TV Review: "The Bear" (Season 3)

The third season of FX's hit series is a muddled and self-indulgent mess that feels like a parody of prestige TV tropes.

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I’m one of those who absolutely loved the first two seasons of The Bear. It was one of those shows that managed to grip you each and every episode, as it plumbed the depths of grief, family trauma, and restaurant ownership. In addition to strong and resonant storylines, it also features some truly top-notch performances from the likes of Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bacharach, and Ayo Edibiri, to say nothing of guest appearances from the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, who never met a damaged woman she couldn’t play.

And now there’s season three and, reader, I couldn't be more disappointed. This season gives in to all of its worst impulses, and the result is ten episodes of TV that are meandering, aimless, emotionally suffocating, and wearyingly self-indulgent. I’m not exaggerating when I say that not only did I have trouble making it to the end; I often found myself tuning out and wishing that the whole thing would get over as quickly as possible. 

The season picks up roughly where the second one left off, with Carmy trying to pick up the pieces of the rather disastrous opening of his restaurant which, viewers will recall, ended with him locking himself in a freezer and setting his life on fire. After that, the plot sort of meanders from one point to another. Secondary characters get their own episodes only to be sidelined again, there’s a pregnancy and a birth, Syd gets offered a new job, and for some inexplicable reason John Cena shows up and the Faks get way too much screen time. On paper it all sounds like the stuff of good drama with a dash of comedy. In reality…it’s pretty excruciating. 

I should have known from the first episode that this season was going to be a slog. The entire thing unfolded like a Terence Malick film in miniature, and trust me when I say that I do not mean this as a compliment. It’s slow and contemplative and unbearably pretentious and, while this sort of thing is perfectly fine in moderation, it’s not quite what one expects from a series like this one. Many of the subsequent episodes are cut from this same cloth, with lots of moments in which characters stand around talking to no discernible end while Carmy stands around brooding and looking off into the distance while reminiscing about his time in culinary school. 

The third season of The Bear ultimately becomes something of a triumph of style over substance. It’s heavy on the close-ups which, given that many of the episodes are structured around conversations between characters, can become quite stifling after a while. There comes a point where you just want the camera to pan away from these people so that you can see what else is going on. Not that there is much else going on in terms of plot, but you know what I mean.

Look, I take no pleasure in saying all of this, and my criticism isn’t to say that there aren’t a few bright spots scattered here and there in an otherwise underwhelming and self-indulgent season. Jamie Lee Curtis makes a memorable appearance as Donna "DD" Berzatto, who shows up to help Sugar through the tumult of giving birth. Curtis is truly a master of the craft, digging deep to reveal hidden layers of this mother who has left all of her children a wreck. By the end of it we come to see DD as something more than just the unstable rage monster of the last season. She is, at the end of the day, a mother who’s tried to do her best with both an unstable family and her own significant mental health issues. Just as importantly, this episode moves the plot forward a bit, even though Sugar largely disappears for the rest of the season. Carmy doesn’t even get to meet the baby!

If there’s one bright spot to this season other than Curtis, it would be Olivia Colman, who continues to prove that she can do no wrong. Andrea Terry is always a welcome presence in The Bear, even when it’s revealed that she’s closing her restaurant, a revelation that seems to send Carmy into a bit of a spiral. While it’s understandable that he would feel sad about the end of an era, it still doesn’t really earn as much attention it receives, and it’s particularly confusing that the season ends with him returning to the restaurant for its farewell meal. For a series that’s supposedly all about the titular restaurant, it’s a very strange and frustrating finale, but it’s very much of a piece with the rest of a lackluster (though stylistically ambitious) season.

On the one hand, I can see why the show is still so beloved by critics. It has all of the hallmarks we once associated with beloved prestige TV series: lots of loving takes, beautiful cinematography, strong acting. To me, though, it felt like more of a movie stretched over ten episodes than it did a coherent season of television. Indeed, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the series doesn’t really have much more story left to tell. It’s hard to find another explanation that makes sense of how a series could become so enamored of its own aesthetic that it essentially forgets about its characters and 

For better and worse, The Bear has already been renewed for a fourth season, which apparently was filmed at the same time as the third. If the next one is anything like this, however, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to muster the emotional fortitude to watch it. I’d like to think that they might take a different route and make the next season into a film–which, in my opinion, would be more focused than a lackluster season of TV–but I’m not going to hold my breath. Instead, we’re almost certainly going to be treated to yet another season of navel-gazing and languid flashbacks. In other words, it’ll be another travesty that feels more like a mashup of prestige TV tropes than a coherent narrative.

Heaven help us.