Carmy can’t apologize to save his life on The Bear

[Editor’s note: The recap of episode 10 publishes July 10. This recap contains spoilers.]

I laughed out loud when I saw the description for The Bear season three’s penultimate installment on Hulu: “Carmy thinks about apologizing.”

That just sums up this season, doesn’t it? Navel-gazing followed by more navel-gazing. Look, some of the greatest TV episodes in history have been all introspection with very little plot; The Bear itself made a delicacy of it in last year’s “Honeydew.” But watching Carm (and Sydney and Richie and Marcus and the friggin’ Chicago Tribune) dwell on the same stuff for an entire season without making any moves isn’t just unsatisfying, it’s boring. I’m not saying I need to see these people make good choices; I just want them to make any choices at all.

There are two apologies on the table here: The one Carmy owes to Claire in regards to being a toxic boyfriend, and the one he owes to Sydney in regards to being a toxic coworker. While his ex doesn’t end up hearing from him, his business partner does.

One night after closing, as he’s fussing with a gorgeous plate of food that no one will ever get to try, Carm acknowledges that he’s why the vibes are terrible. When Syd tells him it’s hard to keep up with him, he assumes she’s talking about their relative skill level and not about the way he’s driving himself into the ground. It’s the perfect moment to drop the news that she’s leaving The Bear to CDC at Adam Shapiro’s new restaurant. Yet when she sees the profound exhaustion and sadness in those big blue Berzatto eyes, she puts it off again. (If you want to drop heavy news on Carm, you can’t wait for a moment when he isn’t in crisis, because that’s never.) Instead, she walks away with an invite to the funeral at Ever, which definitely won’t help with the awkwardness.

Once Syd leaves, Carm closes himself inside the walk-in and pulls up Claire’s number. As his thumb hovers over the call button, Nine Inch Nails’ unsettling “Hope We Can Again” drifts in and out of R.E.M.’s elegiac “Strange Currencies,” a song which has come up a few times on The Bear. It’s the sound of two Carmys rubbing up against each other: The hot mess he is now, and the gentle boy he was with Claire. In the end, he only whispers “I’m sorry” into the muffled silence of the freezer. It’s true to the character, yes, but because he’s been tying himself in knots about this for the past nine episodes, the moment isn’t as effective as it could be.

Watching Syd drag her feet about the partnership agreement—especially now that she has a very promising out—is equally frustrating. At her apartment, she scrolls through articles about The Bear that give the “brilliant, visionary” Carmy all the credit. It’s pretty implausible that all these reporters and photographers have been showing up in the kitchen and completely ignoring Syd, or that Carm would let them.

Really, there should’ve been a bottle episode set in the Tribune newsroom, wherein the features editor marches up to the restaurant critic and demands to know why the hell their review of this restaurant is weeks (months?!) late. It’s probably so that Jimmy can have a drawn-out conversation with Carmy about how having dreams is great, and isn’t it cool that carbon dating was invented by a guy at the University of Chicago? It’s his roundabout way of issuing an ultimatum: If the Tribune roasts them, he’s divesting from The Bear. But even worse than he’s letting on, he took a big hit in the stock market, and now he’s dangerously close to broke. For those keeping score, Mikey owed Jimmy 300 grand. Carmy is in the hole for a whopping $850K.

In a less stressful corner of Chicago, Richie and Tiff (Gillian Jacobs) are at a playground, watching their daughter try to eat the gross stuff she finds in the dirt. They share the easy rapport of amicable divorcés who are both good parents to their kid. It’s nostalgic and just a little bit sexy. Tiff presses Richie about RSVPing to her wedding. He’s family, she says, and she doesn’t have a lot of people left. Though he doesn’t answer, his eyes are saying: Because I’m still in love with you and I don’t feel like watching you get married to Josh Hartnett.

Elsewhere in cobbled-together families, Sydney brings a bag of home-cooked meals to Pete and Natalie. The feast includes a lasagna with the corners burned because Syd knows that’s how Nat likes it. It’s an echo of Mikey and Richie welcoming Tina into the Beef with a free sandwich and a hot coffee: Sharing a delicious meal as an expression of caring.

Contrast that with Carmy, who’s so lost inside himself that he’s forgotten what made him fall in love with cooking in the first place. For him, food isn’t about enjoyment anymore; it’s about gazing into the inky depths of a balsamic reduction and seeing his inadequacy staring back at him.

Stray thoughts

• I don’t even want to think about—let alone write about—Neil and Ted bursting into the ER and begging Claire to take Carmy back. It’s an absolutely psychotic thing for two adult men to do. At this point in the season, The Bear has become a downbeat drama with scenes spliced in from a wacky network sitcom called, like, The Faks of Life. (Just the Faks? Faks and Fiction? I dunno. We can workshop it.)
• “Apologies” opens with an excerpt from a documentary (that doesn’t exist IRL) that splices together recordings of magic shows and classic movies like A Trip to the Moon and Vertigo, accompanied by commentary from Martin Scorsese and stage magician Ricky Jay. Marcus is watching it on his laptop, thinking about the concept of “legerdemain” (sleight-of-hand) he discovered in one of Carmy’s journals.
• “Do you think we’re going to heaven?” “…What religion are we?”
• How much food do we think Carm has tossed in the trash in his mad quest for perfection? He could at least donate it to a homeless shelter.
• Why is there a life-size cardboard cutout of Paul Rudd in the locker room at The Bear? Good question.