The Cost of the Journey
To know where we're headed, let's look back at the last season of The Bear.
If you’re here with me, on Pickle, you’re compelled by change and transformation, yes? That’s what this show is essentially about. If you haven’t watched it, there are some spoilers here, but it won’t ruin the experience if you’re dipping in for the first time. Also, I’m not going to explain all the characters and plot lines, but the gist should still ring true.
Even if you’re not into food or restaurant culture, I can’t recommend The Bear more fervently than I do. It’s one of the best written things on screens. Season 3 of the FX show debuts on Hulu later tonight, but I wanted to put some thoughts to the last season which was, in no lighter words, profound. I never got to write about it last year, because it came on the heels of my mother’s death, and I didn’t have the energy.
But, I was on a date with a guy last summer and he mentioned that he didn’t really care for season 2 of the show, and I understood immediately. The first season of the smash hit really struck a chord with people because it showed (maybe for the first time) what it felt like to work in a restaurant kitchen. Considering that there are over 13 million people currently working in the industry, and that 1 in 3 Americans have worked in a restaurant at some time in their lives: it hit home. Particularly with the episode titled “Review”, which took 20 minutes of television to an art form as it spooled out one chaotic service filled with ticket machine foibles and personal tensions that had some of us (ahem) standing AT our screens with rising blood pressures and triggered memories. I had the old server nightmares come flooding back after watching it.
It’s hard to top the adrenaline push of season 1, and that familiarity of restaurant kitchen culture. So season 2 had a bigger lift with those expectations, and I wondered how they would top it. Because you can’t just do it all over again, that’s lazy and boring and our exhaustion with outrage and loud conflict would eventually wear us down to where we don’t care. Bombast only thrills deeply with context.
So instead, they took us inside.
Season 2 is much quieter, and thoughtful, I explained to my date, and even though it is no less about kitchens and the industry, it’s more about the journey to find your purpose in the world … and what that costs.
It’s best to follow Richie, who is not the main character.
Half-way into the opening episode of season two, Richie asks a very important question of Carmy, the main chef and driving force behind the opening of the new restaurant.
“Do you ever think about purpose? What’s my purpose, homie?”
You don’t know it then, but it sets the tone for the entire season for Richie, a hapless loudmouth that you both love, feel sorry for, and want to smack. Amongst all the fervor of building a restaurant, he can’t find his place.
He tries to be the leader of the crew, it doesn’t take. He tries to be general contractor for the renovation, it fails spectacularly. He even tries to be his daughter’s hero with Taylor Swift tickets, it doesn’t work and there’s a looming stepfather off screen he’s grappling with.
There is a desperation in his search for purpose, he knows he’s 45 and his comfortable world of the The Beef disappeared when his best friend Mikey did. His fear of change comes out violently, and with teeth, gnashing at and challenging those around him who seem more directed.
We get a glimpse of the softer side of Richie in the legendary 8th episode called Fishes. During the most truthfully chaotic holiday dinner in tv history, the only soft and tender moments of the flashback are with Richie and his then-wife Tiff. She’s pregnant and they are full of dreams for the future. You can see what a more centered and gentle human he is when he feels like he has something guiding him: creating a safe world for his little family.
We already know that he failed at this, too.
When we arrive at the following episode, called Forks, Richie is lost. He’s being sent to work in a high-end kitchen to learn, an act he sees as punishment. He is at his lowest point and is nothing but quills and prickles, forced to polish forks, and yet.
Hospitality shows up: In service to restaurant guests, yes, but also in service to humanity. His teacher, Garret, speaks of finding hospitality through acts of service, a mission found through recovery. Within these magical 20 minutes, Richie learns about the gift of not centering yourself, but putting other people first. In his quest for purpose, he’s been screaming at people for their respect and allegiance, but suddenly realizes its not something handed to you. You have to build it, as a practice. “How you do one thing is how you do everything.”
The pivotal moment in this episode, for me, was when Richie realized that Tiff was going to marry someone else. It’s wrenching to see his broken heart, to know that for all the hopes he had in the episode before, there would be no saving that little world he tried to build. The thing is, it frees him. It’s clear that his failures on that part were the weights he carried, that kept him fastened to a life that no longer had meaning.
