The first season of “The Bear” opens with an invitation to chaos, before tossing you into the anarchic party itself. Carm (Jeremy Allen White) is asleep, dreaming that he’s on a bridge in the Chicago loop, where he opens a bear cage to release, what else, a live, snarling, somewhat perturbed brown bear. When he wakes up, it’s time to cook. The restaurant he inherited from his late brother Michael (Jon Bernthal) beckons, and Carm has to serve up the signature beef while putting out figurative and literal fires left and right. It’s chaos compounded with chaos, or to use a cooking metaphor: He’s out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“The Bear” Season 2 opens in silence. Well, near silence. Rather than the clicking of a gas stove flickering to life, there’s the methodical beep of a heart monitor. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is looking over his mother, as she lays peacefully asleep in her bed. He gently applies lotion to her hands and drapes a washcloth on her forehead, before heading outside to scrape ice off his windshield and head into work. Marcus is not in a rush. He’s not stressed. He’s cold, probably tired, but he doesn’t show it, and when the pastry chef arrives at The Beef, he’s all smiles.
“The Bear” does not maintain this pace. How could it? Christopher Storer’s FX production became a sleeper summer hit for Hulu last year by capturing the intense essence of a working kitchen. Everyone called everyone “Chef.” Everyone shouted at everyone — whether it was “chef” or “corner” or “behind” or another timely, more precise request — and they had to shout just to be heard over the clatter of pots and pans, shuffling feet and other voices. With tight half-hour episodes, endearing quips from blue-collar characters, and near-constant forward momentum, “The Bear” carved a space for itself in a crowded TV market, much like The Beef did in Chicago’s competitive sandwich scene.
But now The Beef is gone. In its place, Carm and Sydney (an excellent Ayo Edebiri) hope to open The Bear — a fine-dining, Michelin-level restaurant worthy of their talents. Season 2 depicts this transformation, replacing the daily grind of running an eatery with the daily grind of opening one, while embracing an evolution all its own. Gone are the blunt surrealistic additions (like dreaming up a bear or acting out a sitcom nightmare). Only what’s real remains, and what remains is stronger and richer on its own. The intensity returns before the premiere episode wraps, as “every second counts” becomes the new shop’s mantra. But the change of routine, as well as a few twists of fate, force Carm and his crew to consider why they’re putting their heart and soul into a dangerous, oft-destructive endeavor. What brought them here? What makes them dedicated to this particular pursuit? What drives them to be of service?
This has been “The Bear’s” central question since the beginning — why do it? — but Season 2 does exactly what second seasons are supposed to do: It fine-tunes the storytelling, amplifies what’s working, and digs deeper: both into who these people are and what lures them to this life. If Season 1 looked at how kitchens could become vomit-inducing fear factories thanks to egomaniacal chefs with abusive work habits, then Season 2 asks what would draw someone to such a place to begin with. (Hint: It’s not just the food!) The 10-episode new season pushes beyond finding a functioning compromise between family ties and individual passions, into what happiness even means when you’re an artistic careerist trapped in a capitalistic society.
Many of these themes existed already, but how “The Bear” tackles them in Season 2 is as riveting as before with added dashes of confidence, consequence, and consideration. Silence is golden, even when it only lasts a minute.
That being said: “The Bear” still rips. In keeping with its modus operandi, Season 2 picks up shortly after Carmy finds $300,000 stuffed inside dozens of tomato cans, a surprise gift from Michael, who had borrowed the money from their Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt). Cost estimates are high and getting higher. There’s new equipment to buy, new menus to create, and new staff to hire — not to mention remodeling work and an endless list of requisite permits. The clock, as always, is ticking.
It would be relatively easy for the series to slip back into familiar patterns, and the initial episodes make sure to supply the favorites. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) makes a few off-color jokes. Gary (Corey Hendrix) and Fak (Matty Matheson) entertain with ineptitude, via a good-humored teardown montage. Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) bond as old teammates on different tracks. Natalie (Abby Elliott), Carm’s sister who’s helping out with paperwork and planning, outlines the many hurdles they’ll have to overcome to get this new business up and running, which spurs heated debates over the best way to proceed, whether they can get it all done, and who should be doing what.
“The Bear” never feels slow, but it does slow down. Carm gets a glimpse of what life could be like outside the restaurant (and outside his family) with the reappearance of an old flame. Sydney, in a strikingly beautiful tour of Chicago, seeks inspiration for new dishes among the Windy City’s finest kitchens (including a well-deserved shout-out to the world’s greatest breakfast sandwich at Kasama). Richie confronts his own purpose.
No, really, let me say that again: Richie, the oft-overwhelming chatterbox from Season 1, goes on a journey of self-reflection in Season 2, and getting that guy to convincingly look inward may be one of the new season’s greatest accomplishments. Previously, his oft-overwhelming ass-holery could test our patience with a character who didn’t always earn the empathy Moss-Bachrach was so skilled at evoking. But in the new season, Richie is a highlight — and without betraying who he was before.
Season 2 evolves with similar dexterity. Along Sydney’s self-selected Taste of Chicago, she not only eats a stomach-stretching number of delectable dishes; she also keeps running into closed shops, farewell messages, and dusty help wanted signs. “The Bear” acknowledges the difficulties facing restaurants right now, even in a season that’s more character-based than issue-driven (and even when The Bear’s staff skates by a few of those problems in later episodes). Carm’s sudden crush also pulls double duty. He’s never been distracted from his job before, and balancing his commitments creates unavoidable issues (at work and at home) that are rarely explored with so few clichés and so much nuance.
FX has (rightly) requested reviews published prior to the premiere abstain from certain details in the season’s second half, so all I’ll say (for now) is they put their budget to good use. Well before “Ted Lasso” made it a popular joke, too many half-hour shows (of any genre) stretched their runtimes to fit in every idea they could, usually to the show’s detriment. “The Bear” indulges here and there, including an hourlong entry, but it knows exactly why it’s doing so, and the resulting episodes never feel their length. Carried by magnetic turns from White, Edebiri, and Moss-Bachrach (along with an astutely assembled ensemble by Jeanie Bacharach) and a resolute sense of purpose, “The Bear” flies by once again. Only this time, you’ll be even better satiated.
Grade: A-
“The Bear” Season 2 premieres all 10 episodes Thursday, June 22 on Hulu.
