There will be only one real spoiler in this review of The Bear Season Four, but it’s something revealed within the first few minutes of the premiere, and it’s impossible to talk about the restaurant drama’s return without digging into this. So if you don’t want to know whether the Chicago Tribune review of the restaurant — a.k.a., the subject of the cliffhanger ending to the show’s divisive third season — was positive or negative, come back later. The whole season’s streaming right now on Hulu.
As you might have expected from Carmy’s profane response to the review in the previous finale, it’s a pan. The headline reads, “BEAR Necessities Missing: The BEAR stumbles with culinary dissonance.” From what little we can see of the article, the critic enjoyed the Italian beef sandwich — the one part of the restaurant that predates Carmy’s involvement — and complains that the rest of the experience was too different from night to night, including the front of house staff struggling to explain the menu, which Carmy insisted on changing every day.
It reads, in other words, not too differently from many reviews of The Bear in 2024, including ours. After two universally-acclaimed seasons, the FX series, like its hero, got too ambitious last year. It opened the season with a tone poem recapping Carmy’s culinary journey. It gave far too much screen time to real-life chefs, whose presence opposite trained actors tended to suck the energy out of scenes. What was then the reigning Emmy winner for Outstanding Comedy Series all but abandoned any pretense of being comedic, other than in scenes featuring the cartoonish Fak family, as the show went all-in on the Faks. There was a great episode spotlighting Tina’s origin story and her first meeting with Mikey. On the whole, though, Season Three rarely approached the creative highs of its all-timer second season. And the abrupt ending to the finale made it clear that Bear creator Christopher Storer was treating those episodes and this new batch as one giant season, with a 12-month gap in the middle. There were powerful performances and lovely individual moments. But like the restaurant with which it shares a name, The Bear was trying to do too many things, resulting in a season that didn’t feel coherent or ultimately satisfying.
Carmy spends much of this new season taking the Tribune review to heart and trying to be a better chef, boss, friend, and brother. And whether this was always the plan or Storer’s response to the show’s more muted reception last year(*), the season sure plays as the work of an artist humbled by less-than-glowing notices, doing his best to learn from them and get back to what people first loved about his creations. Carmy apologizes to a lot of people this year. So, it seems, does The Bear.
(*) This includes the show losing the comedy series Emmy — for Season Two, which, remember, everybody loved — because the voting happened while Season Three was released, and the Emmy voters expressed their disapproval by choosing Hacks instead. (Or maybe they were just sending a statement about category fraud?)
There are, for instance, only a couple of well-known foodies playing themselves this time around, and those cameos are fairly brief. The Faks’ presence has also been significantly curtailed, so that when we finally get an episode with lots of Faks, the comedy actually works, rather than feeling like too much of a somewhat amusing thing. (It helps that this year’s Very Special Guest Fak is asked to give an actual performance, versus John Cena just being John Cena.) And where Season Three could feel aimless, as though Storer, Joanna Calo, and the rest of the creative team were marking time until they were ready to get the story moving again, this season has a literal ticking clock in the Bear’s kitchen, representing the amount of time the restaurant crew have left before Uncle Jimmy stops paying for everything. There’s a clear goal — a Michelin star or bust — and genuine tension and momentum throughout.
There’s also much more of the ensemble interacting, with their chemistry and love for one another explaining why we as an audience keep returning to one of the most stressful workplaces in television history. The seventh episode puts most of the cast, plus a lot of familiar faces from the recurring ensemble, in the same house for the wedding of Richie’s ex-wife Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs) to her wealthy fiancé Frank (Josh Hartnett). It’s 69 minutes long, which should feel exhausting and self-indulgent. Instead, the characters and their interactions are so well drawn — even relatively minor figures who might only be in one scene, and/or only have a few lines of dialogue — that it’s the kind of episode of television you might want to live in forever if you can. If the season goes overboard in restating its key themes about the importance of found family, and how being at a restaurant means you won’t feel alone, it’s worth it for payoffs like the wedding.
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The series continues to have a killer soundtrack, with enough money and juice to pay for Led Zeppelin in the premiere, and to offer a mix of genres and eras throughout, from early Eighties New Wave to modern alt-country. Even when Season Three felt meandering or pretentious, the vibe set by the music and the production design never faltered. And that end of things feels even more potent now that there’s more narrative focus.
And of course there are those performances. Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri keep finding new levels of rawness and vulnerability as Carmy and Sydney. There are several moments in the season where one or both of them looks like they’d rather chew their arms off then remain in a particular difficult conversation, and that discomfort and pain comes off the screen in palpable waves. Ebon Moss-Bachrach gets to be a bit more relaxed this year as Richie develops an interesting friendship with Jessica (Sarah Ramos), with whom he briefly worked at the world’s best restaurant, Ever; it feels like a useful release valve for both Richie and the series for him to get to interact with someone he respects, but who knows absolutely nothing about all the drama and tragedy of the extended Berzatto family.
We’re not quite back at the Hall of Fame level of the second season, mind you. Several storylines fizzle by the end — even the ticking clock proves to not be as big a deal as promised — or feel like wastes of the performers and characters. After being the highlight of Season Three, Emmy winner Liza Colón-Zayas’ Tina gets barely anything to do; her whole arc for the year is whether or not she can cook her pasta course slightly faster. There’s still too much time and energy devoted to Carmy’s ex-girlfriend Claire. Molly Gordon gets more interesting things to do this year than when Claire and Carmy were dating in Season Two, but Claire is described and presented as so angelic and perfect that she seems an odd fit on a show that’s otherwise about the importance of loving people despite their flaws.
But there are three instant classic installments: the wedding, a Sydney spotlight about a memorable afternoon she has while trying to get her hair braided, and the finale, which is a single scene that features only a few characters. And the non-Very Special Episodes feel more confident, consistent, and, Bear-y than much of last year.
At the wedding, Frank asks Claire and Berzatto in-law Stevie (returning guest star John Mulaney) what he should be prepared for now that all these Berzattos — none of whom are actually related to Tiffany (nor to “Cousin” Richie, for that matter) — in his life. Claire thinks on how to phrase her answer, and how candid she wants to be with this overwhelmed guy on his wedding day, before finally suggesting, “It’s a lot of people with very specific and unique personalities that feel things very strongly.” Stevie clarifies that the Berzattos “feel things very deeply, and experience life intensely.” The Bear is a show that, at its best, will feel as deep and intense as life is for Carmy and his loved ones. And the series is at its best far more often this year than it was the last time we saw it.
From Rolling Stone US
