The Bear cooks up a frustrating yet mesmerizing season finale

As season three of The Bear comes to a close, my reaction is as mixed as that dang Chicago Tribune review. To borrow descriptors from Carmy’s speed read, some episodes were “excellent,” “innovative,” and “brilliant,” while others felt “sloppy,” “safe,” and, above all, “tired.”

I’m sure it’s equally overwhelming to run a TV show as it is a restaurant, especially when expectations are impossibly high. The first season of Christopher Storer’s series was immediately absorbing, drawing us in with its frantic pace, quick humor, and the sense that we were entering a lived-in world right in the thick of things. Season two dared to radically depart from that fast-paced rhythm, stepping back to explore who its characters were outside the kitchen, eschewing brash comedy in favor of downbeat character studies.

This year, The Bear tried to combine both into a single dish. Unfortunately, it wound up being a recipe with—as Joel McHale’s asshole CDC said in the season premiere: Way too many components. You’ve made nachos.” I hate to agree with the guy (whose name we finally learn is David Fields), but he’s got a point. Thus we arrive at “Forever,” a season finale that feels like The Bear patting itself on the back, buzzed on its buzz, topped off with a non-ending that makes you want to throw your hands in the air. Storer’s heavy-handed script hammers home themes that he already made crystal clear earlier in the season.

That said, it’s also a pretty absorbing 40 minutes, mostly because it’s a blast to watch our beloved fictional chefs rubbing elbows with a who’s-who of real-life culinary legends. Also, who among us is immune to the charms of Olivia Colman? The long-awaited funeral for Ever (“Forever,” get it?) has arrived. Chef Andrea Terry (Colman) is hanging up her toque after decades in the business, leaving behind a legacy—there’s that word again—that’s touched the lives of people across the fine-dining world. That’s particularly true for Carmy and Chef Luca (Will Poulter), who staged at Ever when they were coming up, and even truer for Richie, whose five days at the restaurant changed his outlook on life.

The episode opens at the start of Carm’s origin story, his first-day staging at the French Laundry, learning at the feet of Thomas Keller. Keller tells him that being a chef is about nurturing not only yourself, your colleagues, and restaurant-goers, but also the gardeners, fishers, and foragers who provide the ingredients. This is one of the few times we’ve gotten more than a glimpse of Carm in the days before David rendered him a broken man, and in this brief scene, Jeremy Allen White does an amazing job of conveying the pleasure his character once took in cooking.

All the guests at Ever are in high spirits except Carm. Richie couldn’t be happier to return to the place—and the people—that made him a better man. The staff welcome him back with open arms. “That’s my legendary dawg right there!” the GM (Rene Gube) enthuses, but Richie only has eyes for Jessica (Sarah Ramos), their unspoken chemistry sizzling hotter than ever. Though everyone is dressed to the nines, Sydney looks particularly stunning in a fitted gray dress (note that it’s the same tone as Ever’s walls). She takes a seat beside Carmy and Luca at a table of real-life greats: Milkbar founder Christina Tosi, Boka Restaurant Group’s Kevin Boehm, Elske pastry chef Anna Posey, Sanchez owner Rosio Sanchez, Noma pastry chef Malcolm Livingston II, NYC restaurateur Will Guidara, pizza master Wylie Dufresne, and Genie Kwon of Kasama.

Everyone is instantly charmed by Syd, another sign of her star on the rise. The group falls into a discussion that, while fascinating, reiterates the themes that haven’t been so much seeded into season three as pounded into every episode: cooking as a way to bring joy to others; the transformative magic of creating the perfect dish; how your mentors affect the leader you become, for better or worse; and the dangers of self-sabotaging in your quest for perfection.

Luca, reminiscing about his and Carm’s days at Ever, recalls shucking an infinite pile of peas to add to one of the restaurant’s signature recipes. He adds with a laugh that he later adapted it into a dessert he invented. Syd calls it his “trauma dish” because he repurposed a bad memory and added some sugar on top. Carmy doesn’t hear any of this, because he’s busy spiraling after locking eyes with a malevolent ghost at the next table. (Given his reputation as a total asshole, I’m surprised that the unerringly kind Chef Terry invited David to be a part of this sacred evening. Talk about a vibe killer.)

