Last year, pumped the brakes on the frantic, ulcer-inducing energy of its , as one restaurant shed its skin to make way for the next. This audacious shift in rhythm signaled that, like the addled wunderkind at the heart of its story, the show is always ready to change up the menu in the name of innovation. But what happens once the renovations are done, once culinary journeys across Chicago and Denmark have come to an end, once the dream of a high-end restaurant built with cash secreted away in tomato cans (and a big ol’ loan from Uncle Jimmy) becomes a reality? What happens is the actual day-to-day grind of running a dining establishment, of trying to rise to the top in a notoriously competitive industry, of spending hours on your feet in the literal and proverbial heat of a bustling kitchen, of never being able to escape the people you love that you could wring their lovely necks? One of ’s greatest strengths has always been its ability to make viewers internalize characters’ emotions, and “Doors” is a whirlwind of them.
Over the course of half an hour, the episode takes us through a month at Chicago’s hottest new restaurant, as Carmy and Sydney put their brigade de cuisine model into practice in a kitchen—one staffed by people who, less than a year ago, were working at a neighborhood sandwich dive. “Doors” opens by closing a chapter of one Bear staffer’s life. It’s time for Marcus’ mother’s funeral, and the gang files into an echoing church to pay.