What Really Went Down Between Francie Fak and Sugar Berzatto on ‘The Bear'?
Spoilers below.
For what feels like eons now, inquiring minds have wondered: What, exactly, is the deal with Francie Fak? Over the course of The Bear's first three seasons, Francine 'Francie' Fak was relegated to a purely off-screen existence, her long-running feud with Natalie 'Sugar' Berzatto (Abby Elliott) hinted at in vague (but heated) snippets of dialogue. Something bad happened between them, but no one ever seemed capable of apologizing for it...or saying the bad thing out loud. (Alas, 'tis the Berzatto family way.)
When the fourth Fak sibling's name was first introduced—way back in season 2, episode 6—we learned that Francie's invitation to Christmas dinner had been revoked, thanks to the 'thing' that made Sugar 'mad as hell.' Later, in season 2, episode 8, the FX dramedy doubled down on Sugar's fury. When Neil Fak (Matty Matheson) asked Sugar if his sister could attend a Friends and Family event at their new restaurant, The Bear, Sugar's response was simple and clear: 'She can go fuck, my love!'
Still, it wasn't until season 4 dropped this week that Francie finally had a chance to defend herself. In season 4, episode 2, Sugar's husband, Pete (Chris Witaske), mentions that he ran into the sole Fak sister at the gym—a fact that displeases Natalie greatly. She considers texting 'Francine Bitchfuck Betrayer' (or so her contact reads in Nat's phone) but ultimately decides against it when she gets a call from her younger brother, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White). Finally, the two former friends collide at the wedding of Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs) and Frank (Josh Hartnett) in episode 7.
And who should swoop into the reception but an Avenger! The Bear is now notorious for its ever-growing list of celebrity guest stars, but I doubt Brie Larson as Francie Fak was on anyone's Bingo card ahead of season 4. She manages to pull off a mostly convincing dynamic with the Fak brothers—criticizing their girlfriends and their shoes—even if the surprise appearance of Larson herself makes it hard to re-focus on the scene at hand.
Despite their frilly pastel attire and the elegant scenery, Francie and Sugar launch almost immediately into an shouting match. Soon, the argument turns to the 'thing' that tore them apart, but their overlapping dialogue makes it near-impossible to make sense of what they're saying. There was chocolate and alcohol! Whipped cream and rain! A bus and a car! No cell phones! Pete tries to break up the fight, but Teddy (Ricky Staffieri), Francie's brother, lets a bomb drop as he snickers: 'Pete's in denial that these two hooked up.' Pete turns the accusation around on Francie and Sugar: 'You two did not hook up.' To which they both reply, simultaneously, 'Well...'
The Bear creator Christopher Storer clearly doesn't want us to know exactly what went down between Francie and Sugar. But the look on their faces makes it clear they did, in fact, hook up once—and the fallout wasn't fun for either of them. Later in the episode, they finally reconcile, hugging as they reforge their friendship...so long as neither of them 'fucks' the other over.
It's as yet unclear if we'll see Francie again in future episodes, or if this was one of several subplots in season 4 aimed, perhaps, at making The Bear a comedy worthy of its controversial Emmy category. Either way, Pete has nothing to worry about when it comes to his marriage. When he later checks with Sugar to ensure she's 'not, like, in love with [Francie],' Nat's disbelieving response is genuinely hilarious. 'What? With Francine? No, babe,' she affirms. And she'll leave it at that.
