Though there are familiar restaurant tropes on display, The Bear manages the difficult task of working as an extension of the “You don’t wanna know, but you won’t be able to look away!” genre embodied by Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential - the Fox adaptation, while thoroughly underrated, was too polished - while avoiding so many of its clichés. Storer is as enamored of the ugliness and messiness as he is of an appetizing cooking montage. It’s a world of unexplained jargon, sporadically subtitled and overlapping languages, arbitrary hierarchies and entrenched rituals. The first season is unrelenting cacophony, and even if I’m skeptical of some of the general details at Original Beef - the hours, menu and overall staffing situation all feel slightly off - there’s a clear authenticity to the space and the way each character navigates the perpetual dangers of poorly sharpened knives, perilous towers of sauces and slippery puddles of indeterminate viscous fluids.
Montage nails plus#
The show’s producers want to keep several guest turns a surprise, a pity since I want to praise one or two of those performances, plus once you’ve watched the show you won’t understand the purpose behind the secrecy.
Montage nails full#
There isn’t time in this brief first season for all of the restaurant’s staff members to express full personalities, but Edebiri contributes droll humor and a likable slow-burn, Boyce makes the doughnut-obsessed Marcus into an instantly genial figure and Colón-Zayas delivers on one of the few clear character arcs. Offering a cheery-if-frazzled counterpoint is Abby Elliott as Carmy’s sister Sugar, who hopes that his return will let them grieve together. White is cleverly matched by Moss-Bachrach, the only cast member pushing a Chicago accent, whose own gift is exposing the pathetic underbelly of characters everybody else appears to find lovably irrepressible. Whether that meltdown will come via drugs and alcohol, street violence or the ticking time bomb that is a poorly maintained kitchen is a source of effective suspense. White has a well-established ability to make screwing up seem incredibly sympathetic and The Bear is structured so that its early episodes are a build-up to an inevitable meltdown.
Montage nails series#
Since most of The Bear is set in a cramped kitchen - Storer and Calo, who share directing duties, love a good Chicago second unit montage, but only to alleviate the claustrophobia - it’s a boon that the series is spectacularly well-cast. As Carmy begins realizing how deep in debt the restaurant is and the compromises his troubled brother was making, and he begins confronting some of his own personal demons, it becomes clear that training this particular bear will be more complicated than he expected. Carmy’s mission, which includes a revised menu and hiring Culinary Institute of America-trained Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), is met with skepticism by veteran line-cook Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and optimism by culinarily curious baker Marcus (Lionel Boyce). The Original Beef of Chicagoland is a neighborhood institution, but fine dining it is not.Ĭarmy is determined to make big changes, much to the chagrin of his fuck-up non-biological cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, somehow finding an urban crew more dysfunctional than the one from Girls). After a run as chef at some of the best fine dining restaurants in the world, Carmy returns to take control of the family eatery after his brother’s (one of several cameos FX doesn’t want spoiled) shocking suicide. But as for whether or not you’ll want to spend even 30 minutes per week in this maelstrom of grease spatter, unsharpened knives and multilingual abuse, that’s a personal question.Ĭreated by Ramy veteran Christopher Storer, also co-showrunner with Joanna Calo, The Bear focuses on Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White, somehow finding a Chicago-area clan more dysfunctional than the one from Shameless). It’s a series sure to trigger PTSD for anybody with food service experience and paranoia for anybody worried about what’s happening at the back of their favorite greasy spoon. The Bear (which will stream on Hulu) is more frequently unbearably tense than it is funny, and by the end of its eight-episode first season, I felt it had turned an appealing tonal corner and found empathy for many of its characters.
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss- Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, Lionel Boyce and Liza Colón-Zayas
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