Season 2 of The Bear gave us 10 of the best TV episodes in recent memory.
Sure, TV critics say that often about a variety of shows, but this one is deserving of such praise.
The first season’s success was a slow burn, picking up more fans along the way thanks to its stellar reviews, social media, and word of mouth. It made instant stars of its leads Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, and their characters Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto and Sydney Adamu quickly became fan favorites. The first season focused on world-class chef Carmy returning home to Chicago to help run his family’s sandwich shop after losing his big brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) to suicide.
Meanwhile, Syd was trying to find her way back into a kitchen after a failed business attempt and found it inside The Original Beef of Chicagoland. Together, the chefs were able to realize how much potential each other and the restaurant had, especially if they combined their skills. Now in their sophomore year, the show’s creators shook things up, veering away from the chefs and their team running a local Italian beef sandwich eatery and chasing after something a bit more ambitious—a fine dining restaurant appropriately called The Bear.
Syd and Carmy partner up on the risky venture, investing everything they have and then some into their new dream. While the restaurant is their idea, it’s the back-of-house staff who become the central focus this season, and the show is even stronger for it.
The first season followed Carmy’s mental state, which was affected by being back home while coping with grief, abandoning his career, and dealing with debilitating anxiety. Season 2, which premiered on June 22, follows as Carmy falls in love with his new girlfriend named Claire, and in all honesty, it is my least favorite storyline of the season. I personally only want to see Carmy cook in the kitchen, not the bedroom.
Naturally, the relationship becomes a distraction for him and pulls his attention away from the million things required to open a successful restaurant and from providing Sydney with the comfort and security she needs while embarking on a massive business endeavor with him. But luckily, the crew around Carmy picks up the slack.
The Bear is made up of one of the most impressive ensemble casts, and all the characters—including Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Lionel Boyce (Marcus), Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), Natalie "Sugar" Berzatto (Abby Elliott), and Neil Fak (Matty Matheson)—enriches the show and makes you care deeply about each of them.
“It's a show where people love all the other characters. So the fact that the [creators] fed into that was so cool and smart,” Boyce, who plays a pastry chef named Marcus, tells Complex. “I also just loved everyone's arc. They also put so much time and thought into the arcs so it doesn't feel like it's just a trope or it feels cliché. It's not trying to make it bigger or broader—it's just real, honest, and specific.”
Carmy inherited his brother’s team and has since built his own relationships with them, which empowers them to remain loyal to his new project and commit to becoming better to help him. He is equally investing in them and their potential, and instead of bringing in new, younger, more experienced people to replace them, he prepares them to handle the responsibilities of working in a high-end restaurant and a high-pressure environment.
Season 2 opens up with Marcus taking care of his dying mother. It’s an intriguing place to start since most people see The Bear as a show about operating a restaurant. But this story arc is indicative of the writers taking it further this season. The creators wanted viewers to be more invested in who these characters are outside of the kitchen, and we go on that journey with Marcus.
Marcus was in charge of baking the bread at The Beef, but was given the freedom and responsibility to start widening his horizons. He begins testing out and creating new dessert recipes that will become part of the new restaurant's menu. In Season 2’s “Honeydew”—written by Stacy Osei-Kuffour, directed by Ramy Youssef, and guest starring by Will Poulter—Carmy sends Marcus on a journey alone to Copenhagen, Denmark, to polish and strengthen his skills, and it becomes one of the season’s best episodes. However, while this is a special moment in Marcus’ life, as he evolves from breadmaker to pastry chef, his mother’s deteriorating health is always on his mind.
“The cool thing about Marcus' journey for me is that to be able to keep up with him, I have to learn more myself, too,” Boyce says about his role. “The more he learns and the more happy he is, the more sad you feel for him. What he has is an outlet for a life that right now is just not in a great place because of the circumstances [with his mom]. It sheds light on people going through those sorts of situations. No matter how happy they are, that's always just ruminating back there. It's a fear of, ‘When will the clock expire?’”
He says that Carmy and Sydney’s bandwidth no longer allowed them the opportunity to work with the employees one-on-one. They have reached a point where they have to say, “This is as far as I can take you,” so they sent them elsewhere to continue learning. Tina, played by Liza Colón-Zayas, and Ebraheim [Edwin Lee Gibson] worked in the kitchen for Mikey for years, and now they are being sent to culinary school to sharpen their techniques.
