Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Let me start off by saying that I know how it looks to critique the female romantic interest from a show that centers around a very attractive man who the internet has been thirsting over for years. I get it. And when “Claire from The Bear sucks” first came to my mind, I took a step back to see if I had some internalized misogyny to unpack. have since come to the conclusion that no, it isn’t me that sucks, it’s Claire – and it’s not even really Claire, it’s the uninspired and lazy writing that went into creating her character, a surprising misstep for what is otherwise one of the best TV shows of the summer.
Claire, portrayed by Molly Gordon, is introduced in the final moments of the second episode “Pasta” in the second season of the popular FX drama. She is revealed to be an old friend of Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) and the two instantly have palpable chemistry – as well as a pair each of soulless, yet endearing blue eyes. Through intimate camerawork and sneaky smiles, a softer side of the troubled chef is revealed and, for the first time, we see him interacting with someone who isn’t employed by him nor is considered his family.
Turns out, he’s a normal guy after all! Carmy isn’t all shouting, designer jeans, and heart-racing nightmares – he can hold a normal conversation with a normal person that has nothing to do with his late brother or his never-good-enough business. But, unfortunately, in this season, that’s the only purpose Claire seems to hold, effectively reducing her to 2023’s most irritating manic pixie dream girl.
So fine, Claire is soft and quiet, and safe, and also does wacky things like drag Carmy to a party full of people who hardly seem to know her, just so they can sit in a corner and console her sobbing best friend, who doesn’t even seem to want to be at the party – fine. But what else do we know about her? Well, she’s a doctor, which we see through a short montage of her leaving the hospital after a rough day. She’s had a crush on Carmy since they were in high school before they grew apart. And she seems to have an adversity to Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who makes her full-body cringe when he goes to hug her while she’s visiting the restaurant, and later tells him that his ex-wife’s new boyfriend is “pretty great.” But honestly, that’s it. The rest of her time on screen is dedicated to artful, lingering looks and directionless conversations with her new beau that never go beyond banter.
Aside from bringing Carmy out of his shell, it appears that Claire had no other purpose in the new season, which is a shame given the show’s other female characters, who are deeply developed and not explicitly posed as love interests. That’s exactly what a manic pixie dream girl is: it’s a female character who exists only to serve the lead male character through the creator’s fever-dream perception of women and their ability to “fix” whatever problem their lover is going through. And along the way, the character has to be appealing, accommodating, and supportive. It’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo nonsense that often results in an utterly unrealistic storyline and character. That’s Claire, down to her seemingly barely going to her job so she can spend time plussing up Carmy’s life.
In one episode, she witnesses a major showdown while Carmy is trying to show her around the kitchen, and he ultimately ends up yelling at Richie, his sister and the restaurant’s new manager Natalie (Abby Elliot), and his business partner Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). In the middle of the heated discussion, Claire makes her presence known by muttering a brief introduction to the group, despite her knowing everybody there but Sydney. The decision was baffling and made little sense in the grand scheme of things. Then, later in the season, Carmy is trying to explain his feelings towards her, which are conflicted given his struggles with mental health and the pressures of opening an entirely new restaurant. She simply tells him not to apologize. In the same scene, she asks Carmy to explain what a fire suppression test is, and unhelpfully responds, “That sounds really serious…”
Also, there’s the trouble Claire innocently stirs between Carmy and everybody else: Sydney gets upset numerous times throughout the season for Carmy prioritizing his relationship over the restaurant, and Richie and Carmy’s explosive fight in the finale is sparked by Claire’s tearful exit after she overhears Carmy’s warped perception of love while he’s locked in a walk-in freezer during his opening night. It’s chaos. It’s complete chaos, and she plays an inadvertent role in everything, including Carmy’s newly expressed belief that he doesn’t deserve love or happiness or any of the sweet, gushy feelings Claire gave him. And as sad as this is, I think it’s even sadder that he could’ve fully gotten there without the assistance of Claire.
Following Gordon’s run in the series, memes immediately began surfacing on the same topic with many using Delaney Rowe’s online series about female characters written by men as an example of the role Claire played in the overall series. One of the videos has on-screen writing that reads “an absolutely insufferable female lead of an indie movie explains why she loves rainy days,” and shows Rowe – with a similar wide-eyed look and expressive body language as Claire – going off on nonsensical tangents, saying things like, “I like that it [the rain] washes everything away.” Others are feeling less ha-ha about the portrayal with one Twitter user writing, “Is Claire from The Bear written as a manic pixie dream girl to convey that Carmy is romanticizing her or did TV writers really earnestly portray a woman like that in 2023?” Again, dare I say, I’m just as confused as you are after spending the whole season waiting for a “gotcha” moment that never came?
My only hope is that the writing of Claire was intentional, either to emphasize how left-field Carmy felt in their relationship or to remind us that the chef is an unreliable narrator, who, like all of us, has a limited perspective of people based on his own experiences. Who knows? All I know is that creator Chris Storer has already made it clear that he knows how to write dynamic women in his series, especially given Tina’s inspiring Season 2 storyline, so I’m hoping his intentions are made more clear in future seasons of the series.
As a shameless shipper of all the core characters on The Bear, maybe the intention was to portray Carmy and Claire as unattainable and unrealistic, bringing the focus back to Carmy and Sydney, who have a few intimate moments throughout the season. That table scene? When Carmy thought of meeting Sydney when he was having a panic attack? Friendship or romantic, that’s true love, baby. Meanwhile, Claire’s notes didn’t hit and there was much left to be desired regarding her relationship with Carmy and overall role in the series. But given the show’s sudden — and quite confusing — detour from its noteworthy characters, we’re ready to toss this flat character out. And given her tearful exit in the final episode, we’re hoping Storer and Gordon feel the same way.
