When it comes to “The Bear,” there will be blood. Heart and warmth, too. But also yelling.
Lots and lots of yelling. The sweaty, frenetic story of a humble Chicago sandwich shop slinging Italian beef before pivoting to fine dining, Season 3 of the FX series (streaming on Hulu) has reached the sink-or-swim portion of the narrative, of a restaurant start-up led by a chef whose ambitions may outweigh his reality. The show’s slice-of-life anxieties were stress-inducing when it premiered two years ago and that continues apace.
What’s changed is “The Bear’s” laser focus of its earlier seasons. I like that showrunners Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo don’t feel compelled to rush things along — this is the plodding work of a restaurant still figuring itself out in the early going — but the episodes sometimes feel like they’re spinning their wheels, or biding time until something meaningful takes shape. Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is at the center of it all.
That’s always been the case. But more so than ever, this has become the Carmy show. After his meltdown on opening night at the end of Season 2, the new season picks up in the aftermath with a 35-minute montage of meditative scenes sliding back and forth in time featuring the moments — and the people — that made the man.
It’s a risk to start the season this way. The episode demands a patience it doesn’t always earn. We know who Carmy is by now, a sad-eyed husk of a person chasi.
