The Bear recap: Is Marcus the kindest, softest, sincerest man in Chicago?

[Editor’s note: The recap of episode six publishes July 4. This recap contains spoilers.]

I’ve gone on record as a hardcore stan of the Fak bros. This season in particular, Neil and Ted have been adding much-needed belly laughs to even the most serious, somber episodes. (Hey, something has to justify The Bear getting submitted to the Emmys as a comedy!) But in this installment—and I really hate to say it—I officially hit the upper limit of my Fak tolerance.

Put in culinary terms, these rowdy boys are a strong flavor that works great as a garnish or a side sauce, but overwhelms everything else on the plate if it’s the main dish. That’s especially true when we’ve got not one, not two, but three Faks in the room—particularly when one of them is, uh, John Cena. Written and directed by Christopher Storer, “Children” is a tonally dissonant episode that tries and fails to combine screwball comedy with meditations on whether it’s worse to have a parent who’s around too much or one who isn’t there at all.

We open in the latter mode, as Natalie prays alone in an empty church. For an ep called “Children,” there’s no aural choice more visceral than setting this sequence to the eerie strains of “Dream, Little One, Dream.” It’s the main title theme of Charles Laughton’s magnificently unsettling 1955 film The Night Of The Hunter, in which Robert Mitchum stalks his own stepchildren down the Ohio River after murdering their mother.

Elsewhere in parental baggage, Sydney is at Marcus’ house to help him figure out what to do with his mother’s things. There’s nothing he wants to keep, which is a little sad. But considering all those boxes of Berzatto detritus gathering dust beneath The Bear, maybe letting go is the healthier choice.

Out on the stoop, Marcus brings up the elephant in the room: his epic face-plant when he asked Sydney out on the season-two finale. He apologizes for making things weird, but she doesn’t want to talk about it—probably because she still hasn’t admitted to herself that she’s in love with him. (And aren’t we all? He’s the kindest, softest, sincerest man in Chicago.) Syd instead asks if he’s reached out to his dad since his mom died. Marcus says his father has never been a part of his life and that sometimes he feels bad for never seeking him out. Oh, sweetheart.

Syd welcomes Marcus into the ranks of the Dead Moms Club, which holds meetings in “the dankest church basement possible.” They banter cutely about whether Syd is the president or the secretary, and she assures him that his mom would have loved the food at the restaurant, which she never got the chance to try. I really hope these two kiss before the end of the season; they deserve each other in the best way.

Van Morrison’s “Purple Heather” is the perfect soundtrack to a bittersweet sequence in which Richie and Carmy (separately) get devastating news: Chef Andrea Terry, who had a profoundly positive impact on both their lives, has announced that she’s closing Ever. Why? And what does the shuttering of Chicago’s most celebrated restaurant mean for the future of fine dining? No one but Terry knows.

That both of the cousins are gutted by this news could be the best chance for them to reconnect by bonding over their shared love for the place. But they rear back like spooked horses when Carmy runs into Richie in the office later that morning. When Nat asks her brother how he’s holding up after the announcement, he tells her he feels “Etch-A-Sketched.” It’s a rare thing for Carm to open up, but when he does, the imagery is potent as hell.

At this point, “Children” switches gears from contemplative melancholy to frantic scramble. The clock is ticking down to the hour when the photographer from The Tribune is coming by to shoot pics for the dreaded review. And with only 40 minutes until liftoff, the Bear gang is flailing. Even though there’s a shit-ton to do, Richie won’t stop obsessing over the spacing of the table setting, making Neil futz with the placement of a wine glass for almost half an hour.

Neil and Ted are doing a really bad job of buffing the floor (which, why didn’t they get this done hours ago?), so they decide to call in their brother Sammy, who’s apparently a buffing savant. Now, I gotta say: It was already hard to swallow that Jeremy Allen White and Jon Bernthal came from the same gene pool; but Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri sharing DNA with John “Brick Shithouse” Cena? That’s a whole lot of disbelief to suspend.

And look, I love John Cena. We all love John Cena. He’s charming, hilarious, and incredibly handsome, and he brings all of his considerable comedy skills to bear on this episode. Plus, he’s got great chemistry with his costars. But the vibe is all wrong, and not just because he doesn’t look like a Fak boy. It seems like Storer was so eager to write for Cena that he accidentally let Sammy completely dominate the episode.

There’s a Fak family tradition of doing a “haunt”—a prolonged act of vengeance in which the wronged party reserves the right to, at any point before the person who wronged them fesses up, “do something weird.” In this case, Sammy is on Ted’s ass for stealing his SD cards, and he won’t back down until his bro gives him the password.

It’s a funny idea, but the bit goes on way, way too long. Storer continually cuts away from plot-relevant and emotionally resonant scenes to film Sammy bobbing his enormous body in Ted’s direction, or the three brothers delaying the much-needed buff to banter so rapidly that you need subtitles to understand it.

