The Bear's doors may be open, but the elephant is still in the kitchen.
“The Bear,” the Emmy-sweeping, meme-selling, kitchen-selling, deeply immersive FX series that premiered on Hulu on Wednesday, and viewers are eager to see what kind of treats are made with the sweat of his brow will serve next. By exposing the world to the wonder of the Chicago steak sandwich, the regimented dialect of cooking, and a cast that seems to have been assembled in heaven, “The Bear” has taken restaurant culture to a whole new level of “ Yes, chef!”
But for the adult son of an alcoholic, “The Bear” isn’t about restaurants. It’s not about the wonder of bringing order to the hellish mess of a kitchen that produced the best steak sandwiches in Chicago, as in the first season, or the NASA-like precision required to create a fine-dining restaurant, as in the second.
It's certainly not about the intricate “corner”, the “hands”, the ballet “Yes, chef!” or the meticulous ingenuity required to create a masterpiece from a scallop, a sprig of fennel, and a blood orange reduction. It's not even about how the most disparate and seemingly incompatible array of characters since “Hogan's Heroes” somehow come together as a team that elevates each member to better things.
No, for an adult child of an alcoholic, or at least for this one, “The Bear” is 100% about anxiety. Feeling anxiety. Acknowledging anxiety.
I want to do it but I can't.KI can, but what if it’s not good? It’s good, but what if people don’t like it? People like it, but what if they don’t like it enough? What’s good enough? Certainly not “good.” No, it has to be great. Stop telling me it’s great, that you don’t understand greatness, that it has to be better. I’m so tired, but stop that because you won’t get it right and it has to be more than great. It has to be perfect. So perfect that time stops and it’s just me up here on top of this verifiably perfect thing, and maybe then the voices in my head will finally run out of terrible things to say.
Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about.
Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) knows what I'm talking about. Moments after opening the Bear's doors at the end of season 2, Carmy found himself locked in the freezer; In the weeks leading up to the soft opening, he had been so busy micromanaging and avoiding help, even from his brilliant sous-chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and her manager-sister Sugar (Abby Elliott), that he never bothered to fix the handle. Broken freezer door.
The freezer door may be repaired now, but the damage Carmy unleashed is not.
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While his team scrambled to make the evening a success, Carmy spent the time cursing his fate, inadvertently telling the girl he loved why he couldn't have a relationship and a restaurant, and then lashing out at Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who actually saved the day, because Richie had the temerity to suggest that Carmy was behaving just like her mother.
Which was certainly the case. Because Carmy's mother, Donna Berzatto (Jamie Lee Curtis), is an alcoholic, and children of alcoholics, whether they drink or not, tend to behave like alcoholics.
Like when you obsess over every detail and then forget to do something really important. As when he oscillates violently between confidence and self-deprecation, between enthusiastic faith and bitter recrimination. Like when you refuse to delegate, you resent the subsequent workload and believe that perpetual anxiety is the only thing standing between you and total failure.
I feel anxious just writing about it.
“The Bear” can be seen as a hymn to the pressures of genius or the restorative properties of service, but it is also a vivid portrait of the ever-increasing range of damage that alcoholism and addiction can inflict.
At the beginning of season three, Carmy could have emerged from that freezer full of regret, but also pride and gratitude for having formed a team that could move forward without him. He could have immediately apologized, profusely and in person, to Richie and Claire, gotten a report from Sydney, and then maybe taken a nap.
I could have chosen to view the incident with some insight or even humor and move on.
Him? No. Having experienced a dark night of the soul, Carmy decides to stay put, dim the lights a little more, add some cushions, and prepare for the long haul.
The brilliant first episode of the third season is the portrait of a man who lives in his own head, constantly going over all the highs and lows of his life. In an early scene, he literally traces a prominent scar on himself, wondering what exactly is wrong with him, and then trying to figure it out by making one of those lists.
Carmy's list of non-negotiables.
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There's nothing funny about the intro, but I laughed out loud when Carmy started making that list. I know that list. I have done it. It's not a regular note that helps you set goals or keep a busy life on track. It's the list people make when they feel totally out of control, when they think the only way to survive their anxiety is to control it, to give it an increasingly unwieldy challenge that, if successful, will prove itself okay.
More than good. In fact, he's doing very well. Carmy is doing so well that the Bear is not only going to be a success, but it is also going to get a Michelin star. Year 1. Oh, and you're going to quit smoking, not because smoking is bad for your health, but because it's a distraction. Additionally, studies have shown that when you are under the most stress of your life, that is the best time to quit smoking.
Having “failed” his first test, Carmy is determined to quadruple the difficulty level of the next one.
He believes that this is how people achieve greatness. This is also how people lose their minds. Sometimes they do both, but usually it's one or the other.
“The Bear” is about which of these things will happen to Carmy if he doesn’t try to figure out what motivates him.
In the first season, it seemed like Carmy's older brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) was her main source of trauma. Dear Mikey, who after becoming addicted to painkillers, committed suicide and left the barely functioning family restaurant to Carmy.
Carmy, who emerged as an attractive young chef in the rest of the world, returned home to Chicago to fix Beef. And not only fix it but, with Sydney's help, turn it into the luxury restaurant that Carmy always wanted to create with his brother, which could, in some way, bring his brother back to life.
At first, no one thinks this was a good idea: not Richie, who's been arrogantly running the Beef's and carrying guns. Not Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), who'd been trying to save Mikey by pouring money into his failing business, and certainly not Sugar, who's sane enough to be alarmed by her brother's confession that he has nightmares and wakes up screaming every night. She begs Carmy to go to Al-Anon to help him deal with Mikey's death, which he does.
But it turns out that Mikey's ghost is not the problem. Or at least it's not the only problem.
Midway through the second season, creator Christopher Storer, who wrote the script with Joanna Calo, delivered one of the most harrowing and emotionally powerful hours of television ever recorded. Going back to a time when Mikey was still alive, we meet “mom”, Donna. Donna is funny, smart and a brilliant cook. She is also an alcoholic and is preparing a big Christmas dinner: the Feast of the Seven Fishes. She alone. Not because no one has offered to help her, but because she doesn't need her help; She just wants her love and appreciation, which she, being an alcoholic, is unable to recognize or receive.
Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a scene from the chaotic Season 2 episode “Fishes,” in which her alcoholism is on full display.
(Chuck Hodes/special effects)
Anyone who has lived with an alcoholic caregiver knows how it feels. It's like a tornado decided to prepare Christmas dinner. Splendid dishes emerge from the whirlwind, but also lethal pieces of emotional destruction appear: words that hit like bricks and rebar, that cut like pieces of broken glass and barbed wire. The gathered family members can only protect their faces as best they can and hope that the weather miraculously improves at some point.
Here, then, is ground zero. A family trained to observe a Level Five catastrophic event and see, you know, Christmas.. Mikey's death did not destroy the family; The family was already destroyed. And no one ever talks about it.
As the third season unfolds, this becomes even clearer. We see glimpses of the different families that have shaped the main characters. Pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) lost his mother the night Carmy was put in the freezer; At his funeral, we heard about the love and kindness that nurtured this gentle and talented man. Sydney moves into her own house, and her dad says all the annoying things parents usually say about thin walls and then goes out to buy her a couch. We learn that Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) joined the Beef team after losing her long-time job; She will do anything to help her sweet, if financially confused, husband support her child.
Richie, who has grown more than any other character on the show, finally comes to terms with his ex-wife's upcoming marriage and realizes that he's a good father. Sugar, who is faced with motherhood, is finally forced to tell Donna how scared she's been for most of her life. Though she still can't name the problem, Sugar at least acknowledges that her childhood trauma continues to affect her.
Even Donna has a moment of grace and possible growth.
But Carmy? Carmy is still emotionally trapped in the freezer, cataloging his flaws, making lists, and listening to the wildest voice in his head, which belongs to the worst boss he's ever had. Does Carmy wonder why he would give this toxic guy superiority over the other nicer but equally rigorous chefs he's worked with? Of course not.
Because he was taught that you can't rely on love and joy. Instead, you have to prepare for the worst: the sudden and inevitable explosion of bricks and rebar.
Until you can see clearly enough to identify a tornado as a tornado and not a Christmas dinner, until you're sane enough to admit how your parents' alcoholism infected your life, all you can do is hold on to your anxiety, make a bunch of lists, and pretend that constant pain is part of greatness and that everyone wakes up screaming from a dream.
Hopefully Carmy will spend a little more time in Al-Anon in Season 4 and finally say some words about Mom.
