As is the case with a lot of recent television series, season 1 of The Bear left Chef Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and his ragtag kitchen family at what could’ve been an ending. After a tumultuous and often uncomfortable period of transition in the wake of his brother’s suicide, the era of Mikey Berzatto’s (Jon Bernthal) The Original Beef of Chicagoland came to a close with the promise of Carm’s own restaurant, The Bear, on the horizon. It felt like an emphatic period to such a well-written sentence of a season that any continuation would be doomed. At best, to go on would certainly throw off the delicate chemistry of the meal like an acrid, scorched ingredient added to the recipe. But then Season 2 dropped on June 22, and creator Christopher Storer made it clear that season 1 was but a prologue to an even richer story .
Picking up shortly after the finale of season 1, Carm, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), and Natalie (Abby Elliott) drill down into the frighteningly deep list of repairs, renovations, and replacements required to open up The Bear with Mikey’s found money. With the disrepair so profound, even their windfall is not enough, and they go to Uncle Cicero (Oliver Platt) with an all-or-nothing pitch: The restaurant will open in three months, and “Unc” will get his money back in 18 months – and if he doesn’t, they’ll repay the loan by transferring the property to him. And just like that, The Bear begins its countdown to launch, with concrete stakes for everyone invested in making the new venture a success.
Rather than crafting the entire season around that pressure cooker of a deadline, Storer chooses a more substantive and character-focused path. Yes, the hard deadline serves as a throughline across all 10-episodes of Season 2, as everyone desperately pushes through a comedic litany of permit snafus and construction disasters. But the real meat on the bone of this season is how every employee of the restaurant embraces their role,leveling up their attitudes and skill sets to be best prepared for this new phase of their professional lives. For Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson), it’s being paid to go back to basics and receive formal training; for Nat, it’s accepting the fraught production manager position. Baker Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is sent to Copenhagen to study under expert pastry chef Luca (Will Poulter). Syd throws herself into crafting a “chaos menu” and learning about teamwork from the autobiography of storied Duke men’s basketball coach Mike “Coach K” Krzyzewski. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) seeks his purpose, and Carmy stumbles messily in discovering how to fit a life into his work.
Storer lets each of them simmer all season long in their personal anxieties, self-doubts, and moments of quiet accomplishment. When Carm stealthily assigns his crew to distinctly curated tours of elevated kitchens, cuisines, and culinary personalities, he’s methodically wiping out the toxic environment that shaped his three-Michelin-star existence, swapping it with places where he studied and absorbed different ways of doing things. It’s the same incredible standards, but with more generous spirits. In turn, every character (even Matty Matheson’s goofball Fak) returns to The Bear similarly impacted and ready to face the opening transformed.
Storer’s signature, intimate style of framing his actor’s faces in extremely tight shots or in slow pushes that capture a variety of deep, naturalistic conversations leaves no room for anything cloying or mawkish in the frame. The whole ensemble gets a chance to shine, giving soulful performances that fill in the background gaps left open in season 1. The food and city of Chicago get equally reverential framing too. The sloppy sandwiches of season 1 are gone, and there’s a kaleidoscope of gorgeous food prep and photography that speaks volumes about why these people are so passionate about the pursuit of good eating.
But it’s not all just genteel growth. There’s plenty of fussing and fighting between Richie and well, everyone, and even between Carm and Syd. And halfway through, "Fishes” – a flashback to a particularly incendiary Berzatto family holiday dinner – arrives like an emotional powder keg. It’s a one-hour play that Italians, like me, will recognize with terror. And for everyone else, it’s a master class of acting featuring the most A-list of guest stars who, together, tell you everything you need to know about why this family is so dysfunctional.
The Bear season 2 is television’s version of fine dining. The season’s success is built on the skills of Storer, his writers, and his incredible cast coming together to make something authentic, rich, and meaningful. For all their bluster and emotional walls, there’s a kindness and grace to each of the characters trying to clean up their messes and be something better together. After feeling like The Bear had no more story to tell, I’ve learned my lesson: I’ll eat whatever Storer and company serve up, no questions asked.
