July 1, 2024

Can’t quite figure out what the fervor is over FX’s The Bear. We gave up on it when it first aired a few years ago because the camera work in the initial episodes was cut so fast that it was irritating. A couple of weeks ago, we decided to give it another try in light of the over-the-top reviews, resolved to see what the fuss was about. We also noticed that the reviews for recently released Season 3 weren’t quite as glowing.

The Bear is a middling workplace melodrama situated in and around a Chicago restaurant with extended family — and friends who think they’re “family” — as the main characters. There’s a brooding protagonist (Carmen), who’s also a brilliant chef, mourning the recent suicide of his beloved brother who owned the restaurant. Carm, with his formal culinary training, has aspirations of elevating the place from a sandwich shop to an upscale Michelin one-star eatery, and he’s determined to do it with this motley, mostly untrained, crew.

The go-to creative tic of the show is dialogue that is often screaming cross-talk laden with F-bombs and righteous indignation. The characters hurl horrible, personal abuse at each other, followed immediately by soul-searching contrition and a lot of “I’m sorry, chef.” (Everyone is “chef”). This is supposed to pass for “poignant realism” even though no sane, emotionally stable people ever speak to each other this way. 

The food porn photography is truly outstanding, but there’s not much character growth or even an engrossing story. The quality of the acting varies from show to show (and character to character), but only Jamie Lee Curtis’s nutso matriarch is really dreadful, chewing scenes as an unhinged train wreck. The soundtrack includes a lot of REM, Eddie Vedder and Wilco, if that’s your cup of tea. The Bear certainly isn’t bad, but it’s overwrought in a weirdly pointless sort of way. And not terribly original. Grade: C/C+

Photo: Copyright ©FX Networks 2024