressing you out.
Lionel Boyce plays Marcus Brooks who I often feel is an underrated part of the team as the pastry chef. His mom died at the end of the season before and he’s dealing with that but I love seeing how he has such an interest in different baking recipes that he finds in Carmys old notebooks and on his own time he practices these recipes and perfects them. As a black man who has always had an interest in baking and finds it oddly relaxing i just really enjoy Marcus and his willingness to always try something and perfect the recipe and when he notices a problem, he has an idea of what the solution can be to make the next batch better. Marcus is probably one of the chillest people on the show and he is often left out of the screaming which is great. I love that even after all he’s been through he has the support of the team and while he doesn’t like to talk about his grief they talk to him about it in different ways which lets him not only see the negative side of grief.
One scene I loved this season that involved Marcus even though he was not there was when Computer was telling Nat that he was disposable to save money. I think it was one of my favorite line deliveries of the season because Natalie tells Computer, I respect you, and I’ve known you for years but if you fuck with Marcus I will murder you. It was nice to seethat even through all the angst and arguing, they were still a family who showed up for each other whether present or not.
Oliver Platt plays Cicero also known as uncle who has a close relationship with the Berzatto siblings and is the key investor and father figure. He’s one of the people I feel can truly reel in Carmy and be like hey you’re spending too much money and being an asshole. I think he understands how stressed Carmy is but also has to remind him that there is money on the line, his. He has a bad deal in which he loses money and he doesn’t tell Carmy but that really leaves the fate of the restaurant up in the air. One scene with him that I loved is when he is talking to Syd and he’s saying how he wishes he could’ve done more for the Berzatto kids financially and Syd reminds him that yea money is great but the important thing was that he was present. He has a friend named computer who manages his finances this season who is not my favorite but it was interesting to see him try to balance the logic of computer with the love he has for Carmy and his restaurant dreams.
Counsin aka Richie is played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and its always amazing to see how much character growth he has had over the seasons. In this season we get more time to see how co-parenting is something that is working for him but how losing his ex is still something he’s not over and he is being pressured to go to her wedding. One scene that was sad to me was him asking Nat if he should back out of his daughter’s life so he doesn’t confuse her because of his ex’s fiance also being around. You can tell there is no ill will for Richie and he wants what’s best for his daughter and he just doesn’t know what that is and Natalie tells him that this is not the answer to that problem.
Since season one he and Carmy have clashed which seems to stem from the fact that Richie was always at the beef and spent so much time around his brother Mikey and knew how to run things and while they were financially doing bad everyone loved the place and the sandwich and with Carmy, he comes in trying to change so much and has a lack of respect for the past and cousin isn’t afraid to push back. There is a whole episode with them pretty much arguing the entire time and I was like wow this is a lot of yelling and then more and more people come in and just watch. I love how Richie manages the front-of-house operations and how when we see him talking to his employees he treats them with respect and doesn’t talk to them like a boss but more like a peer and has empathy with them. I just really liked to see how over the course of the show he has become more mature.
Tina has been one of my favorite characters on this show who is played brilliantly by Liza Colon-Zayas and last season she got time to shine and this season she got even more time to shine. Tina’s growth over the seasons starting with her constantly challenging Syd to now welcoming her help and mentorship is something I love to see. Tina is someone you would want to work with because while she is stubborn, she will take time to learn something, perfect it, and you won’t have to worry about it. I will say that Tina is too hard on herself but I think Syd reminds her it's okay to make mistakes and we can go through it again even when Carmy is acting a fool. She does farmer market runs and through her we see how all these farmers are struggling because of a lack of growing produce. I love how Tina still gets some stuff and experiments to see what she can do with it.
We get an episode about Tina titled Napkins which is also directed by Ayo and it’s one of the best this season. Tina is a character I always wanted to know more about and in this episode, we get how she ended up at the beef. At first, I thought she was working 2 jobs and then I was like wait her hair is different and this doesn’t seem like the present timeline in the show. We see how Tina gets laid off and she’s struggling to find a job which eventually leads her to have a breakdown in The Beef and after a conversation with Mikey, he offers her a job. This episode showed how you can give so much time and effort to a company and they can drop you quickly, how hard it is for Tina who is in her 40s which isn’t old but some companies are resistant to hiring people in that age range, how companies want degrees to do stuff that doesn’t need degrees, how with technology changes for those who don’t have experience with online job boards and did cold delivery of resumes have to adapt or get left behind, and how easy it is to get discouraged after you feel that you’ve been doing everything right with no luck. I loved seeing it through Tina’s eyes and how as a parent and a spouse she felt she wasn't contributing and was failing her family even though she wasn’t because she was trying. It just further highlights how in a stressful situation like that finding a new job that will pay you what you are worth is hard and Tina really goes through it but what really pays off is her honesty.