Speaking of Andrea, she clinks her wine glass against her Rolex (ha) to deliver the eulogy for her life’s work. It’s as endearing as Colman’s award show acceptance speeches. She shares the tale of her rise from garde manger to CDC at a London brasserie, where she took pleasure in getting to know the regulars and watching their children. “What I’ve learned over the years is that people don’t remember the food. It’s the people that they remember.”

Carmy learned the same lesson in all the wrong ways. He doesn’t remember the regulars, mentors, and colleagues who have been good to him. He only remembers the person who destroyed him. When Syd and Luca clock their friend’s silent freakout, Carm opens up about his buried trauma: “He’s the fucking worst, and one of the best chefs in the world,” he says, words erupting out of him like bullets: “Total prick. Fuckface. Bastard. Made me probably very mentally ill. Dead inside. Cold. I don’t think he sleeps. I don’t think he eats. I don’t think he loves.”

You can see the moment Syd and Luca realize why Carm is the way he is, why he pushes himself so hard, why he struggles to lead his team without screaming at them, why he never sleeps, and why he despises himself. Donna’s parenting and Mikey’s suicide fucked him up, of course. That’s only half the story. This is his trauma dish. But before his friends can get a word in edgewise, Carm is on his feet and trailing David to the bathroom. Confronting your demons in the flesh rarely works out the way you hope it will. Still, Bear needs to get this out, even if he’s only ramming his fist into a brick wall.

The conversation is doomed from the start when David calls Carm by the wrong name with a shit-eating grin, then invites him to say whatever he wants to. “After ‘fuck you,’ I don’t have much,” he admits. Then: “I think about you too much.” Christopher Storer is paying tribute to a famous line from Mad Men when David replies coldly, “I don’t think about you.” Carmy vomits out all the bile that’s been roiling inside him since he first met this sociopath. David argues that all the ulcers and nightmares were worth it because crawling through hot coals made his former protégé an excellent chef. “My life stopped.” “That’s the point, right? You concentrated, and you focused, and you got great. It worked. You’re here.” He’s not wrong: Carm is well on his way to becoming a legend among legends. But none of those legends gave up their sanity to get where they are, nor were any of Carm’s other mentors anything but patient and supportive.

It’s a powerful, devastating scene, shot with a handheld camera that vibrates in tune with Carmy’s skin. It’s also White’s acting moment of the season, tears hanging in his eyes that he only lets fall once David is gone. Maybe most heartbreakingly of all, he’s gotten good at expediting his panic attacks; like smoking cigarettes, he doesn’t have time for all that.

As Carm leaves to gaze into the darkness of the rain-slick street, Syd and Luca vibe in the kitchen, both a little wine-drunk, both crushing hard. When Luca tells her that he’s staying in Chicago for a few months to spend time with his sister, they talk about their childhoods—hers lovely, his rough. But he says it made him and his sister “best friends”; Syd, on the other hand, doesn’t have a BFF. As Andrea tells Carmy, the cost of greatness is everything else in life—friendship included.

I wanted to shoo Adam away when he interrupted these two. He’s got a good reason. Syd still hasn’t told Carm she’s leaving, and he’s gotta start making moves if this restaurant is going to become a reality. Among the many things “Forever” leaves unresolved, she still hasn’t chosen. At this point, I wouldn’t blame Adam or The Bear for kicking her to the curb; it’s well past time for her to piss or get off the pot.

Andrea, needing a break from the festivities, steps outside to find Carmy brooding. On this night of all nights, it’s tragic he’s obsessing over his worst boss instead of his best one—who doesn’t greet him as “Bergatto,” but as “old friend.” Her warm presence pulls Carm out of his black hole, and he tells her how grateful he is for his time at Ever. She says she’s proud of what she built, but it’s time for her to move on and see what the world outside the kitchen has to offer.

Hopefully, talking to both Andrea and David on the same night may have planted a seed in the back of Carm’s mind. Maybe he doesn’t want to put life on pause in the pursuit of excellence. Unlike Syd, Richie, Mikey, and all those chefs he heard from at dinner, food has never been about connecting with others or sharing joy. For him, cooking is a solitary act. It’s all about the art of losing himself in a dish, loving the creative act, and not so much the result. Syd and Tina bliss out from the flavors of a great dish, but I can’t recall a time we’ve even seen Carmy eat.