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Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
By taming its chaos, ‘The Bear' bravely shows us what addiction recovery looks like
In the beginning there was chaos. Three years ago, FX's 'The Bear' splattered across our screens and made it impossible to look away. The yelling; the cursing; the gravy-slopping, bowl-clattering, grease-slick, jerry-rigged anxious sweaty mess of the Chicago sandwich shop the Beef and the wildly dysfunctional group of people who worked there, including elite chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), who inherited the Beef from his dead-by-suicide beloved brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal), wowed critics and raised the culture's collective cortisol count to eye-twitching levels. Critics used terms like 'stress bomb' and 'adrenaline shot'; current and former restaurant workers described symptoms not unlike those of PTSD, and viewers ate it all up with a spoon. Season 2, in which Carmy follows through on his plan to turn the Beef into a fine-dining establishment, only increased the anxiety level. With real money on the table (courtesy of Carmy's uncle Jimmy, played by Oliver Platt), along with the hopes, dreams and professional futures of the staff, including Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Marcus (Lionel Boyce), Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), Sugar (Abby Elliott) and, of course, Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), stakes were cranked to do-or-die. When the episode 'Fishes,' a stomach-clenching holiday buffet of trauma, revealed the twisted roots of a family forged by alcoholism — Carmy's mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) — and abandonment — Carmy's father — viewers could not get enough. This being television, we knew that all the wild dysfunction would inevitably coalesce into triumph — you cannot achieve greatness without driving yourself and everyone else crazy first, right? When, at the end of Season 2, the Bear somehow managed to have a successful opening night, despite Carmy locking himself in a refrigerator and having a full-on existential crisis, our deep attachment to 'yes chef' pandemonium appeared vindicated. Fistfuls of Emmys and dopamine cocktails all around. Except being able to open is a rather low bar for success, even in the restaurant business. Carmy is, for all his talent, an utter mess, and creator Christopher Storer is not, as it turns out, interested in celebrating the time-honored, and frankly toxic, notion that madness is a necessary part of genius — to the apparent dismay of many viewers. When, in Season 3, Storer and his writers opted to slow things down a bit, to pull each character aside and unsnarl the welter of emotions that fueled the Bear's kitchen, some viewers were disappointed. Which, having become dependent on the show's stress-bomb energy, they expressed with outrage. 'The Bear' had lost its edge, was getting dull, boring, repetitive and reliant on stunt-casting; it should have ended with Season 2 or, better yet, become a movie. Thus far, the reaction to Season 4 has run the gamut — where some condemn what they consider continuing stagnation, others cheer a return to form. Which is kind of hilarious as this opens with the staff of the Bear reeling from an equally mixed review of the restaurant from the Chicago Tribune. (Shout out to the notion that a newspaper review still has make-or-break influence, though the Bear's lack of a social media awareness has long been worrisome). Turns out that Carmy's obsessive determination to change the menu daily, and keep his staff on perpetual tenterhooks, was perceived as disruptive, but not in a good way. 'They didn't like the vibe,' he tells Syd in a morning-after debrief. 'They didn't like the chaos,' she replies. 'You think I like chaos?' he asks. 'I think you think you need it to be talented,' she says, adding, 'You would be just as good, you would be great … without this need for, like, mess.' Coming early in Episode 1, Syd's message is a bit on the nose, but addiction does not respond to subtlety, and 'The Bear' is, as I have written before, all about the perils and long-range damage of addiction. That includes Donna's to alcohol, Mikey's to painkillers, Carmy's to a self-flagellating notion of perfection and, perhaps, the modern TV audience's to cortisol. As Season 4 plays out, with its emphasis on introspection and real connection, viewers might consider why 'addictive' has become the highest form of compliment in television. It's such a sneaky bastard, addiction, happy to hijack your brain chemistry in any way it can. Our collective attention span isn't what it used to be and the adrenaline rush unleashed by crisis, real or observed, can create a desire to keep replicating it. Even on broadcast and cable television, most dysfunctional family series take a one-step-forward-two-steps-back approach to their characters' emotional growth. The mess is what viewers come for, after all. Particularly in comedy, we want to see our characters get into jams for the pleasure of watching them wildly flail about trying to get out of them. Early seasons of 'The Bear' took that desire to a whole new level. But having amped up the craziness and the stakes, Storer now appears to be more interested in exploring why so many people believe that an ever-roiling crucible is necessary to achieve greatness. And he is willing to dismantle some of the very things that made his show a big hit to do it. Frankly, that's as edgy as it gets, especially in streaming, which increasingly uses episodic cliffhangers to speed up a series' completion rate — nothing fuels a binge watch like a jacked up heart rate. Like Carmy, Storer doesn't appear content with resting on his laurels; he's willing to take counterintuitive risks. As an attempt to actually show both the necessity and difficulty of recovery, in a micro- and meta- sense, 'The Bear' is an experiment that defies comparison. At the beginning of this season, Uncle Jimmy puts a literal clock on how long the Bear has before, short of a miracle, he will have to pull the plug. Carmy, still addicted to drama, claims they will still get a Michelin star, despite evidence to the contrary, which will solve everything. (Spoiler: A gun introduced in the first act must go off in the third is one of many tropes 'The Bear' upends.) The rest of the staff, mercifully, takes a more pragmatic approach. Richie, having become the unexpected sensei of the Bear (and the show), does the most sensible thing — he asks for help from the crackerjack staff of chef Terry's (Olivia Colman) now defunct Ever. 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And I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it — I love my adrenaline rush as much as the next person. But that's the whole point. Real change doesn't occur with the speed or the electricity of a lightning bolt; as many addicts discover, it's about progress, not perfection. Recovery takes time and often feels weird — if you want to have a different sort of life, you need to do things differently. That's tough on a hit TV show, as the reactions to Season 3 proved (we'll see how it fares when Emmy nominations are announced in a few weeks). Few series have made as large a shift in tone and tempo as 'The Bear,' but its intentions are clear. To illuminate the necessity, and difficulty, of breaking an addiction to anything, including, chaos, you can't rely on talk; you life to be different, you have to do things differently.