As much cooking experience as they have, their skills pale in comparison to what is required to work at a Michelin-star restaurant, which is what everyone’s goal is for The Bear. Until Syd was hired in Season 1, Tina was the only woman in the kitchen, and she held her own. She fought back against change in Season 1 and was not easy to get along with, especially for Syd, but Season 2 finds Tina a bit more open and willing to learn.
“I feel like I connect with [Tina]. I never cooked in the kitchen officially like that. But I get it. To be holding your own in a male-dominated environment, having to become a product of that environment, reaching a certain age, feeling threatened by major changes of the only thing that you know,” Colón-Zayas tells Complex. “For Tina, this is a family. This is who she spends most of her adult life with. And is just fighting to survive and be a part of something, to fight against gentrification, to prove your worth if you don't have the accreditation. She has seen what it looks like to go unchecked all around her, so I think she was hard because she had to be hard.”
In Season 2’s Episode 1, titled “Beef,” the owners are putting together a new staff for the restaurant. In Carmy’s words, the most important thing is finding not only people who are willing to learn but finding people who give a shit. Luckily for them, those people are already right in their kitchen, and Syd asks Tina to be her sous chef. Tina gleefully accepts the offer, breaking her hard exterior, and their interaction outside of the restaurant is one of the most heartfelt of the season.
While Tina doesn’t get her bottle episode like Marcus in "Honeydew" or Cousin Richie in “Forks,” we see her attending culinary school throughout the season and growing more confident in her talents. Ebraheim struggles to adjust and to keep up in school, but Syd’s vote of confidence in Tina has made her rise to the occasion and made their relationship stronger. The women are able to make strides because Tina feels seen and respected by someone she feels is more qualified than she is. The progression of their relationship is necessary for the show. Not only does The Bear accurately show what any kitchen in a big city in the United States looks like in terms of racial diversity, but it also shows how women have to behave in a male-heavy environment.
“Well, at first, I was nervous. What kind of message is this going to send that the two women of color are [at odds]? But I was assured to trust,” Colón-Zayas says about Tina’s storyline. “I'm grateful that we're seeing Tina being able to trust, we're seeing Sydney earning the trust, and Tina can continue to raise her game. Hopefully, she can take on bigger things, and eke out a little more as time goes on how she became Tina. I have my ideas, but you know what? I like that she's a mystery. We learn about her as we need to.”
It seems like little by little we’re getting inside the mind of all of these characters. We are discovering what led them to The Beef, what their motivation is for staying at The Bear, and who they are in relation to their families and personal lives. We get small glimpses throughout this season of all of them, and deeper insights into characters like Cousin Richie in “Forks” and the Berzatto siblings in “Fishes.” In “Forks,” viewers might find themselves appreciating Richie more than they did previously. In Season 1 it sometimes felt as if he added very little, except tension, not only to the show but also to the running of the restaurant.
Aside from being Mikey’s best friend, and a close family friend to the Berzattos, he didn’t have a clear-cut role in the restaurant’s food chain. But with Carm’s help, we see Richie was simply missing direction. He finds it while doing a short stint at a fine dining restaurant that allows him to appreciate Carmy's world and gives him the kind of passion and purpose that makes a person excited to wake up every morning. Richie progresses from being a pain in the ass in an old The Beef T-shirt at the start of Season 2, to a sharply dressed man in a suit, committed to helping Syd, Carm, and Natalie make The Bear the Michelin-star destination they want it to be.
Those incredible, stand-alone episodes have further cemented this show as one of the most thoroughly engaging, breathtaking and well-written series on TV, with fully fleshed-out characters to match. The Bear Season 2 beautifully zooms in on its characters' experiences, doubts, and insecurities as they take on this new challenge, and follows intensely as we figure out if they will crumble or succeed.
The deeper we get into their conscience and their motivations, the more we see what it looks like for a group of people of all different backgrounds who are dealing with their internal turmoil to put all that aside and come together to build something bigger than themselves. We see them find purpose, build careers out of odd jobs, master new skills, and strive for more even when a positive outcome seems unreachable.
The show’s creator, Christopher Storer, has put together a fascinating team of actors who, together with the show’s writers and directors, have given us something fresh and relatable to sink our teeth into. Seasons 1 and 2 are, fingers crossed, just the start of what could be a series and characters that we will talk about for years to come.
Season 1 and 2 of The Bear are now available to stream on Hulu.
