There is so much to love about FX’s “The Bear.” From its technical precision to its culinary exhibition and intimate, chaotic character work, this vivid kitchen drama had no business being the megahit that it’s become.
Season 4 is the show’s weakest, if only because Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo set such a high bar in previous seasons. IndieWire’s spoiler-free review noted a dulled momentum when it came to key plot development and character growth. The mouthwatering food closeups still work wonders (really, all of the closeups — including those which place viewers so close to an actor’s face that you can practically read their mind), the dialogue still flies almost faster than Tina’s pasta (Liza Colón-Zayas), and there are more Faks than ever (though, unlike Season 3, it doesn’t feel like it).
But even after an objectively solid batch of episodes, “The Bear” feels stuck. It’s doing what it does best, but not doing much more — and that may be the problem. Without further ado (the clock is ticking!), IndieWire’s Ben Travers and Proma Khosla take a closer look at “The Bear” Season 4 and how a potential successor can dig the evolving cooking show out of the two-season rut.
Proma Khosla: I can’t preface this enough with the fact that I do genuinely enjoy “The Bear.” It’s one of those shows that I got into after the rest of the world had been raving about it (including IndieWire dot com), and that can sometimes turn people away from extremely popular shows. I go through some version of it every season as all TV writers steel themselves for The Discourse. (Is it a comedy? Which season is up for Emmys? Does my coworker have screeners and is contractually obligated to lie to me about them?) But then I dive in and I exhale. It’s just excellent writing and performance and production, and you love to see that.
You also love to see that go further! We hold good shows to high standards that they set for themselves. Season 2 raised the bar for “The Bear,” and Season 3 felt like I blinked and it was over with no tangible movement. Season 4 felt the same, and I think it’s because, as your review noted, we seem to be treading water for 10 episodes while waiting for a character to make one, maybe two key decisions.
Ben Travers: Over the weekend, a disheartening paragraph from an interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison was making its way around Bluesky. The featured section saw the A.I. enthusiast complaining that watching “long-form, lots-of-episodes TV is a waste of time,” but there’s an easy solution: Just ask your favorite A.I. bot to summarize it for you. That way, you know what happened, and you’re spared the inconvenience of feeling anything, forming your own opinions, or connecting with anyone via a medium literally made to bring large swaths of humanity together for a shared collective experience.
Now, I don’t think “The Bear” quite qualifies as “long-form, lots-of-episodes TV” — there’s only 40 episodes, and they’re mostly less than 40 minutes apiece — but I do think Collison’s anti-human perspective illustrates a pervasive issue in entertainment: prioritizing plot over everything else. “What happens” isn’t the basis for great storytelling. It’s how it happens, why it happens, and who it’s happening to that really matters, that really resonates, that really lends meaning to the headline actions and events. After all, do we love when Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) crawls out of the ground in “International Assassin,” or do we love all the insane little steps it takes for him to get to a point where he can crawl out of the ground?
We’re living in an age where TV programmers seek out shows the audience only has to half-watch, which tends to negate any potential emotional connection between viewer and story while encouraging an over-dependency on things happening to shock the viewer into paying attention, and “The Bear” is living in that age, too.
All this is by way of explaining I don’t take lightly what I’m about to say: “The Bear” lost the plot. Or, if it didn’t quite lose it, it’s grown too comfortable living without it. Season 4 is the second-half of a two-season arc, and there’s no evidence “The Bear” needed two seasons to get from Carmy insisting they change the menu every day (non-negotiable No. 4) to Carmy admitting maybe they don’t have to do that, actually.
But more vexing to me than the prolonged character arcs — these are good characters, portrayed through great performances, so they can carry a little extra water — is the show’s growing comfort with denying closure. Leaving so much up in the air at the end of Season 3 was annoying and illustrated how little “The Bear” cooked up in those 10 episodes, but at least it had the excuse of “to be continued”; Storer and Calo knew it was a half-season, and admitting as much bought them time to wrap things up in Season 4.
Then… they didn’t. Season 4 starts with, as you alluded to, a literal ticking clock. When Computer’s digital timer goes off, the restaurant is screwed. That’s it. That’s the ballgame. The stakes are clear, and the endpoint is even clearer. So why, oh why, does the season end with the timer going off and no actual answer to whether or not Syd (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Natalie (Abby Elliott) have a restaurant to co-own or not?
The ending we’ll get to a little later, but it’s just one example of Season 4’s incomplete courses and sweet (maybe saccharine?) vibe shift, so please, Proma, take the mic: What else frustrated you about the latest edition of a show we both very much enjoy?
Proma: To your point about the characters: I love them and I love spending time with them. I would also love to see them perhaps do something, apart from yelling at each other in various locations and the bare minimum of self-reflection. We both agree that “Worms” was a missed opportunity to let Edebiri really soar (and Danielle Deadwyler — if you have her, you use her!); while she’s still delivering a great performance, I just wish it wasn’t the fifth time she had to portray Sydney dithering over a big decision that we could all predict from a mile away.
Conversely, I was electrified the one scene she shared with Will Poulter as Luca, rekindling a chemistry we saw at the end of Season 3 and which is begging to be explored — but it was once again limited to that single scene. The same goes for sparks between Richie and Jessica (Sarah Ramos), who deserve for their sexually-charged tie-adjusting to lead to something more. Why was Ted (Ricky Staffieri) the romantic hero of the season? I’m happy for him, but even that arc took place entirely off-camera and left the audience with no choice but to just get on board.
