The Bear on FX: aka HEARD! aka YES CHEF! aka Ketamine Gene Wilder cooks for u

Season 2 starts next week lets gooooo

Jeremy Allen White? Oh, you mean “Ketamine Gene Wilder”? pic.twitter.com/9aESu3OFnO

— Alan Vann (@Alan_Vann_) July 7, 2022

i loved this show so much i binged it twice tbh looking forward to S2

pumped for CHAOS MENU

I came so close to starting this thread a few months ago withe the title "Chicago Beef w/a Side of Wilco"

holy shit I just read "Ketamine Gene Wilder" and was like hmmm I think I know who that is and sure enough it was him

ketamine gene wilder is so hot and i would like him to cook for me

i dont think ive ever been as stressed by watching something as i was with that fucking printer

Good interview with Ebon Moss-Bachrach here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/arts/television/ebon-moss-bachrach-the-bear-season-2.html

Also how the fuck did I miss his partner of many years is photographer Yelena Yemchuk aka Billy Corgan's partner plus artist of choice for the Smashing Pumpkins in the late 90s?

Also given the thread title I do appreciate this:

He had an agent before he graduated and has been working steadily ever since, bouncing between theater, film and TV, studying performers like Gene Wilder, a castmate in Moss-Bachrach’s first onscreen appearance.

I watched one episode of this and immediately wondered if they ever stopped yelling at each other

spoiler: they don’t

i still occasionally do an online pickup order from a local restaurant that i used to frequent during COVID - whenever i do it now i still think of the order printer in The Bear & feel a lot of sympathy pangs for what restaurants must go through w that shit

I watched one episode of this and immediately wondered if they ever stopped yelling at each other

if you can’t stand the heat yelling get out of the kitchen tv show

jk

I watched one episode of this and immediately wondered if they ever stopped yelling at each other

I normally don't like programmes where all they do is shout (I've never managed to get through a whole episode of The Goldbergs, for example), and I don't like it when programmes add in obvious extra tension-building sounds, like smoke alarms or ringing phones or children crying, but after a couple of episodes I was as hooked on this programme as everyone else.

It's a weird show, some good and memorable scenes, but the non-kitchen chaos scenes are often a drag. And there are so many little things that didn't quite make sense to me -- how did the Xanax get into the Ecto Cooler? They played as unintentional but that seemed, uh, logistically improbable. Were they not doing take-out at all before, or just no online ordering? The time of day (and whether this place is doing lunch or dinner or both) is often confusing too.

its about as realistic as a dream sequence in a daytime soap, tbc, its just gritty fun with great performances and moments and direction

i think the micro-specifics of the show are what sold it for me, selling vintage levis for cash (stored in his oven bc he never cooks at home lol) the kitchen stuff like drinking out of the pint containers, the food he eats after a shift (doritos, coke)

like even when parts of story don’t always flesh out perfectly, it all feels so well-observed in terms of details & behaviour

to me, anyway

Ketamine Gene Wilder frequents the pizza place my nephew works and i just missed seeing him there by like 5 mins one time.

Just watched the first episode of season 2, so glad to have this show back. We had just finished season 1 of Succession, and it's wild to veer from a show where i don't give a shit about what happens to anyone and I want them all to fail to a show where I care about everyone and want them all to succeed.

Hell yah. Great music choices too. The Hornsby opener, transcendental blues by Steve Earle into New Noise to close it out.

if no one has seen Matty Matheson’s cooking videos I’d recommend because those are wild fun.

pure chaotic energy, highly recommend

in other news:

password is “speedboatmojito” all one word

just watched the first couple of episodes, going to savor the rest over the weekend. the never-ending chaos was anxiety-inducing in the first season, but the show's rhythms are kinda comforting now heh

the Marcus episode is a really lovely little break of pace

xpost "gofastboatsmojito" !!!!

oh fuck i knew i screwed it up lol thankyou

That made me laugh really hard. Of course that guy would have been a huge fan of the Miami Vice movie...