The show gets labeled as a comedy sometimes and I often argue that it’s a Drama until I remember the Faks. Supposedly there are 9 of them but we mostly see Teddy and Neil with a small cameo from a new member we haven’t met before played by John Cena, and them together or apart leads to hilarious scenes. I think one of the funniest was Neil serving this deconstructed soup and the veggies were in the cup, the broth was on the side and he walked up with it on a tray explained what it was, and poured the broth into the veggies for the customer but then takes the food back with him to the kitchen and he’s so proud only for Carmy and Richie to tell him that you need to give the food to the customers. The Faks bicker a lot which sometimes is annoying just because they do it at the wrong time like when a photographer from a newspaper the restaurant is trying to impress is there but they are still fun to watch on screen.
The show is filled with so many Cameos from Jaimee Lee Curtis, John Mulaney, John Cena, Olivia Coleman, Will Poulter, and Josh Hartnett to name a few. One recurring Cameo that I’m always happy to see then i’m immediately sad about is Jon Bernthal as Mikey who we see in a lot of flashbacks. In every scene with him in it, you see why so many people love him and why they are so resistant to the change that Carmy tries to implement. He might not have been the most serious or made the best business decisions but he made people feel seen, helped so many, and was a joy to be around. He didn’t understand what Carmy was doing with his culinary pursuits sometimes but he always supported him. With all the family crap that went down, I think you need someone like Mikey but his character also highlights how even the person doing the most smiling and helping can still be struggling. I think the show does a great job of handling his death in a very respectable way and they make you love the character through the flashbacks but then you are sad when you get back to the present day and realize he is not there.
The show gives us a look this season at how getting a new restaurant off the ground is stressful while also showing how an iconic restaurant closing can be emotional for more people than expected. Besides running your kitchen and making sure the front-of-house is set you have to deal with reviewers when starting a new restaurant that can make or break you and you have no control over what they say. We see the stress that comes with that because as much as you would like to ignore it, you have to be mindful of how people perceive your restaurant since reviewers might influence customers. When it comes to closing a resturant they have a big dinner also called a funeral and you see all the people that the restaurant has helped during their career and how if you’re making a new restaurant it makes you nervous because if a restaurant that has been successful for so many years can shutter, what’s stopping yours from doing the same?
Rarely do I watch a show and the first episode sticks with me as much as the first episode of this season did. I don’t know if I was tired of talking to people or what but the lack of dialogue was just what I needed. It showed us Carmys journey starting with him leaving for New York and we got to see him have experiences with so many chefs that were positive and see the negative experience that he had with David Fields who it took me way too long to realize was Joel Mchale. It’s crazy to me how yo can have so many good experiences but you remember the one really bad one. Carmy seems to be battling even here how his family life has influenced him with the screaming and cursing and Chef Terry shuts it down and calls for silence. Chef Terry seemed like she saw the talent Carmy had but also could see he had been through so much. This episode helped to explain further the family dynamic, Carmys OCD, how he has so many connections, and show how cool and uncool it can be to be a chef. We see what happened when his brother died in real time which made me emotional all over again and see how Carmy couldn’t bring himself to go inside the funeral. It switches to the present as well to see how everyone is dealing with the events of the finale and how there is dysfunction in the kitchen. The episode was well-lit and pretty and we got to see some cool experiences new chefs go through not only with cooking but also with hand cleaning after service which is rough. One thing I was not expecting was for them to weave Sydney in the story about Carmys past but it was cool to see how she ate a dish of Carmys when he was a chef and she was just exploring her love of food.
I mentioned cameos before and one thing I failed to mention is while yes lots of great actor cameos the one other thing I found cool is that there are a lot of cameos from real-life chefs. It’s cool to see chefs in a show about chefs and restaurants. it’s a small detail but I found it fantastic to include some people who have to deal with these stresses all the time and give them a moment to shine.
The show has a lot of static shots and it really lets you sit with the scene and I noticed in most episodes we stay in one location for most of it. Both of these things really make the show even more stressful because it just makes you feel that you are in the moment with them where everyone is screaming or sad because you are sitting there with people and their grief. There are even some cool long shots where we see people going from the kitchen to the restaurant floor which I wasn’t expecting but I loved nevertheless. I think the way the show is filmed and the lighting really helps invoke the feeling they want and also lets you see why some of these places are considered fancy.
It was lovely to see how people are trauma-bonded in the last episode when they are all having dinner at Ever one last time and the party at Syds. Like these people may not have worked together but many of them went through similar situations. This is a perfect showing in my mind of how people make friends at work or with people in similar fields becuase you guys either have shared experiences or similar ones and I think the worse the experience, the more you remember them and increases the likelihood of them coming into conversation.
My favorite part of this season was the first episode and the one about Tina. I’ve spoken about these already so I won’t dive too deep but they both reminded me why I love the show and how seeing this restaurant run is interesting but seeing stories about the people working there is more interesting and really helps you understand them more.
The Bear season 3 is as stressful as ever but still has the emotional beats that will have you shedding a tear. The cast is amazing and even though I feel my blood pressure going up while watching, I am still super invested and love seeing these characters and what they have to go through. The season ends on a cliffhanger which has me wondering what’s next, so Hulu or FX go ahead and drop the next season.
