Note: This review contains spoilers from “The Bear” Season 4.
Let’s start by answering the most important question: yes, “The Bear” Season 4 is better than Season 3.
Once FX’s restaurant dramedy moves on from the self-indulgent stuckness that made Season 3 so un-bear-able, it finds some moments that feel like the best of Seasons 1 and 2. It’s as confident and singular in its artistic vision as ever. But even though more is happening than there was in Season 3, it’s not quite enough to give the show a shape. Its overemphasis on character and vibe at the expense of narrative momentum leaves it repetitive and flabby. Like the Chicago Tribune’s mixed restaurant review says, it’s missing some Bear necessities — namely, a compelling enough plot.
Season 4 picks up in the aftermath of that review. The problematic press will make achieving success even harder for Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and his ragtag-turned-highly professional team of chefs. Jimmy “Uncle Cicero” Kalinowski (Oliver Platt), the restaurant’s primary investor, gives them two months of financial runway, but after that, they’re on their own. If Carmy wants his business — and his life — to be sustainable, he’ll have to find a way to make it less chaotic. That’s where the season starts and pretty much where it ends, too.
Stylistically, “The Bear” remains unlike any other show on television, and four seasons in, you know if what it’s serving is for you. Every ingredient is specific to the show — the wall-to-wall music, the unique use of montage, the stylized chaos of the way characters scream over each other, etc. — and the show is totally committed to all of them. Everything that happens could only happen on “The Bear.” Creator Christopher Storer & co.’s artistic integrity is admirable. Unlike their characters, they’re not afraid to make bold choices.
Carmy and sous chef Sydney Adamu’s (Ayo Edebiri) decision paralysis — on apologizing to his ex-girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon) and whether to leave the Bear for a less insane new job, respectively — are what made Season 3 so narratively stagnant. While they avoided taking necessary action, the plot could not move forward. Season 4 finally gets moving again, eventually, but it takes its time. The first two episodes remain in stuck mode, as the staff of the Bear make small adjustments that aren’t enough to bring about the big changes they need. The show is not subtle; Carmy watches “Groundhog Day” on TV to drive the point of being stuck home. Very little of consequence happens, and the episodes end with nearly identical kitchen montages. If you didn’t like Season 3, you will be tempted to 86 “The Bear” for good at this point. But once Carmy goes to Claire’s apartment to apologize at the end of Episode 3, the show finally gets moving — and improves just enough to make you wish it were doing more.
The characters barely change, but they talk about how much they want to change to the point of exhaustion. Syd takes all season to make a decision — that’s 20 episodes of being stuck — but in her standalone (and standout) fourth episode, written by Edebiri and pastry chef Marcus actor Lionel Boyce and directed by Janicza Bravo, she at least takes an active role in her process. After a tour of the new restaurant’s space with chef Adam (Adam Shapiro), who means well but isn’t Carmy, Syd goes to her cousin Chantel’s (Danielle Deadwyler) house for a hair appointment and ends up spending the afternoon hanging out with Chantel’s middle school-aged daughter TJ (Arion King). As Syd gives TJ advice on how to handle a complicated friendship situation, she gets a clearer perspective on her own dilemma. Meanwhile, Deadwyler makes the most of a rare comedic role. The way she’s stunned into enraged silence when TJ mouths off to her will have you checking to see if your TV is frozen.
Deadwyler is one of several notable guest appearances, a “Bear” trademark. Comedian Kate Berlant has an impressive one-scene cameo as a woman in Carmy’s Al-Anon meeting who tells a story about her addict brother. It’s not as intense as Carmy’s legendary Season 1 monologue, but it has a better punchline. And a wedding episode serves as a way to bring back many guest stars, including most of the extended family from Season 2’s “Fishes,” plus a notable new face. No spoilers for this particular surprise guest if you haven’t watched the season yet, but an Oscar winner’s appearance as a long-referenced but previously unseen character will have you Googling if she’s from Chicago (she’s not).
The cameos got out of hand in Season 3, but they return to a more manageable level here. John Cena’s Sammy Fak, the nadir of the show’s overindulgence in celebrity guests, is mercifully absent.
The best moment of the season — the kind of scene you tolerate “The Bear’s” flaws to get to — involves one of the guest stars. Bob Odenkirk returns as Carmy’s estranged mother Donna’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) on-again, off-again boyfriend Lee, and he and Carmy have a nuanced conversation about Carmy’s late brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) that helps Carmy understand how people can change. “Sometimes to break patterns, you gotta break patterns, man,” Lee says, which could be the thesis statement for Carmy’s story this season. Executive producer Joanna Calo’s underplayed dialogue gives White and Odenkirk the opportunity to dig into the subtext. It’s a masterful scene that lets two tremendous actors showcase their talents. And even though it doesn’t directly move the plot forward, it serves a clear narrative purpose by allowing Carmy’s mind to change.
In normal shows, most scenes serve that kind of purpose, with a handful of non-narrative scenes peppered in for flavor. “The Bear” reverses that, with mostly non-narrative scenes, and a handful of plot scenes per episode. For every scene like Carmy and Lee’s, there’s a scene where characters repeat the same phrase over and over again in a way that’s supposed to be funny, followed by an overlong, boring scene where characters speak repetitively and inarticulately about their feelings. The worst offender is the one in Episode 2 where Carmy and his sister Natalie (Abby Elliot) say nothing but earnest platitudes to each other while an entire Bob Dylan song plays. These episodes are pretty short, but they’re not tight. If the stuff that would be considered filler on a more traditional show got cut down — which wouldn’t and shouldn’t happen, to be clear — the episodes would be about 10 minutes long.
In the end, “The Bear” has to be “The Bear.” The show has always put character and atmosphere ahead of plot. This is not an inherently bad thing, and it makes “The Bear” what it is. Sometimes it results in enjoyably vibey non-narrative scenes like Carmy visiting the Frank Lloyd Wright museum. However, there is dissonance in how precise “The Bear” is with its character dynamics and aesthetic details but how indifferent it is to plot. The characters are on slow-moving emotional journeys, and most scenes serve those stories, rather than the overarching question of “will the restaurant stay open?” And the things that do happen in a cause-and-effect sense don’t seem to matter much. The premiere introduces a literal ticking clock that means the restaurant will run out of money and have to close when the countdown reaches the end. But then all season long, the show keeps downplaying how important the clock is until manager Natalie and accountant Uncle Computer (Brian Koppelman) realize that they’re actually running efficiently enough to keep going. The clock still runs out, but after “The Bear” creates the tension, there’s no payoff. It’s a violation of commonly accepted and effective storytelling rules without a clear purpose for doing so.
It’s simply unusual for a show as well-made as “The Bear” to so deemphasize one of the essential components of television. It’s “The Bear’s” boldest take-it-or-leave it choice, and it’s the least successful. But hey, at least this season has a plot at all.
“The Bear” Season 4 is now streaming on Hulu.
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