‘The Bear' review: Stellar performances carry Season 4, but story has missing ingredients
This review contains light spoilers regarding the fourth season of 'The Bear.'
At one point in the wheel-spinning yet reliably well-acted fourth season of ' The Bear,' brilliant/tortured chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) stops changing his restaurant's menu every night. For the sake of consistency and his customer base, he sticks with proven hits.
Meanwhile, creator and executive producer Christopher Storer employs his show's most crowd-pleasing element only sparingly, as if it is the last ounce of truffle on a busy Saturday night.
This show's sweet spot has always been its depiction of a busy restaurant kitchen, first at fictional Chicago sandwich spot The Beef, then its fine-dining successor The Bear. Although kitchen scenes can be stressful to watch, moments when the crew works harmoniously and produces perfect dishes often thrill in their precision. Yet the bulk of the new 10-episode season — now streaming on Hulu — is maddeningly imprecise.
Season 4 starts with The Bear's team still absorbing a mixed review from the Chicago Tribune. The review's gist is that the restaurant is capable of excellence but messy in execution. (Any resemblance to the critical reception to this show's third season is surely coincidental.) Since they consider the Tribune review too ambivalent to drive new business, Carmy and crew turn their focus back to earning a Michelin star.
This premise is easy to get behind, first because it presents a metropolitan newspaper as still make-or-break influential in 2025, and second, in stating a goal that seems to require nail-biter kitchen scenes to achieve. But apart from an extended, beautifully choreographed sequence in Episode 3, most of this season takes place outside business hours — and involves dry, limp word salads rather than delicious food.
Meandering and inarticulate, the season's too-frequent extended conversations usually occur between the famously unforthcoming Carmy and one other character. Carmy does use his words, but most are meaningless and must be interpreted by companions who too often join him in obtuseness.
Scenes with Claire (Molly Gordon), the longtime love Carmy too often pushes away, can be agonizing. They often are shot in close-up, further emphasizing the degree to which these two talk in circles. Granted, the Carmy-Claire storyline has always seemed forced, but Claire, who is a doctor, once spoke in sentences.
These scenes and many others feel too obviously improvised — you can see what appears to be actors 'yes, and'-ing each other in real time. When we tune in to 'The Bear' to see the sausage being made, this is not what we mean.
Scripted or otherwise, White (soon to be seen on the big screen as Bruce Springsteen) and fellow Emmy winners Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach — who play chef de cuisine Syd and front-of-house manager Richie, respectively — once again deliver stellar performances. Although White can seem overly morose, he lends emotional depth to scenes that tap Carmy's inherent empathy.
Edebiri brings more confidence to Syd this season while remaining unaffected and relatable, making a case for being named overall 'Bear' MVP. Having directed last season's excellent 'Napkins' episode, Edebiri co-wrote this season's fourth — and most cohesive — episode, which explores Syd's family ties beyond her widowed, loyal dad (an always solid Robert Townsend).
Although still prone to dramatic self-flagellation, Richie finally seems like a full-fledged adult. Moss-Bachrach continues to keep Richie's pain and self-doubt right at the surface but adds a layer of wisdom.
Although Syd, Richie and even Carmy progress this season, the story does not, as conflicts that should have been resolved in Episode 1 stretch unnecessarily into the finale.
Maybe it's time to acknowledge 'The Bear' not for what it promised to be — a TV classic — but for what it is: a small, pandemic-era miracle not built for longevity. Although this realization disappoints, the transitory realities of the show's restaurant setting help it go down easier.
