The Bear season 3 premiere: Journey through the past

[Editor’s note: The recap of episode two publishes June 28. This recap contains spoilers.]

Over the course of its first two seasons, The Bear gradually revealed a trail of breadcrumbs—or maybe more aptly, blood—for us to follow back through Carmy Berzatto’s life. And like the haute cuisine wonders he lovingly crafts, Carmy bears the fingerprints of everyone who’s ever touched him, be it with gentleness, violence, or something in between.

On the season-three premiere (ironically titled “Tomorrow”), series creator Christopher Storer slices and dices Carmy’s life experiences and tosses the lot into a stew pot. The result is a nonlinear, dialogue-light episode that hops from kitchen to kitchen, chef de cuisine to chef de cuisine, rendering a fragmented portrait of a man whose creative passion is inextricably intertwined with his deepest pain. (I mean, look, the dude friggin’ earned that knife-through-the-hand tattoo.)

Nearly the whole episode is set to the ambient buzz of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ “Together,” creating an effect that’s alternately numbing and beautiful, like the eye of a storm—or the comedown from a panic attack. It’s a tonal experiment from a show that’s made an art of changing up its format week to week, season to season. But for all its ambitious shuttling between eras of Carmy’s life—some we’ve seen before, and some we haven’t—the episode feels both too slow and too fast. And ultimately, it doesn’t tell us a whole lot that we didn’t already know.

The present-day portion of “Tomorrow” takes place in the immediate aftermath of friends-and-family night at The Bear, when Carmy, trapped inside a frozen cage of his own making (read: the walk-in), torpedoed his relationships with both Claire and Richie and convinced himself that, no matter how high he flies, he’ll always be the irredeemable fuck-up the worst people in his life said he was.

Later, he apologizes to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) for leaving her alone to handle the soft open. He fails to absorb her meaning when she says she wasn’t; even if Carmy is still clinging to the Great Man theory of restaurateuring, his business partner knows that it takes a village to make seven fishes. He then leaves a halting voicemail for Richie, the gist of which is that Carmy loves him, he’s sorry, and probably neither of them meant any of the things they shouted at each other through six inches of steel door, even though they both absolutely did.

Dawn finds our hangdog hero cleaning up the remnants of the night before: clearing dishes, wiping down counters, re-setting the tables, taking the menu down from the wall. He sponges away a flour spill on the kitchen floor like he’s cleaning up a murder scene. It’s an elaborate self-soothing ritual for a guy who takes comfort in routine and repair—the very opposite of the mess he was raised in, as if he could un-smash all the precious things his mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) and brother (Jon Bernthal) ruined over the years.

The fateful Berzatto Christmas dinner of last season’s masterful “Fishes” is one of several wells “Tomorrow” returns to, in addition to Carmy’s time working under the abusive, unnamed NYC chef de cuisine (Joel McHale) he left behind to take over The Original Beef. (For our purposes, let’s call him Chef Joel.) As we’ve seen in past flashbacks, he’s nasty in a way that only a man who’s been told he’s a genius all his life can be, looming over Carmy like a handsome gargoyle and shit-talking every choice he makes.

One particular round of torture centers on a hamachi dish Carmy’s been working on that, like all the food on The Bear to this non-gastronome’s eye, looks perfect. But Chef Joel thinks it’s hot garbage: “That’s way too many components. You basically made nachos.” He leaves Carmy to simmer in that with a simple command written neatly in Sharpie: “SUBTRACT.”

We see a kaleidoscope of other kitchens he’s sunk his life into as well: Ever, the Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant where Richie experienced his week of epiphanies last season; Noma, the legendary Copenhagen fine-dining spot where Chef Luca (Will Poulter) taught Marcus how to make sublime desserts; DANIEL, Daniel Boulud’s equally storied French restaurant on the Upper East Side; and, of course, The Bear.

It’s often impossible to keep track of where we are in time and space, amid a sea of starched chef’s whites and colorful sauces bubbling on spotless stovetops; and that’s by design. As Carmy dreams up an entirely new menu and philosophy for his fledgling restaurant, all his days collapse in on each other like the white-hot core of a dying star. All of those memories hit him with equal force, from the shrewd kindness of Chef Terry (Olivia Colman) to the sadistic dickishness of Chef Joel. There’s a lot of pain and repression here, of course, but there’s also the obvious joy both Carmy and the show itself take in a beautiful piece of food, whether it’s a beet fresh from the soil or a lovingly prepared duck confit.

We also see flashes of Carmy’s life outside the kitchen, even if he’d prefer he didn’t have one: Natalie (Abby Elliott) sending him off at O’Hare before his big move to New York; Claire (Molly Gordon) kissing him outside the hospital; and, in a moment that’s both sweet and funny, Stevie (John Mulaney) throwing a blanket over him after a long day in the kitchen. (“You smell like a goddamn donkey,” he grumbles.) Then there’s the night of Mikey’s suicide, and later, Carmy watching mourners pour out of church after the funeral, unable to bring himself to go inside.

As layer piles upon layer, our tortured little cub drafts a list of “Non-Negotiables” for The Bear like “less is more,” “vibrant collaboration,” and “no repeat ingredients” (an order Chef Joel barked at him earlier in the episode). By the second or third page, scrawled admonitions like “NOT ABOUT YOU” and “PERFECT MEANS PERFECT” make it crystal clear exactly how deeply he wants to punish himself right now.

The episode closes out back in New York, as Carmy prepares the hamachi dish his way—with blood orange instead of fennel—for a customer who has an allergy. The dish lands on the table of one Sydney Adamu, who regards her future business partner’s creation with an almost religious awe. Even before these two got each other, they got each other.

“Tomorrow” itself is an odd dish, combining ingredients that don’t quite go together. Though it sometimes feels like a dreamy (and nightmarish) journey through Carmy’s psyche, it often lands with all the artfulness of a clip show, making what should be a stage-setting season premiere feel like a filler episode. Maybe Storer could stand to take his own advice: subtract.

Stray observations

• Amid all of Carmy’s past heartbreak, “Tomorrow” also shows us a much more present loss. In a few wordless scenes, we learn that Marcus’ (Lionel Boyce) mother didn’t make it through the night. Just like Carmy did when Mikey died, Marcus spent the last hours of his mom’s life toiling away in the kitchen.
• Though the scenes at DANIEL feel oddly divorced from the rest of the timeline, it does give The Bear a chance to show Carmy training at the feet of IRL culinary master Daniel Boulud.
• He’s not the only legendary chef to make a cameo. In Copenhagen, we get a glimpse of Noma founder René Redzepi as he looks over photos of dishes made by the chefs training on site. The scenes set here feel something like an elegy, given the 2023 announcement that Noma will soon be closing its doors. The reason Redzepi gave The Times for his decision is very The Bear: “It’s unsustainable. Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.”
• Carmy’s smiles are few and far between, but his face lights up like the sun when he texts a photo of a fancy dish he made at Noma to Mikey. At the Original Beef, he and Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) study it in confused wonder. (“What is that?” “Absolutely no fucking idea.”)
• Part of Carmy’s ablutions involve labeling every item in the walk-in with the exact date and time it was packed. The green masking tape he uses (and his practice of trimming each piece with a pair of kitchen scissors) is a habit he picked up from good ol’ Chef Joel.