He and every other sensible person.

i'm a fiend for italian beef

In the Ever/Alinea-restaurant episode, I love how a) it's Ritchie who gets sent into that 3-Michelin star world and how he dials up the Chicago accent when presenting the deep-dish canapés. Also, having Olivia Coleman as the chef keeps it credibly as someone very privileged without having it be a dude at the top. And her warmth and unintimidating manner seemed very credible as the kind of person who is nearly impossible to reach one-on-one and with tough underlings, but face-to-face can be incredibly friendly.

What a series. Again.
PS I adored the little omelette scene. Just process and reaction; making something with love and seeing it received with love.

oh damn, I put this off after Star Trek last night because I thought it was week to week and wanted to save up episodes

i watched through ep 5 last night, hoping to finish today but ep 6 is weirdly over an hour long?

god help me i could look at ketamine gene wilder all day

I have managed to convince the husband to watch this, which means I will be going in on season one again before season two. A treat for me!

big fan of shortish episodes too

i have read elsewhere that S2 not quite as safdi-esque insane?

We've seen five of the new season so far, and while there is still plenty of hectic screaming, it's in service of something productive. The characters, acting, music cues, use of the city, all top notch.

made it up to half-way through the guest-star packed christmas episode last night.

i got up early & watched 2 eps while eating breakfast

brb going to copenhagen

the scenes w carmy & claire are so good, the way they talk about random shit & stare morse code to each other is v good

omg that “can’t hardly wait” needledrop

literally a …

(are you ready)

.. CHEFS KISS

youre welcome

THIS GODDAMN GORGEOUS BEAUTIFUL SHOW WTF WTF

#gofastboatsmojitos obviously unassailable but the stuff with Carmy and the alarm is also A+++.

i have read elsewhere that S2 not quite as safdi-esque insane?

NCIS: Lake Michigan

well buckle up for the christmas episode fuckos

Haha was gonna say….

real talk

the family stuff at the heart of this is so real.

like, i don’t even have a 10th of that level of craziness in my own family, i don’t know chicago from shit, etc etc

but the way when you have a family w ~history~ to a level that you are a telepathic air traffic controller waving each other away from the hazards

the way when you visit after being away that at it’s worst the house itself is like a vice that is constantly squeezing you down to your smallest denominator… the way you are always, ALWAYS the person you were when you were 10, the way you start feeling like you’re 10 just being around it too long
… the way you expand & become alive when you go away and you contract & sort of die a little when you return…
the way the love is so crystallized & so real but so small you can hold it; the way it lifts you up so quickly but the way all that bad is just always there, hanging, unsaid, in the air like a poison gas that only becomes toxic if you acknowledge it

sorry tl:dr

this christmas episode really got me feeling some type of way

Catching up with the new season and 4 episodes in, and it's already miles better than last season. They remembered the jokes! Ayo's episode is also fab.

finally watching season 3, about halfway through and i love it. kinda aimless but enjoying the art direction and the mood/texture. not really much more to reveal about these core characters i guess but i still care about what theyre doing and how they do it.

https://i.imgur.com/lH9F163.png

lmao

My fave phone contacts detail is that Carmy still has Pete saved as "Sugar's boyfriend (Pete?)"

A moment to consider the Fak gene pool is broad/deep enough to produce Matty Matheson, John Cena, and Brie Larson.

Had mixed feelings about this season in the end. I feel like it sort of crept away from itself and the characters, and in this season it was like these are the most articulate and open emotionally troubled people of all time, who voice that state of being in great detail very often. It reminded me more than once of Dawson's Creek. It felt like everyone had gone to therapy a lot.

I like the first half of the season more then felt it just sort of slid away as it went on. The final episode was hugely disappointing imo, like just a page of dialogue, when it became clear it wasn't going to move on from that one scene it was a real anticlimax.

In the end it resisted having any of the main characters do anything, besides commitments to future actions. Maybe that's setting up a new season but even worse if so. All the plot, in fact, just completely disappeared despite the fact this season had a lot of quite hard and specific plot points, a literal ticking clock!

I like the show a lot in general but I think it could be so much better if they weren't afraid of making decisions as they have been for two seasons now.

If anything, this entire show has kind of been about fear and anxiety over making decisions.

I'm heading into the finale, and yes, I do agree that the pace in the last few episodes has slowed and kind of tries my patience. (Also the wedding bit under the table was a bit too cute and precious, like the temperamental opposite of DD's family dinner, but without the teeth or car-crash catharsis.)