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Season 3, relentless in its examination of the sticky contours of Carm's trauma, offered fewer bursts of that kind of respite. These new episodes, though, bear fruit, in the form of progress, and forward momentum, and the impossible optimism of people changing for the better. In Season 1, Carm—a burner-scarred veteran of some of the world's best kitchens—returned to Chicago to try to save his dead brother's hopelessly dysfunctional sandwich shop, sparring with Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), his coke-dealing 'cousin' and a poster boy for woeful masculinity. In Season 2, with the help of his protégé, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Carm prepared to open the restaurant he'd always dreamed of, while Richie found his own sense of purpose. At the end of Season 3, the Bear—the restaurant—received a thoroughly mixed review from the Chicago Tribune, leaving the team scattered and uncertain. On the plus side, this means there's no time left to waste. The motif of the new season is a clock that Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) unceremoniously plonks down in the kitchen, counting the number of hours until the restaurant runs out of funds. If the team is going to save the Bear, it has to be now. Christopher Storer, the show's creator, turns the last minutes of the first episode into a rousing, synth-scored, preparing-for-battle montage reminiscent of a Cold War action movie. Every Second Counts reads the sign on one wall. 'Why am I crying?' I wrote in my notes, as lockers slammed shut and knives rasped against sharpeners ahead of service. The biggest obstacles, beyond money, are the ones in the chefs' heads: Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is still slower and clumsier with the desserts he's trying to perfect than he can afford to be; Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) can't turn the pasta around quickly enough; Sydney can't decide whether Carm's genius in the kitchen is worth the risk of sinking her own career and mental health. The Bear has always had an expansive understanding of what restaurants represent—the task not only of elevating food into an art, but also of making every guest feel cared for, affirmed, at home. And for the people who spend 80-hour weeks sweating all the intimate details of service, the job means so much more than work, the team so much more than colleagues. 'Please, help me out with this place,' Richie prays one night. 'If it's fucked, then I am fucked. It's like the last thing that's actually keeping me attached to anything, so please, help me out here. Amen.' Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson), whose work in the sandwich window is the lone financial bright spot in the Bear's books, seeks a mentor to try to figure out how he personally might be able to help. Sydney agonizes over the question of whether to abandon Carm and the Bear for a more functional (if annoying) chef who's trying to poach her. The new season, as is series tradition, makes space for some intriguing curveballs. An episode co-written by Edebiri and Boyce takes Sydney outside the restaurant to a hair appointment at a friend's house, where she considers what it means to have people who really know her, and to feel like she belongs. Another episode that runs upwards of an hour brings together virtually everyone in the show's history for an event that seems to promise chaos and destruction—say, a car driven through a house, a gunfight—but goes somewhere wholly unexpected. Almost more than ever, The Bear is preoccupied with what we as humans inherit and what we pass on in turn, and whether we can actually choose, as Carm wanted in Season 3, to 'filter out all the bad.' Carm's sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott), trying to raise her own child differently, starts using gentle-parenting techniques at work, almost unintentionally, with understandable lapses in patience. Richie's work on himself continues to, in my opinion, sustain all hope for humanity. ('Neil Jeff, you're beautiful,' he whispers to his and Carm's childhood friend, Neil Fak—Matty Matheson—in a heartbreaking instant of pure television.) Marcus and Sydney, both of whom have lost their mothers, interlock neatly with Carm, who still dreads seeing his own. In Season 1, the show seemed intent on conveying how toxic masculinity poisons not just kitchen culture but all hierarchies; now, because the team members have opened themselves up to more nurturing models of care and communication, their potential is fully unfurling. All of this wrestling with pain and purpose and guilt and growth is intermingled with Storer's musical callbacks and quick cuts of dishes being plated, red lines on charts running menacingly downward, clocks ticking, casual conversations that become so unexpectedly profound that they rip your heart right out. The pace isn't always so rapid-fire—when episodes slow down, it's for a reason. There are still a handful of dream sequences and surreal interludes that seem to want to underscore the show's deep psychological curiosity, and its unwillingness to be an easy watch. But after the slow-drip, languorous suffering of Season 3, it's thrilling to see the characters and the action move so purposefully and gratifyingly forward.
