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The Hindu
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
‘The Bear' Season 4 series review: Let them cook
By its fourth season, The Bear has stopped pretending it's not a workplace drama in chef's whites. The powdered sugar of stylisation has mostly been dusted off, and what now remains is a sleek, trimmed-down story about trying to keep a business alive while everyone involved is quietly falling apart. It's still quite fond of its 90-second close-up montages of someone birthing the future of modern gastronomy. But underneath the mood lighting and the string of aggressively curated needle drops, there's something simpler, sweeter, and, finally, human again. The pendulum swing from the previous season's art-house self-seriousness to this season's almost earnest sentimentality is dramatic enough to cause whiplash. The Bear dials down that divisive haute cuisine pretension from last year and finally loosens its apron strings to let the rest of the kitchen serve up more of what we've been craving. The Bear Season 4 (English) Creator: Christopher Storer Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebony Moss-Bachrach, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colon-Zayas, Abby Elliot, Edwin Lee Gibson Episodes: 10 Runtime: 30-70 minutes Storyline: Carmy finally faces his demons and allows his restaurant to achieve its full potential We pick up right where we left off: the Chicago Tribune review has dropped, and it's a confusing, love-hate letter to The Bear, kind of like how season three was recieved. The tragic, Byronic Carmy is still brooding, Sydney is still visibly holding the place together with the strength of her eyes alone, and Uncle Jimmy is now literally counting down the hours until his patience (and money) runs out. But instead of spinning in never-ending loops of Carmy's insufferable martyr complex, the series decides to do something truly radical in the wake of its previous season. Like moving forward, for one. The revelation this time is Ayo Edebiri. After two seasons of playing the show's designated rational adult, Sydney finally gets to be something resembling a person. Her big episode — written by Edebiri herself and Lionel Boyce — sees her spend time with her niece, reflecting, decompressing, and being torn between staying at The Bear and taking a job offer that would almost certainly involve fewer existential crises and more consistent health insurance. It's one of the few understated moments this season where the series remembers what food costs the people who make it. That said, The Bear still can't help itself. Season four might just be even cornier than its predecessors. There are repeated platitudes masquerading as revelations about the sanctity of restaurants, about restaurants as families, families as restaurants, and so on. There's still a whole lot of looking, pausing, and meaningful chewing. No one in this universe has ever said, 'I don't know,' and meant it. They're always just one sentence away from a full-blown personal essay. But when it works, it really works, because like its characters, The Bear doesn't always know how to express what it's feeling, so it just says it very loudly, and then plates something beautiful. Maybe it's because of the extraordinary performances that the show still packs a punch. Jeremy Allen White has become almost allergic to words this season. He emotes through eyebrow twitches, hand tremors and ruffling those tattooed palms through his hazel curls. The tragic boy-genius of the kitchen spends much of this season listening, which is ironic, and oddly poignant. He is no longer the engine of the series so much as the ticking clock inside it. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, meanwhile, continues to do miraculous things with Richie, turning what began as a loudmouth punchline into one of television's most unexpectedly moving characters. He can go from absurd to profound without changing pace, delivering grief, growth, and dad-level bravado with the same cracked charm. This season gives him a bit more quiet, and the seasoned chef in Moss-Bachrach lets it breathe. One of the biggest wins this season is how it gives its supporting cast actual things to do besides just marinate in trauma. Ebraheim finally gets to be more than the kitchen's resident monk. Richie assembles his fine-dining Avengers — Jessica, Garrett, Rene from his tryst at Ever — to steady the ship. And even the infantile Faks are scaled back to semi-useful kitchen goblins of sorts. It's an upgrade across the board. This season also finally chills out on the cameo circus. Sure, a few still pop up (it's The Bear, after all), but they don't scream, 'Surprise!', like they've done so far. When the show does go big — particularly in the now-trademark 'Episode 7' — the familiar faces feel like well-earned callbacks. The smartest thing The Bear does in Season 4 is finally admit it might not need to orbit around its sad, sous-vide-edged white boy anymore. We've lived in Carmy's head long enough to know the floor plan, and the Berzatto family trauma has been thoroughly sautéed. The more compelling question now is: what happens when someone else takes the wheel — someone who still believes food can fix people, or at least keep them from completely falling apart? Season four is the closest The Bear has come to feeling like a real place again, but it's still half-baked. Some arcs feel undercooked, emotions come slathered in too much sauce, and too often the show confuses shouting for jokes. But it's also warm, nimble, and more generous than it's been in a while. It has started to remember that it's a show about people trying to make something beautiful together, even if they're not entirely sure how. Let them cook. The Bear Season 4 is currently streaming on JioHotstar
