Carmy Berzatto’s self-sabotage is the featured dish on “The Bear,” but the show’s real star is time. Clocks and alarms are motivators or stressors. As the doors open each night, the chefs wage open war with every tick as they obsess over efficiency.
In the fourth season, time is a collapsing parachute, signaled by Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) and his business partner, Nick “Computer” Marshall (Brian Koppelman), plugging in a clock counting down from 1440 hours. Two months. When the numbers hit zero, the money runs out and The Bear must close.
Time can also be enlightening, and the value each person assigns to it can vary significantly. To Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the clock sets a bar he must meet or exceed, but it’s also a reminder to slow down and make the smallest details count. The Bear’s head chefs, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), view it as an unrelenting but fair disciplinarian. The motto ruling the kitchen is displayed for all to see: “Every second counts.”
These long-awaited 10 episodes present another spin as Carmy and Sydney take a hard look at time as it relates to life and experience. That’s always ticked away in the show’s foreground, with Carmy struggling to recover from his early-career peak and burnout and Sydney wondering how much time she needs to put in before he’ll value her good ideas.
Season 4 takes us to the other side of what Malcolm Gladwell romanticized in “Outliers,” where he boiled down mastery into a 10,000-hour rule that has since been disputed, although the gist of it holds true: Devoting enough time and practice to doing one thing correctly eventually yields expertise.
Of course, giving everything you have to a skill doesn’t take into account natural talent like Syd’s. Her dedication to culinary mastery blows past all previous standard-setters in Carmy’s experience, and that brings out his insecurities. Carmy tends to brush off nearly all of her concepts, making Syd question whether she can find the culinary success that’s long eluded her at the side of a colleague who overspends and overreaches. She can stay the course, or jump ship to join a new venture with another renowned restaurateur.
Chef Adam Shapiro, who shares a name with the actor playing him, offers solid financial backing and a sky’s worth of promises. He’s also volatile and abusive, like Carmy’s old mentor. The other side of the knife is that devoting all of one’s time and focus to one big swing robs us of minutes we don’t get with the people who matter. Pouring her heart and soul into her work means Syd misses a lot of phone calls from her father (Robert Townsend), similar to the way Carmy imploded his relationship with Claire (Molly Gordon).
Worse, as someone counsels an extremely frustrated Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), who is pushing herself to cook and plate a dish in under three minutes, the pressure to beat the clock adds to the stress. Then you learn to live with it, eventually thriving on it. Then, he says, “The challenge becomes: Can you live without that pressure?”
Now that it looks like all their sweat and stress could amount to nothing, Carmy and Syd separately ruminate on the meaning of all those months of devotion and anxiety. That question reduces to one everyone asks of themselves sooner or later: Why do we do what we do?
This is as existential as the quest for life’s meaning gets. It’s the counterpoint to Syd’s earliest argument for sticking with this insoluble endeavor: “Why can’t we put everything that we have into everything that we can?” We ask such questions before whatever it is we build with effort and sacrifice slams against the iceberg of reality, which doesn’t care about anyone’s dreams.
That isn’t quite what happens to our team, but the Chicago Tribune’s review of the restaurant in the third season finale’s cliffhanger was neither stellar nor a disaster. Sometimes, a middling verdict can be more of an insult, and the Trib’s critic points to Carmy’s “chaos” menu as the problem.
With everything changing all the time, none of the dishes have the space to evolve or improve. The restaurant’s flaw, then, is inconsistency. The reviewer deems its one indisputable triumph to be the Original Beef’s signature sandwich, the product of a few guys doing the same thing over and over for years. That’s not madness. That’s practice resulting in perfection.
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Series creator Christopher Storer (who wrote or co-wrote several of its 10 episodes and directed or co-directed all but one) and his writers practice what the plot preaches. I wouldn’t necessarily call “The Bear” review-proof, but four seasons in, it is admirably consistent.
That may not be enough for people who expect significant escalations or resent recurring indulgences, such as its gigantic guest star cameos. Season 4 has an episode that rivals “Fishes” in its star power convergence and runtime, although its mood is that strenuous hour’s opposite — it’s frantic for different reasons.
If you loved the show before, that shouldn’t change. Having said that, you may find that the best of its recurring all-stars aren’t returning celebrities like Jon Bernthal, Sarah Paulson or Jamie Lee Curtis, but characters who represent the best of their profession.
The return of Jessica (Sarah Ramos), the unerring kitchen expeditor from the recently closed restaurant Ever, made me grin and applaud. Jessica understands that time can and must become everyone’s friend. If five-star service is the result of an impeccably executed battle plan, she’s the general The Bear needs.
Every troubled business needs a Jessica, just like every inspired artist can use an ally to help them realize their genius. Later in the season, one of our deserving chefs gets exactly that. (That re-entry also earned another cheer from the couch.)
What people may appreciate more acutely than the fan service is the show’s evolving consideration of artistic philosophy. In the same way that we take for granted the way shows like “Top Chef” make the creative process accessible, “The Bear” confronts the fork waiting down the road after anyone’s 10,000-hour journey is complete, asking whether knowing you can do something well requires you to keep on doing it.
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Typically, our reasons for staying in a battle against crushing odds are soft, even banal, but universally defensible. Carmy’s sister Nat, aka Sugar (Abby Elliott), does it for the love of The Bear’s family. Gary (Corey Hendrix) understands he’s on the verge of achieving greatness as a sommelier. Cousin Richie, Tina, Marcus (Lionel Boyce) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) also keep showing up because they know they’re a part of something special; as Richie says, there’s really no place else he’d rather be.
They’ve gambled that putting in the time will yield great rewards — that is, if Carmy can fulfill his promise to win the Michelin star Syd has been chasing. But that could take hours, months, possibly years that aren’t guaranteed. As Uncle Jimmy remarks to Syd as the hourglass sand is running out, it is a shame that the businesses that give the most amount of joy, or try to anyway, happen to be ruthlessly tough. (He doesn’t use those precise words; Uncle Jimmy is a five-star vulgarian.)
With joy in short supply these days, whetting our focus on what matters counts. Luckily, “The Bear” still serves a purposeful story that earns our attention for a few precisely portioned hours that always run out before we’re ready to let go.
All episodes of “The Bear” are streaming on Hulu.
