In the time since it premiered on Hulu as last summer’s surprise hit, FX’s The bear was often considered stressful television – usually in a complementary way. The comedy-drama, about a Chicago sandwich shop’s struggle to stay afloat in the midst of various personal and professional crises, is definitely one of the most brutal series streaming right now, full of people screaming and alarms beeping and a catastrophic accident always seconds away. But call The bear stressful poorly describes why it was so magnetic, or why anyone would blast through the 10-episode first season in no time. A better word would be empathize. The bear has a pulse in a way that few TV shows do right now, and to watch it is to hear that pulse pounding in your ear.
Now in its second season – premiering on Hulu all at once, just like the first – The bear continues to follow the staff of The Original Beef as they tear down their old deli and try to turn it into something new – a bold, full-service restaurant that will take Chicago by storm. The problem is that none of them really know how to do that.
The bear is a work of controlled chaos, always crashing, screaming, scrambling to make it to the end of its 20 minute or so episodes. Out of this mess comes something cohesive and delicious. In the first season, it was a tale of camaraderie and grief as handsome NYC chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) returned to Chicago after his brother’s death to keep his deli running but also do some refurbishment. Carmy struggles to hold his own Chef’s Tablegrubby hole-in-the-wall approach proved to be an ideal vehicle for the raw heart of the show – his arrogance kept him from seeing the potential or pain of others, while ignoring the pain of his own grief to stubbornly to move forward .
It also meant Carmy had to do all sorts of things to keep The Beef afloat, like hosting a kid’s birthday party (and accidentally drugging the kids with Xanax).
Photo: Chuck Hodes/FX
In Season 2, everyone is trying to get better, yet hopelessly themselves. Carmy teams up with his former sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) to turn The Beef into The Bear, a restaurant fueled by his ambition and her ideas. Together, The Beef’s scrappy crew starts from scratch, screaming, stumbling, and wrecking their way to something they can call their own.
By means of, The bear remains a showcase for outstanding performances, as both tender and chaotic scenes are perceived through the same claustrophobic setting, every line of dialogue is delivered against the noise of people working in the background, and characters shine through movement above all. White, as Carmy, leans and itches and fights with his impulses in every frame. Edebiri’s Sydney, on the other hand, is more measured and unsure of herself, even more so physically, but her mind is always racing, wondering if she’s got what it takes and if her partner can be trusted. Together they form the center of it The bear‘s universe, the Big Bang that every other character spirals out of, like Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the best friend of Carmy’s late brother and an eternally angry force of nature that The Beef can’t quite do without.
Again: The bear lives, doing everything it can to get by with what it’s got, tearing people down and building them back up, trying to find ways for abrasive, busy, derivative characters to complement each other and bring out the best in each other. In other words, it’s cooking.