The National
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The National
From Noma to Poulette: How Copenhagen's restaurants shaped The Bear
In a bright Copenhagen bakery, actor Lionel Boyce was more interested in perfecting croissants than memorising lines. Each day, he would join Hart Bageri's staff, rolling pastries and absorbing the meditative rhythm that would later define his pastry chef character Marcus on The Bear, season four of which begins Thursday. Amid the bakery's light, airy interior – with its high ceilings, expansive windows and beams – there was no script to follow, no intensive coaching. Just the endless repetition of folding and shaping until the movements became instinct. 'We just treated him like any aspiring employee who came to work for us,' Hart Bageri creative director and baker Talia Richard-Carvajal tells The National. 'It was a few years ago, so we're talking around the time they were preparing for the second season [which aired in 2022], and I remember our attitude was like, 'Listen, it's lovely that you're here, but now you really need to work.'' Boyce was immediately comfortable with the rigours of the craft. 'It made me realise that we're more similar professions than we perhaps thought,' she notes. 'You have to be the kind of person who finds joy in repetition, and you always have to be open to learning from scratch to a certain degree. You have to be humble enough to appreciate that you're not going to get it right on the first go.' For a series based on the triumphs and travails of a fine-dining restaurant in Chicago, the training mattered. In The Bear, the food always seems to be saying something. The exacting craft of a perfectly cooked Chilean sea bass with tomato confit signals a kitchen in control, while a croissant ragefully hurled to the floor screams chaos. The point of training wasn't for actors to merely act or move like chefs. It was to think like one and experience the kitchen from the inside, with all the awareness and aches that come with its momentum and monotony. To get it right, the producers looked to Copenhagen. They consulted Rene Redzepi, co-founder of Noma – arguably the Danish capital's most famous restaurant, which earned its third Michelin star in 2021. Redzepi also appeared briefly in season three. Lead character Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is said to have trained at Noma, a detail that explains his obsessive standards and quiet discipline. His pastry chef, Marcus, follows that path more literally. In the dedicated season two episode Honeydew, directed by Ramy Youssef, he travels to the Danish capital to deepen his craft. That connection is concrete behind the scenes. Amid Noma's foraged gardens – with elderflower, wood sorrel and wild herbs – Boyce trained alongside the team during service in Copenhagen, with scenes shot inside Noma's actual kitchen. 'Our team was just amazed by the scale of the whole thing. The cameras, the crew and the operation were incredible and genuinely fun for everyone to be part of,' recalls Annika de las Heras, managing director at Noma Projects. 'I think there's a lot of overlap between film, design and food. It's always interesting to see how people working creatively and with care can come together like that.' The detail was so precise that Rosio Sanchez – a Chicago-born Mexican chef who made a cameo appearance in season three – found herself recoiling during some of the show's more intense kitchen scenes. 'I actually thought, 'Wow, this is so real'. It's so accurate to how it feels to be in these moments,' she says. 'I was at the edge of my sofa just thinking, this is making me cringe because I can so relate to it.' That said, the rush actors feel following the director's cue of 'action' mirrors her daily experiences when opening her restaurant. 'It's that same adrenalin of getting ready for service each day,' she adds. 'Our daily service is its own version of a television production.' Not all of The Bear' s Copenhagen discoveries came through research or industry contacts. Sometimes, stumbling on a small shop selling chicken sandwiches can matter just as much. In the Norrebro district is Poulette, known not for innovation, but for perfection, for getting the fried chicken sandwich right. There is retro neon signage, a short and focused menu and their signature sandwich – crispy, seasoned thigh meat, tangy slaw, pickles and a soft brioche bun. In the Copenhagen episode, Marcus drops by the restaurant to try the sandwich, relishing in its flavours and craft. Co-founder Martin Ho says a local production crew scouting locations for the series found the place by chance. 'They came when they were scouting locations for the second season, and then suddenly a Danish production company reached out to us. We didn't know what it was for, and then the next thing we knew, they were filming outside, and we figured out it was The Bear," he tells The National. "We didn't even know they came to Poulette, but apparently they did." Whether it's the success of the series or pop star Dua Lipa reportedly calling it one of the best sandwiches she's ever had, Poulette now sells up to 800 sandwiches a day, with a line of over 20 people outside when it opens daily at 11am. Whether The Bear captures all the intricacies of running a restaurant is up for debate. Like every dish, every kitchen has its own story, whether in Chicago or Copenhagen, shaped by its staff, their experiences and their traditions. But one truth the show gets right is that the trade is all about giving. 'It's about doing something for someone else, serving people and making something that makes people happy,' says Sanchez. 'But it's also performance. Like actors, every day the doors open we're on our own stage. And the magic comes in seeing people come together and do inspiring things.'