It makes me wonder if his arc will end in abandoning the restaurant business to pursue the things that bring him joy, like sketching, journaling, picking vegetables in a sun-dappled garden, and most of all, finding love that lifts him out of his trauma. Maybe a cookbook full of delicate pencil drawings and fussy recipes—aesthetics and experimentation, sans the pressure. It’s been agony to watch Carm torture himself this season, trapped in a destructive cycle of panic, dissociation, and self-denial. It’s a vivid portrait of unprocessed trauma—never-ending and infinitely recurring—but it results in a story that’s so static and repetitive that it ceases to engage. By the 10th, let alone the 20th time, The Bear showed us the same flashbacks of David’s punchable face and Claire’s empathetic eyes, I felt numb.

Those flashbacks are this season’s biggest problem, especially in “Forever.” We didn’t need a clip montage to remind us that Syd still hasn’t signed the partnership or agreement, that Carm mistreats her at work, that he and Richie are in a fight, or that the restaurant is getting mixed reviews. A big reason The Bear was such a breakaway hit is because it threw us in the deep end and trusted that we’d learn to swim. It got its underlying themes across without having to make them text. So by the time we met Donna, saw Syd interacting with her dad, and witnessed Mikey in a coked-up rage, it felt like pieces of the puzzle falling into place rather than a hammer to the head. That’s lost now.

Back in the kitchen, Sydney joins the staff, Richie, and Luca as they gaze at the “Every Second Counts” sign. When Andrea walks in, Adam takes the sign off the wall and hands it to her like a holy relic. She tells Carm she’s content with her work over all these decades and that she couldn’t ask for anything more. She’s lived her life by the words her father wrote in his diary every day, and she has no regrets. Then she breaks the solemnity with a call to arms: “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here!” Cue James’ blue-sky anthem “Laid” as the gang retires to Syd’s place, Richie toting the inflatable hot dog from season one and the Faks toting a keg, followed by Tina and Marcus. If dinner was the funeral, this is the wake. Everyone’s cutting loose, singing and dancing, Syd high on the thrill of having a world-famous chef inside her shitty apartment.

But nothing gold can stay. The smile vanishes from her face when she notices the four-star review from the Tribune hanging on her fridge—not of The Bear, but The Beef. She instantly falls apart and escapes into the hallway to have a panic attack. Unlike Carm’s, it isn’t an efficient one. Without meaning to, her business partner has passed on the curse David put on him. She needs to get out from under his shadow before it’s too late. Elsewhere, Carm is experiencing a rare moment of peace as he strolls down a deserted sidewalk at midnight. Then his phone buzzes: three missed calls from the Computer, four from Jimmy, and a notification that the Trib review is up—and from what we can see, it’s full of contradictions. Since we don’t see the article ourselves, it’s impossible to tell whether Carmy’s “motherfucker!” is amazed or horrified. With so much up in the air, the screen flashes: TO BE CONTINUED.

See y’all next year, I guess?

Stray thoughts

• It’s fun to hear Keller drop some trivia about where the term “the pope’s nose” (aka the uropygium, aka that thing that sticks out of the back of a chicken) comes from. James I, who infamously hated Catholics, popularized the name as a way to call Clement VII a hen’s ass.
• A photo collage in the Ever hallway features shots of many of the legendary chefs in attendance, plus…Bradley Cooper?! Guess we’ve got another conspiracy theory to argue over at the water cooler.
• The music supervisors packed this episode with as many needle drops as there are celeb guest stars, including tracks from Weezer, The Talking Heads, The Sundays, Otis Redding, John Cale, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Damn.
• Blink and you’ll miss a cameo from Lucas Trahan, Ever’s IRL pastry chef.
• Will Poulter gets his little comedy moment when Luca fanboys all over three-Michelin-starred Chicago chef Grant Achatz. He’s weirdly obsessed with Achatz’s recipes that may or may not use injected ingredients, e.g. the Truffle Explosion—which, in Luca’s words, “explodes so much.”
• The food at Ever looks so much prettier—and tastier—than what Carm and Syd are cooking up at The Bear. Put some color in there, guys!
• “Andrea Terry is in my freezer, and all I have are waffles and pizza.” “This is amazing! Andrea Terry loves this shit!”