This specific qualm I think stems from the larger issue here that was not an issue at first: “The Bear” is not like other shows, certainly not other half-hour shows (comedies). Over the course of four seasons, Calo and Storer have leaned into what their show does best, but it’s starting to feel like active rejection of other storytelling techniques that wouldn’t necessarily hurt the quality. Allow yourselves a little workplace romance, as a treat! Give us more of the characters’ inner lives like with “Napkins,” and use the guest stars to build out more than just the Berzatto-Fak extended universe.
Ben: After spending five minutes piecing together who “Ted” is based on context clues and a quick Wiki search, I can now wholeheartedly agree with your points before proffering another: The monologuing has to stop.
By that, I don’t mean “The Bear” has to jettison every lengthy speech or chat the writers pen for their talented cast. I just mean the episodes don’t have to wildly vacillate between moody, music-driven montages and concentrated, one-sided conversations. Season 4 has Syd’s strained “sleepover” debate with herself in Episode 4; Kate Berlant’s opening Al-Anon monologue that builds to a joke you could see coming from the start; Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) laying it all out there while making amends to her son; Syd’s hospital confessional to Claire (Molly Gordon), and Carmy and Claire’s confrontation on the stoop — which is technically a hefty piece of dialogue, but when your dialogue sounds like a monologue, that’s probably the first sign it needs a good edit.
Whether there was more monologuing this season than in the past is a question for someone with a better memory than myself, but even if the total was similar, the tone was too lopsided. Nearly all the aforementioned dense talks were delivered with unchecked sincerity, and while Season 4’s shift into heartfelt-mode largely worked to its advantage — I love the wedding episode, “Bears,” in part because it’s the unabashed bizarro version of “Fishes,” which it invokes at the start before veering in the opposite direction — vulnerability goes a long way in small doses, and “The Bear” gave us heaping spoonful after heaping spoonful.
With that, Proma, I have to ask about the ending: After the mixed response to the last two seasons, as well as Carmy’s so-called “retirement” in Episode 10, “Goodbye,” there have been plenty of people arguing it’s time for “The Bear” to close up shop. Personally, I couldn’t disagree more. Too much is left unfinished, and too much is left unresolved. “”Unfinished” goes back to the relationships that have or haven’t come to fruition and the fate of the restaurant itself — plot details, if you will — but “unresolved” applies to how much Carmy & Co. have grown, changed, and done right for themselves.
Richie mocking Carmy for using the phrase “retired” might be the most I’ve laughed all season, in part because “Good luck, Admiral. We’ll send you your watch” is a great quip, but also because I kinda believe him? Carmy may have to leave the restaurant for a while in order to gain perspective, find peace, and move closer to the unattainable goal of a work/life balance, but there’s no way one of the top chefs in the world with a deeply personal connection to food is going to simply stop cooking. Nor do I think abandoning his family to start over with Claire (as Carmy obviously intends) is the right thing for a guy who, as Richie says, is constantly running away.
Technically, the finale addresses these complaints, so maybe I just need to shut up and respect people’s choices. But we literally don’t know whether Richie, Syd, and Natalie have jobs, nor do we know if they’ll be happy in their new intended positions at The Bear. Those aren’t intentional stopping points. This isn’t a series meant to end with that level of ambiguity, and it’s also not a series that has to punt on a legitimate series finale just because it delivered another dissatisfying season finale.
“The Bear” may be headed toward an ending, but it’s not there yet. Tell me I’m wrong?
Proma: Listen when you’re right, you’re right — and I’m not just saying that so that Luca and Sydney can kiss (not entirely). When pitching a series, creators are asked about the overall arc of the story and what future seasons might look like. I can’t imagine these very talented writers went into those meetings waxing about ownership agreements and giant clocks. There had to be a vision — if not a map — for where Carmy, Richie, Sydney, and the rest were going, and my hope is that this protracted season is in service of that vision. Carmy’s incremental growth is triumphant even as he inches along, and a highlight of Season 4 was seeing just how far Syd and Richie have come since being party to a workplace stabbing in Season 1.
So let’s not stop there! This is a massive ensemble and while I don’t expect everyone to have their story tied up with a bow — excuse me, garnished with an edible flower — nearly everything ended in a place that left us wanting more.
Yes, Richie and Carm finally talked about their tension and Mikey’s funeral, but can’t we see how their dynamic shifts? Marcus texted his father and got a “Food & Wine” shoutout, but what does that mean for their relationship, and his place at The Bear moving forward? Is the Michelin star really in the bag, as Episode 3’s snowy climax would suggest? Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) is going to franchise the Beef window, but can’t we see how it does? And is Tina going to get a medal for winning the pasta Olympics? Voracious viewers need to know!
There’s a difference between leaving something open-ended and ostensibly giving up on resolution, and Season 4’s individual endings fall scattered across this spectrum. So despite having too much of “The Bear,” I hope we get more of “The Bear.” Maybe I’m just not ready to say goodbye, and if I’ve learned anything from this show it’s that you often don’t get to — not on your own terms and not neatly. But TV creates chances we don’t get in life, and these characters deserve a final course for the ages.
And also Luca and Sydney should kiss.
“The Bear” is now streaming on Hulu.