The Bear is the Most Exciting Show of the Summer

I loved the first season of the bear... and I didn't even know Jon Bernthal popped up in Ep. 3.

Pictured: Jeremy Allen White as Carmy, making scrubbing a floor look romantic

One of my part-time jobs is working in a bar/kitchen environment. If it weren’t for the timing of The Bear’s release, I’m not sure I would still be working there. Fair warning to future viewers, this wonderful, kitchen-set dramedy will have you wanting to yell “CORNER,” “BEHIND,” and “ALL DAY CHEF,” constantly. Lucky for me.

Lost in the sauce of Hulu’s barrage of new shows, (see my last post) The Bear — featuring former Shameless standout and guilty-pleasure heart-throb Jeremy Allen White — was released to significant acclaim on June 23rd.

And boy does it deserve that acclaim, and then some.

My interest in the show was initially kindled by White, who plays its lead, Carmy. I was never particularly fond of Shameless — the show which jump-started his career — but one thing I and fans of the show could always agree on was White’s strange, hunched-over, greasy, unteachable charisma… and, dare I say… raw sex appeal.

Carmy was once a chef de cuisine at the nation’s finest restaurant. Until his brother, from whom he was estranged, commited suicide and left him their families restaurant: the Original Beef of Chicagoland.

For reasons unbeknownst to even himself, the show opens with Carmy pushing his grief to the side, and placing every ounce of his energy into making the Beef into a respectable place of business.

In his way: his brother’s loudmouth best friend Richie (an incredibly effective Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and a gaggle of cooks who think Carmy is a douchebag who’d rather use tweezers to prepare a dish than a deep-fryer. His only ally is his ambitious new hire Sydney (played by the wonderful Ayo Edebiri whose hilarious twitter page I will link here).

It is this ensemble of character that elevates the show from highly functional drama to transcendent, balletic chaos. If you ask me, one of the most challenging sensations a filmmaker can attempt to capture on-screen is the particular brand of organized insanity one finds in a kitchen.

But for my money, even Josh and Benny Safdie — the current heavy-weight champs of ultra-realistic chaotic filmmaking — fall short of the level of camera work and choreography on display in The Bear. The writing is so crisp that you hang onto every word, even while characters bounce in an out of the frame, and background dialogue merges with the banging and sizzling of the kitchen appliances.

The sound design, acting, and camera movement is so kinetic, so exquisite, as to completely transport you into the the Beef’s kitchen. Tonally and visually, it straddles the line between romantic and stressful; invigorating and exhausting.

This whole project would fall so flat however, if not for a crucially magnetic performance from Jeremy Allen White. If serious Emmy consideration isn’t in his future, I don’t really know what acting awards mean anymore. I haven’t seen Amy Schumer’s performance in the new season of Only Murders in the Building yet though, so I can’t call it the best performance of the year yet I suppose…

White holds the camera with a gravitas I didn’t know he had, and from the show’s superb pilot episode (why do we even call them that anymore? It’s not like it’s a test anymore — more like first episode of the pilot season) I was with Carmy until the end.

Now, admittedly I do find chef culture to be fascinating in general. 21st century chefs share more in common aesthetically with Machine Gun Kelly than they do with Mario Batali. Do to the explosion of high-end, experimental restaurants in LA and New York, kitchens have become intensely cut-throat environments. There’s a strange cultural acceptance that it’s hell, but it’s the kind of hell you endure for the art. You get tattoos and scars to commemorate your time, and tell your story like you did ten years in folsom.

What’s not romantic about that??

I digress.

If I was to teach a class on pilot episodes, this pilot would be on the syllabus. Every character is fully fleshed out, their dynamics with each other explained, and essential narrative questions of the show is introduced so effectively within 25 minutes. Did I mention that this show doesn’t have 67-minute long episodes? Bring back short shows!!

The kitchen of this fictional Chicago institution is the perfect setting for the themes this show is interested in exploring — chiefly, manhood, obsession, addiction, mental-illness, and grieving. It’s almost as if the heat of the stoves, the pressure of the constant orders, and the constant yelling, strips each character of their various facades. Before they can bring out the best in each other, the kitchen brings out their worst.

Needless to say, you should watch The Bear. It won’t take much of your time, and the trip it takes you on will wring you out like a used dish-rag. In fact I loved it so much, that I will extend it the greatest and most frustrating compliment a television show can get: season 1 of The Bear is so satisfying I don’t know if I even want to risk ruining that feeling by making a second season…

But I hope they do.