The Bear Season 3 has finally hit Hulu on June 27th with the return of Jeremy Allen-White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bacharach, Abby Elliot, Lionel Boyce, and Liza Colón-Zayas cooking up another installment of this “comedy” series.
I remember being sick with COVID and having to stay home for the next two weeks and I decided that I wanted to watch something that would totally distract myself from the crumminess I felt from being sick. I did not expect to watch one of the best new television series of this century while I develop an irrational fear of working in the kitchen of any restaurant. The first two seasons of The Bear delivered such spectacular writing, amazing performances, and stunning visuals in less than an hour. I am clearly in the majority because this show itself has won multiple Emmys and other accolades in the past year as well as boosting the careers of its most prominent actors. As The Bear approaches its third season, there’s so many questions that need to be answered, “What will happen with Carmy and Claire? Will Donna make up with her children? Will Syd be happy working at the Bear with Carmy’s arrogant behavior? Will The Bear be successful?” Well Season 3 definitely answers some but continues to elude us.
Season 3 slows things down a bit as The Bear is facing a lot of financial challenges with Carmy’s new methods of cooking which have led Syd to look for new opportunities. Although the story of Season 3 doesn’t have a sense of urgency and cataclysmic events to push its narrative, it paves the way for the characters’ internal development that pushes the audience to feel closer to them than ever before. Two episodes in particular are “Napkins”, which is directed by Sydney herself, Ayo Edibiri, and “Ice Chips” are the best episodes of this season by far.
Liza Colón-Zayas’s Tina in the episode “Napkins” captures the ugliness of the economic turmoil that our country has been going through with unemployment rates, layoffs, and job-seeking and what a way for Jon Bernthal’s Michael to return in the season by showing how impactful he was in changing Tina’s life. But I always loved the character of Tina since the first season and having an episode dedicated to her history was a treat.
“Ice Chips” revolves around Abby Elliot’s Nat going through labor while the only support she has is none other than Jamie-Lee Curtis’s Donna. From the previous seasons, we already know that Nat and Donna’s relationship, to put simply, has been rocky and the tensions were high going into this episode. This episode was a mad scientist lab’s creation, both Jamie-Lee Curtis and Abby Elliot’s chemistry was cooking! The high tensions dispelled into such a loving mother & daughter moment. “I make myself sick to make you feel better.” That line was heavy and even if you are not a daughter, being anyone’s child, you could embrace that raw pain Nat felt when growing up with her Mom.
The season wraps up with Carmy, who has been struggling with quitting smoking, his strained relationship with Richie, unresolved feelings with Claire, confronting the “Asshole” Chef played by Joel McHale, and it did not go the way he thinks it would have. I felt that Carmy’s character took a step back from his development from the previous season as he became more arrogant and controlling, pushing Syd to rethink her partnership. Although we love to root for our main protagonist, the writing captures the realism that sometimes people can’t change overnight and that if your main goal in life is to demand perfection, it will ultimately eat away at your relationships with the ones close to you.
Although The Bear Season 3 may not be as eventful and fast paced as the previous two seasons, like with slow-roasted dishes, it will deliver some of the most tender moments and ground us from the craziness we experience on the daily.
