More uplifting. More team-focused. More magnificent. | James Poniewozik
“The Bear” is about the curse and blessing of having a calling…[and] uses editing cuts and luxurious images not simply as food porn but to visualize eating as a form of thinking, a way of bringing the world into you. [Copenhagen and Forks] have a kind of wax-on-wax-off philosophy of growth through repetition. Marcus learns that greatness in the kitchen is about not just skill but being open to experience. Richie learns that what seems like absurd meticulousness — no streaks on those forks! — is about respect for one’s diners and for one’s self.
A great restaurant, [The Bear] argues, is about care. But there’s also taking care, learning discipline, doing things the hard way because it’s the right way. In his Danish sojourn, we watch Marcus try to scoop a perfect quenelle while his mentor tells him, over and over, that it’s not good enough. This kind of scrutiny can be abusive — we saw this in Season 1 flashbacks to Carmy being terrorized by a past boss (Joel McHale). But here it is simply firm and honest. Try again, try again. It’s unsparing, but it comes with the belief that you can do better because you are better.
“The Bear” is just earnest enough to believe that this can be transformative. It is with Richie, who in a week’s time goes from a divorced sad sack to a guy who wears suits and respects himself, from a loudmouth without skills to a front-of-the-house wizard who can read a stream of rapid-fire orders like the code of the Matrix.
Does it all happen implausibly fast? Absolutely. But it makes sense within the spirit of “The Bear,” which believes that everyone is a renovation project but that no one is irreparable.
In the final moments [of Seven Fishes], Carmy stares at a towering, incongruously festive platter of cannoli.
That pastry comes back later, as the Bear prepares to open. Marcus presents Carmy and Sydney with a new item for the menu: a savory cannoli, inspired by Carmy’s desire to “take back” the dish after the Christmas disaster ruined it for him. “This one is a little bit of all of us,” Marcus says. He calls it “The Michael.” […]
Every experience you ingest, every memory, every hurt becomes part of you, like it or not. You are what you eat. You can internalize the bad stuff until it curdles in your gut and leaves you heaving in the back alley. Or you can externalize it into something new, maybe no longer sweet, but with tang and richness and umami depth. Leave the trauma. Take the cannoli. –