Because suddenly he is open. He finds meaning in the tasks at hand. He begins to bloom and finds his stride as he builds his world anew.
The cost of the evolution is letting go. It’s the part of the journey that no one really talks about in our rise & grind culture. Sometimes it’s letting go of things that once defined you, sometimes it’s letting go of beliefs you once held. About yourself. As we entrench ourselves in identity as a way to buffer the chaos around us, we forget how limiting that can be, to freeze ourselves in a moment of life. Holding on to it desperately, so that we don’t spin off the tilting earth.
It’s wickedly scary. Because you usually have to let go before you can see the next version of yourself clearly. It’s the leap.
Carmy, who’s purpose was so clearly defined in the beginning, is actually on this same journey. He is clearly trying to evolve under immense pressures that includes grief and just-under-the-skin family trauma. By letting Clair into his world, he’s allowing a challenge to the way he sees himself (work only work is who you are if you are the best). Some part of him is seeking the softness in the chaos, you can feel that he wants to transform into something better.
And though it begins to actually make him *gasp* happy, in the end, he can’t let go. At the end of the season, we see Carmy physically locked up in his own cooler (a perfect metaphor, *chefs kiss*) while his restaurant opens for the first time. It’s a thing he “let” happen via a broken handle he never got fixed due to the distraction of Claire. He rails at the door:
"Right? What the fuck was I thinking? Like I was gonna be in a relationship? I'm a fucking psycho. That's why. That's why I'm good at what I do. I don't need to provide amusement or enjoyment. I don't need to receive any amusement or enjoyment. And I'm completely fine with that. Because no amount of good is worth how terrible this feels. It's just a complete waste of fucking time."
Read: There’s too much at stake, he’ll fail, his old ways are the best ways because that’s the way he knows and has won before, it may be a horrible way to be comfortable but at least its comfortable. It costs too much to let go.
The only song played three times during this season, is Strange Currencies, usually with Claire for what it’s worth: I tripped and fell/did I fall/what I want to feel I want to feel it now.
The rub, of course, is that his restaurant, his world he’s been building and putting into practice, has not skipped a beat. It didn’t miss him, it didn’t break or fall into the void. In fact: it won the night.
Around him are people who all have, over the course of the season, taken the leap. There’s Richie, a newly suited and ready to lead with confidence. There’s Tina, who took to her transformation from line cook to sous chef fearlessly, meeting each new step with both vulnerability and sharp knives at the ready (her karaoke moment was everything). There’s Marcus, who has had a spiritual awakening through pastry and Copenhagen, but remains rooted in the care of the people he surrounds himself with (there’s a reason why that season opened in a hospital room, and that Richie’s teacher points out the connection between hospital and hospitality). And there’s Sydney, who is slowly, with care and effort, evolving into a leader who can trust herself, and thereby be trusted. Leading with Heart.
This is the stage that is set for the next restaurant life to be doled out in 10 episodes that will drop in a few hours.
I guess the question will be, can Carmy let go of the destructive and restrictive world he built for himself in the past, to find a better one with his freshly transformed crew? I can’t wait for the story to spool out.
PS …. if you are a deep deep fan of The Bear already a few things to watch for in this season:
More clocks? Every Second Counts was a huge theme last year, and the pervasive digital clocks in every episode was such a cool element.
I’ve come to realize that the music is seriously the conscience of the show. Fak talks about how he loves Can’t Hardly Wait in a side conversation with the electrician, and then it shows up running underneath the first Carmy + Claire kiss.
Will the iconic Donna Berzatto be making a return? Her timers were an early version of Carmy’s clocks, maybe even his source code. Would love to see more JLC obviously.
I loved this deep dive into the Chekov’s Gun theories in season 2, as there are SO MANY THINGS you get from rewatching it. Layers, people. Layers.
outstanding write up of a show I love! You are so damn talented
Nailed it! I only wish I could describe why this show resonates half as well as you did.