Stream It Or Skip It

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Bear’ Season 2 On FX/Hulu, Where Carmy, Syd And The Crew Work To Transform The Original Beef Into A New Restaurant

By Joel Keller Twitter @joelkeller

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The Bear snuck into the pop culture conversation last summer, mainly due to its pressure-filled and frantic first few episodes. It had people dressing as Carmy or Richie or Syd and saying “Yes, chef” to each other in ways that have nothing to do with cooking food. After entering the zeitgeist, it’s back for its sophomore season, with the pressure on its characters being almost as big as the pressure on the show itself.

THE BEAR SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As we hear the beeping of a monitor, a woman lies in a hospital bed. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) come in and rubs her hand, then puts a cold compress on her head.

The Gist: Since finding the money his late brother Mikey left in tomato sauce cans, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and the crew at The Original Beef of Chicagoland have started tearing the old place apart in order to transform it into a new restaurant, called The Bear. As he scrawls the expenses on the back of a pizza box, he’s reminded of lots of hidden costs from Syd (Ayo Edibiri), his chef de cuisine, his sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), general handyman Neil Fak (Matty Matheson) and line cooks Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson).

Syd, who is always the one who tries to calm down Carmy’s fervor, virtually begs Natalie to be the project manager, an idea that only sounds somewhat appealing to her; after all, the restaurant reminds her too much of Mikey.

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In the meantime, Carmy finds Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) in the basement, in an unusually subdued mood, wearing a “collector’s edition” “Original Berf” t-shirt. He thinks he has no purpose in Carmy’s new venture and that he’ll be pushed out; Carmy assures him that he won’t push his “cousin” out when The Bear opens.

Syd asks Tina to be her sous chef, then the next day, she puts her hand through a wall in the office; Richie covered it with a Fenway Park poster after Mikey tried to burn the restaurant down for insurance money. Carmy, Syd and Natalie soon realize that the money they have won’t be nearly enough, so they go to who lent Mikey that money in the first place — Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) — for another loan, with a promise that if he doesn’t pay back all the money in 18 months, Jimmy can have the restaurant, building and land.

The Bear S2
Photo: Chuck Hodes/FX

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Let’s call The Bear‘s second season a much less intense version if its first season. We did compare the first season to Kitchen Confidential, but we’re not sure if that’s an apt comparison anymore.

Our Take: Like we said above, the frantic intensity that permeated most of the first season of The Bear isn’t there in the second season. But creator Christopher Storer has replaced that with something else: The pressure of increased expectations, not only on people like Carmy and Syd, but on pretty much everyone working at the restaurant. And the push to get The Bear open in what is going to be a ridiculous timetable is a good propellant to drive that pressure through the season.

What we found with Season 1 was that, while the first episode or two seemed too intense to call the show a “comedy,” the show became increasingly comedic as the season went along, mainly because everyone buzzing around Carmy had their own ways of blowing off steam and dealing with the pressure. Now that everyone is pulling together — even Richie, to an extent — with Carmy in the lead, there’s going to be pressure to make The Bear something special, while not completely alienating The Original Beef’s core crowd.

We see the pressure differently for each character. Syd, for instance, starts to lose her seasoning touch when she and Carmy try to craft a menu. Tina thrives when Syd sends her and Ebraheim to culinary school, but Ebraheim is finding the methods they use to be foreign to him. Richie is trying to find his place. Natalie has to grapple with a bunch of different things.

Carmy, on the other hand, is surprisingly — well, calm isn’t really the word, but he’s certainly not in the kind of turmoil we saw him in during the first season. He even reconnects with Claire (Molly Gordon), a woman from his past. He seems to be making room for relationships and connections in his life, whether it’s with the family at the restaurant or people like Claire, despite the fact that he’s doing this insane renovation project. It certainly isn’t the stark existence he lived in the first season.

It’s a surprisingly effective follow-up to the show’s frantic and often hilarious first season, and it was a risky move. But by taking the temperature down a bit, Storer gives us time to get insight into not just Carmy, Syd and Richie but everyone else at the restaurant. Yes, even Neil Fak.

Sex and Skin: None. There isn’t even that much food porn in the first few episodes.

Parting Shot: Carmy, Syd and Natalie gather at the restaurant and set an insane three-month calendar to opening day. “EVERY SECOND COUNTS!” is scrawled on one of the calendars. “Is this a terrible idea?” asks Syd. The other two nod, and she says, “Yeah, just making sure.”

Sleeper Star: We’re definitely happy to see Elliott getting more time this year as Natalie. And now that Ayo Edebiri is a star, it’s hard to call her a “sleeper.” Let’s give this one to Lionel Boyce as Marcus, who wants to be a top pastry chef while dealing with the family health issues we saw at the beginning of the 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:

Most Pilot-y Line: The hole behind the Fenway poster “is the result of some failed Jewish lightning,” says Richie. Of course, everyone calls him out on that phrase.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Even though Season 2 of The Bear isn’t as frantic as Season 1, we get to know everyone at the restaurant better this season. And the second season is shaping up to be funnier than the first.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.