REVIEW: The Bear
Let’s get something out of the way right off the bat: The Bear is not a comedy.
But, four years into it’s run that’s the way its creators still classify it as one when they submit episodes for awards consideration. And for some reason I just can’t let that go. I mean, it really bugs me — so much so that it has seeped into my overall view of the show. Because, frankly, it seems like cheating.
See, one of the ingrained travesties of TV and film awards is that dramas are always considered more important than comedies — when people who make both will tell you that comedy is just as hard (if not harder) to pull off than drama. That means when you put a show like The Bear up against a comedy the drama has an unfair advantage.
It’s not that The Bear hasn’t deserved awards, it has. But, it’s like you’re pushing a vegan soup on the menu and it’s made with beef stock. It’s not quite serving cashews to someone with a peanut allergy, but it’s deceptive, and I can’t seem to let it go.
Shake it off, Mike. No one cares.
Alright. I’m back.
If you’ve somehow missed The Bear here’s the premise via Wikipedia:
Talented haute cuisine chef Carmen "Carmy" Anthony Berzatto inherits his family's Italian beef sandwich shop after the suicide of his older brother, Michael. He goes home to Chicago to run it, leaving behind his world of working in Michelin-starred restaurants. He is left to deal with his brother's unresolved debts, a rundown kitchen, and an unruly staff, while dealing with his own pain and family trauma.
If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant for any period of time you know what a unique and stressful environment that is. I was a busboy then waiter from high school beyond college, and decades later I can still have paralyzing nightmares about that experience. And that was before everyone in the kitchen was calling everybody chef.
The Bear captures that drama better than anything I’ve ever seen, as Carmy decides to turn the sandwich shop into a high-end restaurant. The first two seasons really are just fantastic and there’s more good than bad beyond them.
At it’s heart The Bear is about a disfunction family, of the traditional genetic variety and the work variation where stress and a common goal brings people together and tears them apart. Yes, there is some comedy — but it’s much more of the breaking the tension variety.
Part of the reason I know The Bear isn’t a comedy is because there’s actually much more comedy inherent in the restaurant business that is left to rot in the walk-in.
Sorry, I slipped again. Back to business.
The main cast deserve the awards they’ve gotten and all the supporting cast are equally good and have gotten their own narrative arcs over time. The cinematography is top-notch as is the pressure-packed pace set by the editing. And the great Chicago location shooting and b-roll truly makes the city a character, not just a place.
And yet…
Like so many shows, for me, the The Bear started slipping as its run continued. Too many high-profile cameos and cast additions. Stand-alone episodes that were fine but seemed more like stretching and vanity than anything else. But, more importantly, as those other things popped up something at the heart of the show started to wear thin.
The whole writing and acting style of The Bear is meant to be naturalistic. The dialogue isn’t supposed to be polished and sharp, it’s meant to be jumbled and purposefully not straight-forward — more like real life.
But, in the days after the final episode of season four my wife and I picked the show apart more thoroughly than I did a rotisserie chicken for a recent soup. And not in a good way. Because that real-life dialogue and and acting is simply trying too hard and often veers into an almost annoying parody of itself.
Some scenes are just a slog to get through with painfully long pauses in the dialogue that only result in another incoherent response between characters. Somehow these smart characters have devolved to a point that that simply can’t make a coherent point.
And the problem is that once you pick up that flaw in scenes, it’s hard not to see is everywhere. It simply takes you out of the show, more than any picayune comedy/drama debacle.
The Bear has been picked up for a fifth season and all signs point to that being its last. While the story could have probably been told in four, that’s a good thing. And there are many good things about the show that make it well worth watching.
I will see it through to the end. Even if I am as annoyed as I am entertained.