But OTOH: "He made you a great offer! Go suck his balls."

Ayo

Adjacent to the show, but this story about abuse at Noma reminds me of what was frustrating about this show after season one. Carmy had left this exacting, abusive kitchen to return to Chicago, and take over his brother's humble sandwich shop...but then aspires to turn it into the kind of restaurant that traumatized him. This is fine in itself, but the show became about aspirational and exacting fine dining (with Amex bumper ads) without really going into: is it possible for Carmy to run an exacting kitchen without it becoming toxic? Season One was special, especially coming out of the #MeToo era, in figuring out how this diverse group of people (diverse in experience, temperament, all that) would work together, and it felt like a way of modeling that. After the first season, it just became a kitchen with the authority of EVERY SECOND COUNTS looming over them.

Well, as another story about Trauma (tm), there's that thread of generational abuse, where Carmy is simultaneously attempting to break from his family (depressives, alcoholics, emotionally abusive) while inflicting or at least enabling the same damage on his coworkers. In the past few seasons they've showed glimmers of him Doing the Work, but iirc they haven't really depicted him moving on, emotionally. Probably because the show is fueled by yelling and stress, and eliminating that leaves it with little but shots of prepping fancy food. It would be a bit like watching The Pitt if it was set in a fancy clinic instead of a big city ER.

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/tv-shows/the-bear-gary-episode-explained/

Ahead of “The Bear” Season 5, FX dropped a surprise tie-in episode of its critically-acclaimed darling on Tuesday. The hourlong “Gary” is available to watch now on Hulu.

The installment focuses on Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Mikey (Jon Bernthal) and was written by both Moss-Bachrach and Bernthal. Series creator Christopher Storer directed the episode. Set a few years before the beginning of “The Bear,” Gary follows best friends Richie and Mikey on a work trip.

I hope we finally learn how he became the Bear.

Hell yes. Moss Bacharach & Bernthal could take turns reading the phone book & I’d watch it

In the past few seasons they've showed glimmers of him Doing the Work, but iirc they haven't really depicted him moving on, emotionally. Probably because the show is fueled by yelling and stress, and eliminating that leaves it with little but shots of prepping fancy food. It would be a bit like watching The Pitt if it was set in a fancy clinic instead of a big city ER.

Which is why this show would have been soooo much more transcendent as a shorter 3-4 season arc, with every episode firmly advancing the ensemble's emotional and professional growth rather than playing crap out (Syd's decision, Carm's mother/brother issues, Fak filler). The show needs to just end already, and I'm ecstatic the 5th season will be the final one. Wonder how they're going to handle the passing of Rob Reiner - I adored his role and it was just getting ramped up.

your enjoyment of “Gary” will vary depending on how much you enjoy coked-out conversations jk

It’s a nice showcase of how good these two actors are together, just watching them play in a sandbox for their characters. I dug it.

the ending is kinda “whoah!”

Also I am vey down with Cousin Richie’s road trip cd

*very

This was fucking fantastic imo, Bernthal was just next level good (so was Moss Bacharach but less surprised about his turn). Wondering if I'm not remembering something I should from the main series, but wasn't clear on the timeline for that ending.

also, "Althea when Althea"

I liked that the entire premise of the episode was about doing a mundane thing for Uncle Jimmy, when both the viewers and Richie are always trying to suss out exactly how shady his business dealings are. Just some unspoken tension underlying the entire plot.

mm hmm, how do they feel about ketamine vibes?
https://deadline.com/2026/06/gene-wilder-biopic-dito-montiel-in-works-1236932047/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojjCvICC86c

Ummm... I guess this means more countdown clocks to a pulsating soundtrack?

This is a show known for intimacy and authenticity, and this season is dominated by digitally augmented rain and heavily stylized interiors in which the restaurant feels like an evocative soundstage and not like a working eatery. It’s very artificial, but there’s little doubt that Storer, who directed six of the seven episodes I’ve seen, is embracing that artificiality. From the amoebic kaleidoscope of rain-diffused light to the pervasive lens flares to the carefully expressionistic silhouetting in doorways, every aesthetic choice is exaggerated, including the score from new addition Hans Zimmer. With the pressured amped up throughout, this season is less naturalistic and more like a Tony Scott-directed version of Kitchen Confidential.

