‘The Bear’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: “Fishes”

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The Bear Season 1’s 17-minute one-take episode,“Review,” with all its red-faced, butt-stabbing, insult-hurling, donut-throwing madness left most viewers emotionally drained for days after it aired. But that felt like watching a ballet compared to the star-studded collective nervous breakdown at the Berzatto family’s Christmas Eve dinner in The Bear Season 2 Episode 6 (“Fishes”). Even though I was pacing and squirming through most of the final ten minutes, it’s tough to conceive of another television episode this year — or possibly the next five years — as breathtaking as “Fishes” (aka The Berzattos). A quick summary of some of the backstory, which is all a flashback that takes place five years (or 256 weeks) before opening.

We find Sugar Nat and Jon Bernthal’s Mikey smoking cigarettes outside while Christmas music blares from inside the house. Carmy comes scurrying out and asks for help with “all these people” inside. Nat is being consoled by Mikey, who is reiterating to her, again, that she shouldn’t ask their mother if she’s okay because it sets her off. That’s all the setup we need really: inside is a mix of relatives and friends from the dysfunctional Berzatto family tree and their subsequent backstories all intermixing which gives us a all the clues we need to show us why everyone in the Berzatto clan is as fucked up as they are.

The Bear was scheduled to have many “special guest stars” this season, but I don’t think anyone expected them to all be paraded out on the Christmas Eve episode, Love Boat-style. In addition to the usual cast, we’re introduced to Bob Odenkirk’s angry Polish “uncle,” Lee Lane; then there’s Jamie Lee Curtis as Donna Berzatto mother to all three Bear kids. We have Gillian Jacobs as Cousin Richie’s ex-wife, Tiffany. Then there’s Cousin Michelle, played by Sarah Paulson, who is accompanied by her out-of-place, overly polite, mostly normal-seeming, boyfriend, Stevie, played by John Mulaney. Oh, and then there’s Bernthal, alive and deeply unwell, as Mikey Berzatto. Phew.

Quick exposition: This is Carmy’s first visit back home since his apprenticeship in Copenhagen. His brother Mikey and his mother are giving him a hard time for acting like a big shot, abandoning his family. We also learn that Mikey’s broke, struggling with The Beef, and showing all the signs of depression and addiction frayed and testy, especially as he interacts with Uncle Lee. Then there’s Richie and Tiffany–she’s newly pregnant and Richie is trying to hit up Cicero for a new job in order to help pay for his growing family. Oh and the Fak brothers are there, being drunk and lovably dim-witted as they try to sell people on their get-rich-quick scheme involving baseball cards. All the while Donna Berzatto is flailing in her messy, sauce-covered kitchen trying to finish the massive undertaking that is the Feast of the Seven Fishes.

Alright, let’s fast forward to 45 minutes into the episode.

Dinner is served out in the dining room, all seven fishes crammed onto a big long table, but Donna stays back in the kitchen, crying and smoking. “I make things beautiful for them and no one makes things beautiful for me.” Carmy tries to convince her to come eat, but she needs a minute. “Ma, are you good?” he asks stupidly. Donna’s eyes, swollen and streaked with mascara, becomes resentful of that question and tells Carmy as much. “Do we have a problem?” she asks. Her hinges are creaking.

The intense awkwardness Carmy experienced in the kitchen with his mother was tame compared to the chaos in the dining room, where we find Lee and Mikey agitating each other until the wheels finally come off. Or, in this case, the forks go flying:

And then he does it again.

And then things get real quiet and cruel, as Lee takes the opportunity to verbally annihilate Mikey while the rest of the table averts their eyes helplessly. Their whole interaction gave me a real drug-deal-“Sister Christian”-firecracker scene in Boogie Nights type of anxiety.

“Tell a story about how you’re living with your mom and how you’re borrowing money off of her and any other sucker that’ll listen to your bullshit.” Uncle Jimmy tries to cut Lee off, but it gets worse.

“This guy’s nothing and he’s nobody and I know you’re scared and you’re afraid aren’t ya, Michael? And Michael, I don’t know what you’re on, but if you can HEAR ME THROUGH THE FOG–throw another fork at me and you’re gonna get fucking rocked.”

It was brutal. I mean, look at Odenkirk’s face!

Finally, Donna enters and cluelessly asks what she’s missed so far. Everyone hushes up and spares her the grim details and Stevie is finally forced into saying grace, which he does so sheepishly, but kindly, offering sincere thanks to everyone for making space for him at the table every year. Just when we thought the air has returned to the room, Natalie stupidly asks her sad mother if she is okay. Whoops.

Donna leaves eventually, but Lee says something shitty, forcing Mikey to throw another fork at him. Tables smash, fists are flying, then as soon as it appears, there is nothing left to break, this happens.

In the final moments, we see poor Carmy disassociating from all of it, staring off into the next room, the smoking wreck of a car inside the family room, zeroing at a fork sticking out of a stack of cannoli.

Come awards season — Fall 2024, not Fall 2023 as this series was released after the 2023 Emmys consideration cut-off date — Odenkirk, Bernthal, and Curtis will be tough to beat, but, honestly, every single actor at that dinner table crushed it. Mulaney deserves consideration, too.

THE BEAR SEASON 2 EPISODE 6: LEFTOVERS

QUESTIONS I STILL HAVE: We’re clued in that the Berzatto’s actual father is either dead or no longer in the picture, but we don’t know any details about that timeline. It appears “Uncle” Lee has been in the picture for a couple years, though. Also: we still don’t know how mobbed-up Uncle Jimmy is.
MIDDLE-AGE DAD NEEDLE DROP: “Got My Mind Set On You” by George Harrison. This song is playing throughout a good portion of Donna Berzatto’s cooking sequence, up-beat strum-strum providing the pace as sauce-covered oven timers ping, the pots over-boill, the oven racks sag, the cigarettes get ashed, and the wine gets drunk.
CARMY ARM PORN: He wore long sleeves throughout this episode.

Can’t get enough of The Bear Season 2? For more insight, analysis, GIFs, and close-ups of Carmy’s arms, check out all of Decider’s episodic recaps: