One Thing About: The Bear

Instead of writing overall move/TV/book/music reviews, I like to focus on one scene, or line, or single tiny thing that made me think, or laugh, or feel, or whatever. This is One Thing About...

Here I go again. Talking about art that talks about art.

I love listening to chefs talk about their craft. I can’t help but see the obvious parallels between the process they go through when creating a menu to the process of crafting stand-up comedy. The creation process is done behind closed doors, either completely on their own or by bouncing ideas off their trusted co-workers. They can test things themselves, and get feedback from the people closest to them but the ultimate judge of the final product is the public.

Trial and error. Getting used to failing. Learning from your failure to start over with a new approach to try to finally crack an idea you know has legs but hasn’t been able to find its footing yet. The process is addicting. It’s easy to become obsessed. And that obsession can become dangerous when you start to believe that succeeding is all that matters.

The Bear captures that perfectly. It’s a show that I watch and can’t help but think about the creators and writers pouring their own life experiences into while crafting the story. Sure, the characters are talking about food and restaurants, and how every little detail matters, and how

and how much these things mean to the people they serve but you just know they’re actually talking about how storytelling matters. It’s not the deepest of metaphors. It’s tried and true “write what you know” stuff. We’ve seen it in countless shows about Detectives who sacrifice everything in their lives to be the best at solving the case. But The Bear just does it so fucking well.

I just got done texting a friend that after finishing Season 2 of The Bear I’m currently feeling like it could be my favorite show of all time. I’m not saying I think it’s the best show of all time (and don’t really know what that means, neither am I interested in talking about what “the best” is anymore, only my favorite things and how they make me feel.) I’m also aware that I’m experiencing major recency bias. But the way the show explores art, and obsession, and sacrifice, and the people who shape the way we are, and finding our purpose, and how we decide to spend the time in the one and only (that we know of) life we have is really hitting me hard right now.

In the final episode of Season 2, in the middle of the soft “Friends and Family” opening of the restaurant we just spent an entire season watching a team of people speed-run through the stressful pre-opening process, Carmy gets locked inside the kitchen’s walk-in. He’s separated from his team at the worst possible moment, allowing many of them to step up to the occasion and shine, and others to smoke meth behind the restaurant.

Carmy goes into a spiral that makes him question every decision he’s made in the recent (and probably also distant) past. He feels like a failure who has let himself and the people around him down. He releases his frustration and questions the mistakes he’s made and blames them on the fact that he started a new relationship while trying to open a restaurant in a rant that just so happens to be timed so that his girlfriend Claire hears him through the door of the walk-in. She walks away in tears, heartbroken that he could feel that way. He seems just as hurt, and not sure that he totally actually does feel that way.

The scene plays out like the real-life version of drafting an email you don’t intend to send in order to get out your frustration but oops you accidentally hit SEND at the end out of habit and for some reason you also put the person you’re ranting about into the subject line and OH NO now they see all the shit you dumped out that you never intended for them to see. In the moment, when things were going badly, and you feel like you made some absent-minded mistakes it’s easy to look at something taking up a good bit of your time and blame those mistakes on being distracted. After venting, and a little time to cool off, I’m pretty sure Carmy would have come to his senses. But it’s too late to unsend the email now. Also, while cooler heads may be able to see “the real truth” the ugly feeling that escaped in his stressful moments still lingers beneath the surface.

There were points in my life, especially in the first few years of doing comedy, where it was the only thing that mattered to me. I felt like I would sacrifice anything to be great at comedy. I felt like anything else would be something that would take away from my chance to be great at it. I watched Jerry Seinfeld tell the Glenn Miller Orchestra story in Comedian and thought “hell yeah, that is what’s up.” At 23, I would have blamed Carmy right along with him for “losing focus” on his passion and getting into a relationship. I would have understood him when he gave her a fake phone number.

I sure am glad I don’t think the same way as I did when I was 23.

Don’t get me wrong, I still want to create art that matters to people, and makes them feel something, and gets them to think and maybe even write way-too-long blog posts about what it means to them. But that means nothing without people around you to share it with. No amount of success or perfection matters if you’re locked out of celebrating the wins and enjoying the moment with people you care about. It’s easy to forget that sometimes. And to become singularly focused and obsessed with your goals. Especially for someone like Carmy who grew up in an environment where having your mother drive her car through your living room during Christmas dinner doesn’t seem like something all that far-fetched.

If nothing you do will ever be enough to satisfy your own mother (who should love and accept you unconditionally, right?) then how will any other relationship with any other person possibly succeed? Might as well pour everything you have into your work so you don’t end up disappointing somebody else. He says this in his rant while stuck in the walk-in. He admits that he doesn’t feel like he deserves anything good to happen in his life, or to give anything good to someone else (which is heartbreakingly paralleled when his mother shows up to the opening only to refuse to go inside because she doesn’t feel like she deserves to enjoy her children’s success with them.)

The Bear is able to show the other side of things in Sydney’s relationship with her father. Their journey from early in the season, where he’s concern-parent-suggesting “safety” jobs to her, to the end of the season where he lets her know that he “gets it” after letting her off the hook for still living with him (and inviting her to stay for her entire life if she must) shows us what true support and love looks like. And while Sydney shares the same tendencies as Carmy to obsess over her work, and took charge of the restaurant over the course of the season to drive it towards success, I can’t help but feel hope that she’ll be able to find a better balance based on her reaction and acceptance of her father’s love.

The show really drives home the “Every Second Counts” message and shows us various interpretations of the mantra. From a ticking-clock deadline at work to the precious moments we have with the people we love. It also shows us that no matter how late in the game it might feel, what you do with the seconds still remaining on the clock matter, and that it’s never too late to make a difference to the people around you and just as importantly, to yourself.