“Tony Scott-directed version of Kitchen Confidential”

Zero chance it’s that cool.

Maybe the Hans Zimmer score is amazing, but hiring him for the last season feels emblematic of these showrunners' tendency to treat creative decisions as opportunities to flex and look cool. Like I'm just imagining the conversation where they say "You know who we should get? Hans fucking Zimmer!!" "Do you think he'd do it?" "I dunno, but it's worth a shot!"

i’m sure I’ll finish watching it because the episodes are so short, for the most part, but I’ve come to the realization that for me watching the show feels like homework. I just don’t find it really enjoyable, and when it lands on moments that are really funny or insightful, it feels like the heavy lifting is being done by the actors, and the writing is spare to the point of being not there at all.

The score is actually by one of Zimmer’s army of assistants anyway.

Think I might not bother with the new season then, they’ve systematically expunged everything I liked about the show in the first place.

I also found the Gary episode exhausting, just self mythologizing from the actors, what is the coolest shit ever that my character could do? Road trip! Mixtape showing his deep soul and r&b roots! Buy coke from some random house in a neighbourhood he’s never visited! Join a pickup game and absolutely rule while convincing the locals he’s cool! With forties! Turn up to a bar and have a table full of day-drinking attractive women hang on his every word for a lengthy story … about shitting himself! I turned it off.

Apologies for any spoilers.

I stopped watching after they ate at the diner.
I’ll watch season of actual show but those two guys quipping etc exhausted me.

I’m actually half-convinced this is maybe a bad show that has many of the superficial trappings of good tv and cinema, complete with good acting. It feels instinctively wrong in a lot of ways, having a lot of hot air and vibes scenery and eye rolling music cues.

first two seasons were excellent (except for the Christmas episode of non-stop screaming), never finished the third or started the fourth.

The score is actually by one of Zimmer’s army of assistants anyway.

Yes, I noticed that the credit says it's produced by Hans Zimmer.

We watched the first two episodes of the final season and I got absolutely nothing from it. A lot of shouting, a lot of very fake-looking rain, a lot of Fakking about. I realised that I had not missed the extreme closeups and the shouting and the Faks one bit. I'll see it out, but if this wasn't the final season, I wouldn't.

Ok I watched the whole thing

Controversial take / pvmic = I honestly liked this as a final season? but I think you do have to assess as a whole

It’s not amazing or doing anything new but I think the need to see huge growth/ change kinda forgets that the whole show is about fkn, poor mental health & dysfunctional loops. Small gains are kinda boring as stakes but within the characters & what’s been established it was ultimately just, idk, good. Like coming up for air or taking a deep breath outside. Like we’re just not going to use the Carmy pressure cooker anymore - let’s cook something else a different way.

It’s just: good.

First 3 eps are retreading similar ground because of the way the season wraps around to be something ~slightly~ better but the tangible relief of the “getting better” in the final felt nice.

The Richie & Sydney stuff is my favorite; my brain honestly turns to radio static whenever Jimmy & Computer & his robot niece are arguing about whatever or at whatever licensing board I just dgaf about the financial stakes & could live without all that (BUT I love Jimmy/Platt as a character)

I dunno. I can see why it feels like a cop out

Also : I def felt some boredom/dismay in the first 3 eps like we’re still doing this huh … but it does push through. maybe just not in a big way.

(Also I did find myself wondering if this season is a metaphor for Storer’s relationship w the show itself. )

Anyway. it’s worth watching the whole thing for a) Marcus’ candle and b) the walk-in w Richie & Carmy

my blather above makes me sound a lot more lukewarm on the season than I am

I actually really enjoyed the release of the final episode.
I love these characters & they’re so well acted that it was nice to feel like maybe we were right to root for them all this time

AND that the positive choices came from each character on their own, like I really loved watching them break their cycles individually

im excited to watch it. ive loved every season & theres been no drop off in my view.

