“Let it rip.” Ever since Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) read these words in a note from his late brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal), they’ve become the de facto motto for a series that does indeed love going for broke. The debut season was an unrelenting introduction to the grueling life of restaurateurs, especially those still reeling from the loss of a family member who also happened to leave them in debt deeper than Chicago’s deepest-dish pizza.
(We’re talking Pequod’s here, not Lou Malnati’s.) An ambitious Season 2 kept the heat up, as Carmy & Co. remodeled the greasy spoon sandwich shop into a Michelin-worthy fine-dining establishment, but it spread the fire more evenly across its core ensemble and top-shelf guest stars .
In short, it ripped, and it did so in a way Season 3 can’t and doesn’t across 10 new episodes. But the popular slogan still applies. Back in the first season’s finale, when Carmy finally gets up the nerve to speak about Mikey (to his Al-Anon support group), he talks about how much confidence his brother instilled in him.
“When I was a kid, if I was nervous or scared to do something, he would always just tell me to face it, to get it over with. He would always say — it’s stupid — ‘let it rip.'” Just as Mikey has been the impetus for so much of “ The Bear ,” his motivational words spur Carmy, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and the rest of the staff to move forward when fear stands in their way.
“Let it rip”.