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Warning: Spoilers ahead for Season 4, Episode 7 of The Bear. Throughout The Bear's ambitious and stress-inducing catalog of episodes, 'Fishes' ranks among the most memorable. The hour-long Christmas special (if you can call it that) in Season 2—set five years before Carmen plans to open his refurbished restaurant—is one big, loud, obnoxious family gathering. How could it not be? There's the Berzattos, the Fak brothers, Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Lee (Donna's on-and-off boyfriend), Cousins Michelle and Steve, friends Richie and Tiffany, and Natalie's husband Pete—a mixed-company cocktail waiting to be turned into a Molotov. It doesn't take long to be set aflame. At the dinner table, a conversation breaks out about the Seven Fishes tradition, but it quickly escalates from spirited to chaotic. Mikey starts a heated debate with Lee that leads to forks flying through the air. Natalie (a.k.a. Sugar) asks her mother Donna if she's 'OK,' which sets off a fight. Then, amid the disruption, Donna leaves the table and crashes her car into the dining room. It's a drunken exclamation point on a volatile, violent night. It's also a flashpoint for Carmen, another traumatic moment that pushes the chef to leave for New York and remove himself from the orbit of the toxic people in his life. Often forgotten inside that overwhelming episode: a brief mention of Neil and Ted's sister, Francie Fak. Earlier that evening, when Michelle inquires as to why she isn't at the party, the brothers share that Francie is not allowed to be there, because Natalie refuses to be in the same room with her. 'She's mad as hell. She's angry,' Neil says of Natalie. ''Cause of the thing…' 'Still, huh?' Michelle remarks, surprised. It's just 30 seconds of dialogue, but the lack of explanation regarding their falling-out intrigued The Bear's diehard fans. When did this take place? What happened between them? How bad was it? And crucially: Would Francie ever make an appearance? And if so, who would play her? The questions, at least among obsessive Reddit users, lingered throughout Season 3, but the show's ruminative, overbearing, Carmen-focused arc boxed out most of the ancillary backstories. When would we find out what happened? A year later, the wait is over. In Season 4's seventh episode, Francie, played by none other than Oscar winner Brie Larson, makes her grand entrance onto the show. Over the course of the hour-long duration of the episode, which takes place at the reception for Tiffany and Frank's wedding, Natalie and Francie verbally attack each other, share a vulnerable moment together, and eventually make up, settling their years-long beef. But do we ever figure out the origins of their issue? Well, sort of. When Francie first arrives, she greets Uncle Jimmy with a hug, much to Natalie's dismay. Then the pair begin the first of a few shouting matches. 'You can apologize whenever, you know that?' she hisses at Francie. 'You f-cking bitch!' The insults soon devolve into sarcastically miming each other's words like little kids. 'No! Yeah? Well…' It feels like we might be headed toward another 'Fishes' scenario. Then the truth starts to emerge. It's hard to decipher through the overlapping bickering, but remnants of the fateful night that turned these two into mortal enemies come into focus. Natalie gripes about what appears to have been a house party, complaining that 'whipped cream was everywhere,' and that Francie was drunk, and 'I didn't know how to start the car…' Francie claps back: 'It was raining, the bus was going to leave,' before offering one more explanation. 'There were no cell phones then!' At this point, as they begin shouting another litany of profanities, Pete enters the fray to separate the two women and calm things down. Then Ted drops a small bombshell. 'Pete's in denial about these two hooking up,' he says. Pete scoffs. 'You two did not hook up,' he says looking at his wife in disbelief. In the awkward silence, Natalie and Francie look at each other. 'Well….' Natalie says. It's a funny and informative sequence, though it doesn't give us all the details. As the episode progresses, however, showrunners Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo offer a little more insight into Francie—and why Natalie could be driven to so much hate. When she sees Neil and Ted near the bathroom, the brothers confront her and ask why she's so mean to their girlfriends. 'I'm supposed to, that's my job,' she says, before insulting Ted's girlfriend's shoes. 'The shoes are really bad and it says a lot about a person,' she says, practically suggesting he break up with her. 'Get your head in the game.' The scene makes Larson's casting an inspired choice. Not what you'd expect a Fak sister to look like, she cuts against her filmography of nicer, more sympathetic characters and harnesses her beauty like an evil queen, hiding her insecurities by punching down. The choice is also in line with a show that likes to make a splash with its cameos—whether that be revered chefs, British stars, or former wrestling champs (see: John Cena as Sammy Fak). Eventually, she and Natalie sit down together and hash things out. They express their true feelings. They think about each other a lot. They each hope the other one is happy. They hope they're doing something great. 'Francie, you wanna maybe try and be friends?' Natalie asks. When Francie responds positively, Natalie asks one more follow-up. 'You won't f-ck me over?' The resolution—and Francie's appearance itself—makes sense within the show's context. The episode is effectively a spiritual sequel to 'Fishes,' reconvening the entire family for another celebration. This time, the forks stay on the table. After all, Season 4 is much calmer than the preceding ones—it's about following Carmen's ultimate goal ('filtering out the bad, to make it good'), an intention he expresses at the end of Season 3. It's about working through trauma, finding room for forgiveness and healing, and moving forward. And what better setting to celebrate the return of a friendship than at the union of two other friends? It's unclear whether we'll ever know specifically what happened between Natalie and Francie. But at least we know the pair won't be getting near whipped cream any time soon.