I literally shouted “NO!” at my screen when the brothers started smoking cigarettes on the restaurant floor. Richie tries his best to babysit these mooks, but it’s a rigged game. They’re bulls in a china shop, and everyone at The Bear is going to suffer for it. That he doesn’t immediately kick them out when the photographer arrives signals how profoundly distracted he is by the news about Ever.

Speaking as a journalist who has dabbled in restaurant criticism, I wanted to pummel all four of them when they started harassing the poor photographer to get him to reveal the contents of the review. (He sincerely doesn’t know, you guys!) Weirdly, there has been zero advance communication about what dishes the kitchen should have ready for him to shoot, which is maybe the most implausible plot point of the episode.

The Bear partners have zero eyes on the disaster unfolding at front-of-house, because for some reason, Nat has arranged for them to meet with the family’s accountant/lawyer “The Computer” (Brian Koppelman) during the shoot. According to Uncle Jimmy, the Computer has concluded that “we are doing a shitty fucking job at a bunch of shit. Other things, we’re not so shitty at.”

The Computer offers wise (and pretty obvious) advice on how to cut costs without putting the kibosh on Carmy’s “new menu every day” nonsense: Switch from the farmers’ market greens to a produce vendor, reduce the wine pours, stay open six days a week instead of five, spend less on microgreens, etc. His proposals are very reasonable, and it’s kinda wild that the partners didn’t already figure this stuff out themselves.

There’s one suggestion the Computer makes that classifies him as an all-out villain: Does the Bear really need a pastry chef? Nat, speaking for all of us, shoots back, “If you fuck with Marcus, I will murder you.” That’s a Non-Negotiable everyone can agree on.

After the meeting, Jimmy asks Syd why the fuck she hasn’t signed the partnership agreement yet. (It’s understandable that she’s dragging her feet—signing essentially means marrying into the Berzatto fam—but she can’t avoid it forever.) He also confesses his fear that he’s the reason Carm and Nat are so profoundly broken, because he didn’t do enough to help them out as kids. Calling back to Marcus’ musings on his absentee dad, Syd assures Jimmy that he’s helping now simply by being in their lives.

Jimmy’s anxiety is a sobering reminder that, though Sammy’s haunt is a gag, there’s a very real ghost hovering over this episode, a distant Mitchum whistle on the air: Donna. She’s the person Nat is praying not to become after her own daughter is born, the one whispering in Carmy’s ear that, no matter how hard he tries, he can never fix what’s shattered.

And while Nat ignores a Donna phone call, Carmy descends into the basement in search of an old notebook, where he stumbles upon a cardboard box marked “DD.” Among a pile of flotsam, he discovers three faded snapshots: Donna and grownup Mikey, arms around each other on the floor of The Original Beef; a little boy with haunted eyes, gazing past his unseen mother’s shoulder; and a young Jamie Lee Curtis with a baby in her arms (Carmy?), smiling the smile of a woman whom you’d never guess is profoundly mentally ill.

It’s pretty on the nose when The Rolling Stones’ “Mixed Emotions” starts to play as Carm flips to the last photo. But the things an adult kid feels for a mother they spent their childhood parenting is the same the world over. In the words of Jagger and Richards, you’re not the only ship adrift on this ocean.

Stray observations

• The Computer is bewildered by a line item on The Bear’s budget for “chargers.” Sydney explains that they’re plates that sit on the table before guests arrive, which the server then clears. “So it’s a plate that nobody eats off of, and then you still have to wash it anyway?” he asks. Lose the chargers, save Marcus. Simple.
• Carmy continues to cling to even the pettiest of his Non-Negotiables: Morning finds him inside the recycling dumpster behind the restaurant, knee-deep in boxes that no one bothered to break down. This guy truly is both God and Satan to his own Job.
• In search of ideas for caramel recipes, Marcus digs into Carmy’s New York diary, which is filled with the beautiful watercolor illustrations he never shows anyone. Marcus secretly shares them with a grateful Nat and tells her about that white violet he spotted on the street last week. In tribute to his mom—it was her favorite flower—he’s working on a violet-inspired dessert. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
• Worry not, Chicago gastronomes: IRL, Ever is alive and well.
• Cena’s domination over this episode might have been worth it for a brief exchange he has with Sydney when she asks him to go buy a duck so Carm can whip up a dish: “Sick. What kind of duck? Freshwater? I saw one at the park. Should I get a trash bag from Neil?” The way Ayo Edebiri says, “No. No. Nope” absolutely sent me.
• Among the boxes in the basement, Carm finds one of the misprinted “Original Berf” shirts Richie was rocking early on in season two. Just aheads up that you can buy one of these babies for yourself on Etsy.
• Lightning crotch is, unfortunately, an all-too-real phenomenon for pregnant people.