To somewhat understate the case, the new, third season of FX’s “The Bear,” which is now streaming on Hulu, is as magnificent as television ever gets. I’m not here to tell you what happens in it, but it’s not particularly a plot-driven season in any case — though there are challenges the characters face and the question, which hangs over the entire series, of who and what will manage to hold together, and who and what will break apart. More Created by Christopher Storer, who writes and directs many of the episodes, it’s a fundamentally musical show — and not just in terms of its use of recordings to underscore or create counterpoint with the action, which is standard screen practice, but constructed tonally, rhythmically.
Words matter, of course — though probably fewer than 100 are spoken in the opening episode, a nonlinear montage of past and present moments set over a floating ambient score — but the impact of the series is less literary than it is musical; it lights up the limbic system. As a season, it’s an album, changing from track to track, much as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) wants to remake his menu from day to day. It’s arranged in short and long movements, in major or minor keys, at tempos marked largo or moderato or prestissimo, with passages played fortissimo or pianissimo.
Dissonance dissolves into consonance, consonance is drowned in dissonance. There are motifs (lots of clocks) and quotations. (Characters from the past reappear; R.
E.M.’s.