CNET
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What to Stream This Weekend: 'The Bear,' 'My Mom Jayne' and 'Squid Game'
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Yahoo
an hour ago
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What Really Went Down Between Francie Fak and Sugar Berzatto on ‘The Bear'?
Spoilers below. For what feels like eons now, inquiring minds have wondered: What, exactly, is the deal with Francie Fak? Over the course of The Bear's first three seasons, Francine 'Francie' Fak was relegated to a purely off-screen existence, her long-running feud with Natalie 'Sugar' Berzatto (Abby Elliott) hinted at in vague (but heated) snippets of dialogue. Something bad happened between them, but no one ever seemed capable of apologizing for saying the bad thing out loud. (Alas, 'tis the Berzatto family way.) When the fourth Fak sibling's name was first introduced—way back in season 2, episode 6—we learned that Francie's invitation to Christmas dinner had been revoked, thanks to the 'thing' that made Sugar 'mad as hell.' Later, in season 2, episode 8, the FX dramedy doubled down on Sugar's fury. When Neil Fak (Matty Matheson) asked Sugar if his sister could attend a Friends and Family event at their new restaurant, The Bear, Sugar's response was simple and clear: 'She can go fuck, my love!' Still, it wasn't until season 4 dropped this week that Francie finally had a chance to defend herself. In season 4, episode 2, Sugar's husband, Pete (Chris Witaske), mentions that he ran into the sole Fak sister at the gym—a fact that displeases Natalie greatly. She considers texting 'Francine Bitchfuck Betrayer' (or so her contact reads in Nat's phone) but ultimately decides against it when she gets a call from her younger brother, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White). Finally, the two former friends collide at the wedding of Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs) and Frank (Josh Hartnett) in episode 7. And who should swoop into the reception but an Avenger! The Bear is now notorious for its ever-growing list of celebrity guest stars, but I doubt Brie Larson as Francie Fak was on anyone's Bingo card ahead of season 4. She manages to pull off a mostly convincing dynamic with the Fak brothers—criticizing their girlfriends and their shoes—even if the surprise appearance of Larson herself makes it hard to re-focus on the scene at hand. Despite their frilly pastel attire and the elegant scenery, Francie and Sugar launch almost immediately into an shouting match. Soon, the argument turns to the 'thing' that tore them apart, but their overlapping dialogue makes it near-impossible to make sense of what they're saying. There was chocolate and alcohol! Whipped cream and rain! A bus and a car! No cell phones! Pete tries to break up the fight, but Teddy (Ricky Staffieri), Francie's brother, lets a bomb drop as he snickers: 'Pete's in denial that these two hooked up.' Pete turns the accusation around on Francie and Sugar: 'You two did not hook up.' To which they both reply, simultaneously, 'Well...' The Bear creator Christopher Storer clearly doesn't want us to know exactly what went down between Francie and Sugar. But the look on their faces makes it clear they did, in fact, hook up once—and the fallout wasn't fun for either of them. Later in the episode, they finally reconcile, hugging as they reforge their long as neither of them 'fucks' the other over. It's as yet unclear if we'll see Francie again in future episodes, or if this was one of several subplots in season 4 aimed, perhaps, at making The Bear a comedy worthy of its controversial Emmy category. Either way, Pete has nothing to worry about when it comes to his marriage. When he later checks with Sugar to ensure she's 'not, like, in love with [Francie],' Nat's disbelieving response is genuinely hilarious. 'What? With Francine? No, babe,' she affirms. And she'll leave it at that. You Might Also Like The 15 Best Organic And Clean Shampoos For Any And All Hair Types 100 Gifts That Are $50 Or Under (And Look Way More Expensive Than They Actually Are)
