The Bear Season 3 Spoilers Ahead
When it comes to The Bear, creator Christopher Storer has the advantage of knowing that the Emmy Award-winning show is guaranteed to return. With this, there’s room for the character journeys to feel more grounded and nuanced, allowing them to fill the space within short time frames to properly underscore the emotional turmoil they’re each still living with.
The Bear Season 3 is far from perfect—one joke, in particular, gets very tiring very quickly, and one character overstays his welcome. Still, the show is relatively obvious about what it wants its audience to take away. Every. Second. Counts. That’s the gist of it, and for nine episodes, ironically excluding the ninth episode, the show manages this faultlessly.
It dives deep into character psyches and pushes them to new pinnacles, allowing the third season to essentially be a puzzle piece match to what we’ll presumably get in Season 4. There are few shows that can manage to make quiet conversations convey enormous depth, and The Bear is undoubtedly one of those shows. The third season proves as much, even while some viewers might feel it loses the edge that made it unique.
The Bear Season 3 Proves That Character-Driven Narratives Are More Impactful
If last year’s toss-up between best episodes was between “Fishes” and “Forks,” in The Bear Season 3, it’s inarguably between “Tomorrow” and “Napkins.” Both episodes place characters centerfold and allow the directing and performances to showcase how much is at stake. It’s bold of The Bear to start a series with an episode like “Tomorrow” when there’s very little dialogue to enlighten us on new revelations. Yet, we aren’t getting a new beginning toward the future; we’re going backward in time, deep into Carmy’s mind, and it allows Jeremy Allen White to not only excavate the character’s past but to bring some of his strongest performances as an actor.
“Tomorrow” takes us back to NYC; it brings Michael’s death to the forefront, and it reminds us why Carmy is consistently on edge and haunted by the grief he has yet to heal from. This is where the show’s realism comes into play because for a character who holds so much in, opening up a new restaurant isn’t going to give him the clarity he needs. It’s a placeholder because when tomorrow comes, he’ll still be grieving, drowning in guilt, blaming himself, and utterly lost.
There’s no clarity even when he sees his old boss because all he gathers from the confrontation is that he isn’t thinking of him as much as Carmy is. Joel McHale’s character isn’t broken, remorseful, or aware of the haunting effect he’s had. Everyone is moving forward toward tomorrow, but our characters are stuck. That’s the story that we’re consistently getting to the root of, and it’s far more complex than what a few episodes can showcase.
All of this is to say that change doesn’t happen overnight. Characters don’t have big revelations and learn to let go of their trauma just because things are looking up. As a direct result of being stuck in the freezer, as a character, Carmy is still very much stuck in the past, trying to do things to force himself out, but he’s going about it in all the wrong ways. The same can be said about Richie and Nat and almost every character working at The Bear. Their guidance is skewed, and the show tries to show us how that impacts every single person, even if they’re relatively less burdened.
Too Much Ted Fak Is the Season’s Biggest Fault
Now, while The Bear Season 3 starts with a near-perfect episode, it slowly shifts when you realize that you’re seeing way too much of Ted Fak, and the haunting joke loses every bit of taste it marinates in. He’s not funny. The joke’s not funny. And Season 3, Episode 9, “Apologies,” completely sours the beauty and warmth we see in Season 3, Episode 8, “Ice Chips.”
Ted Fak isn’t a character most viewers care about, and he isn’t one who provides us with any sort of depth that others could. I would’ve rather had something focused solely on Marcus, Ebra—quite literally anyone else but Ted. It makes very little sense why the showrunners went in this direction when every second counts because this is the one episode that essentially contradicts that notion.
Where We Go From Here …
The Bear’s critically acclaimed status remains intact because, if nothing else, the show has clear intentions about where it wants to lead its characters, and it does so by taking the audience on an intimate journey, too. The cliffhanger works only because it’s easy to want more for all these characters, so it gives us time to steep in the mistakes for a little while longer. There might not be as much screaming this season, but what we get is still enough to exhibit that the characters are on a path that feels realistic.
Ayo Edebiri’s directorial debut and Liza Colón-Zayas’ performance in “Napkins” deserve their own feature to analyze and praise. As does Nat’s childbirth in “Ice Chips.” The women on the show give us 110% even while they’re in the background, and this is where Season 4 needs to step up with unraveling more of their heartaches and perils. Claire remains a haunting force through and through, but it’s still unclear what we’re doing spending as much time with her. More, Sydney and Tina, instead, please. Thank you, chefs.
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There’s plenty that The Bear Season 3 nails and it’s entirely due to the decision to focus more intimately on the quiet journeys than the plot. We have time for more in Season 4. From the directing to the writing, the series remains as sharp as ever—save for the fact that it’s still not a comedy. There’s ample potential for the realistic journeys we could go on with them because this isn’t a show that prioritizes shock value. Instead, it’s a series that digs into the haunting matters that make people bend and break and lose parts of themselves just to feel something more powerful than the harrowing voices in their heads. It’s an ode to anxiety, in more ways than one, and all the various ways we try to protect ourselves.
Now streaming on Hulu: What are your thoughts on The Bear Season 3? Let us know in the comments below.
First Featured Image | Official Poster Credit: ©FX