I’m actually half-convinced this is maybe a bad show that has many of the superficial trappings of good tv and cinema, complete with good acting. It feels instinctively wrong in a lot of ways, having a lot of hot air and vibes scenery and eye rolling music cues.

― omar little, Thursday, June 25, 2026 9:54 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is 100% correct lol

the rain and the dim lighting is making this seasom feel like Glen-Beary Glen Ross

Put that on Bsky and it’ll do numbers (complimentary).

I tried for the second time to watch this show after work at a restaurant and I fell asleep with my shoes on.

I've now seen all but the finale episode. In general, I appreciate the sharper focus of this season, but the first few episodes *are* pretty boring, tbh, kind of The Bear on auto-pilot. It improves once service starts; episode 7 in particular is the best one they've done in a long time. But if you're going to set it all on a single day, you need to make those earlier episodes feel like more than just set-up for the last few.

I think my main problem has been that the characters and plot simply aren’t interesting enough to sustain the show for me and the overheated style and vibes don’t compensate, and the acting can only carry it so far. It’s also perhaps interesting to me that the two best episodes I’ve seen were the ones focused exclusively on Richie working at another place, and Tina’s struggle finding work leading to her origin story w/the restaurant.

I finished the series - some spoilers ahead so leave this thread if you haven't watched the whole series yet.

As with the past few seasons there are things to like about it and things that are kinda annoying.

To the show's credit I have fallen in love with pretty much all of these characters and it makes me happy to see each one have their moment, even it gets a little (a lot!) emo at times.

To some extent this show has always been about Carmy coming in and helping everyone to elevate their own game, so perhaps it's fitting that that is exactly how it concluded - everyone across the board rising to the occasion.

At the same time, the show was also about Carmy pursuing greatness and processing his trauma, and I feel like the show just kinda gave up on that arc, and on Carmy as a character. Somewhere in season 3 or 4 Jeremy Allen White made Carmy a guy who literally can't seem to get any words out of his mouth and instead just stares off, which made the character way more boring. As set up in the s4 finale, he's essentially sidelined himself even if there is no clear path forward for him. And I don't think the show cared to engage with that in a serious way. He never really had a moment that demonstrated that stepping away from the restaurant was a good idea or that he'd definitely be OK. I guess they tried to communicate that in the finale but I don't think that was successful. I felt the same way as Bonnie Hunt during the interview - "OK, wow, that's a lot and it sure sounded hard for you to say, but that's not really answering my question." Even Claire Bear never came back except for a quick flash of her at the birthday party. I mean the fact that the show ended on Richie's evolution just shows me that the showrunners sort of forgot that there actually was a lead character on this show.

watched this last season up thru ep7, agree first 2 episodes were kinda wasted but it picked up and got pretty good by ep6-7. the show runners obv got up their own ass after unexpected success of S1, s3 was very bad but faults in s2, S4-5 are exaggerated by how bad they let people down with S3..... it happens, characters in last season overcome bad vibes from bad episodes i feel. don't feel bad about sticking around to the end pending last episode. did not like jamie lee curtis performance in this show but sometimes you just whiff on a character

last season felt like a coda, imo

Final season redeems any missteps in the last one. I think they stuck the landing.

I mean the fact that the show ended on Richie's evolution just shows me that the showrunners sort of forgot that there actually was a lead character on this show

I kind of liked this actually. Carmy is all fucked up. I was actually hoping Bonnie Hunt was a therapist because that's where he needs to go. He came to the realization last season that he absolutely cannot run a restaurant and lacks leadership skills. This is a tough thing for a character to come to but the fact that he accepted it demonstrates growth.

The episodes in the flow of service were the best ones, as always. They did a great job of communicating why you would eat at this restaurant and why you would go away raving about it. And they were genuinely funny.

Just finished the season and glad the show has ended. Spoilers ahead...

I liked the one-day concept and the later episodes were compelling, but overall the season felt like a victory lap. They tried to include drama around whether Carmen would leave, whether Ebra's plan would be the answer to saving the business, but those things felt mostly inevitable after S4. So what you're left with is the drama of this particular day which was done well but had been done before and done well in previous seasons. I guess that's kind of the message of the season too, that the job is just about those days? Even getting the stars seemed like a minor point in the end