The Bear is hardly the first time we’ve seen a stressful screen restaurant. If Boiling Point, Burnt, Ratatouille or Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares have taught us anything, it’s that professional kitchens are intensely hostile environments, where the temperature of the tempers is only matched by the industrial-sized gas stoves.
This lightly funny comic drama bears some similarity to the above examples: there is an almost farcically tense working environment, some swollen egos butting heads, and a guiding love of food above all. What makes The Bear stand out is its sharply observed writing, its rich emotional honesty, its array of electric performances, and some better-than-average TV direction.
The pilot, in particular, sees creator and showrunner Christopher Storer direct the hell out of the opening half-hour, with all manner of visual tricks — Martin Scorsesian crash-dollies, Edgar Wright-ian whip-pans, Baz Luhrmann-ian rat-a-tat editing. It makes for a lively, energetic experience, matching the restlessness of the kitchen with visual language. It is, more often than not, a heck of a stressful watch. You may need to pair it with a calming wine.
This is ultimately a deeply humane show about complex characters learning to be kinder to others, and themselves.
Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto is our head chef here, brilliantly played by Jeremy Allen White, who perfectly summons a professional aloofness masking barely-contained anxiety. Carmy comes from the legendarily cut-throat world of high-end kitchens, and the move to a messy, cheap-and-cheerful sandwich shop might seem like a downgrade. But there is a philosophy to his approach: what if he could bring the principles of haute cuisine — the strict division of labour, the respect of addressing each colleague as “chef” — to an over-the-counter lunch destination? Could his unconventional methods turn a struggling business around? And does this business, perhaps, symbolise more than just food?
White leads up a fiery ensemble, of which there are no weak links. They all enjoy some easy level of banter (that often overspills into something worse), ball-breaking and overlapping speech in thick Chicago accents that never seem contrived or affected. There’s some great insults chucked around (“one plus one equals you’re an asshole”) and the writing is fantastically jagged.
In an odd sort of way, it bears a loose resemblance to Ted Lasso, even though its characters are far more cynical than that show’s starry-eyed feel-goodery: this is another series about an outsider who barges into a tight-knit workplace community, disrupts their well-maintained routine with unorthodox methods, and eventually wins over the affections of even the toughest souls. An affirmation often spoken in Carmine’s kitchen, “Heard, chef”, feels rich with unspoken meaning, a signifier of quiet empathy; and like Lasso, this is ultimately a deeply humane show about complex characters learning to be kinder to others, and themselves.