Five stars for The Bear season 3 — kitchen tragicomedy lowers the heat but deepens the flavour

The last time we saw chef Carmy Berzatto, he was not in a good place — physically or mentally. Trapped inside the walk-in fridge of his new restaurant on its gala opening night, he spent what should have been a career-defining occasion berating himself and alienating everyone on the other side of the jammed door. 

Picking up after this wrenching end to season two, Christopher Storer’s terrific tragicomedy The Bear restarts with a mesmerising, meditative episode of few words and abundant emotion. Essentially a 40-minute montage of short, largely dialogue-free scenes and images, it pieces together fragments of Carmy’s life — a mosaic of a talented, troubled man. This masterful example of show-don’t-tell storytelling provides glimpses of the character’s formative and destructive experiences. It also revels in his culinary virtuosity. To call these vividly shot cooking sequences “food porn” does them a disservice. They are nothing short of gastronomic erotica. 

Back at the restaurant the morning after the night before, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) introduces a blueprint for obtaining a Michelin star that reads like a list of Orwellian slogans: “less is more”; “perfect means perfect”; “push boundaries, respect tradition” and so on. These “non-negotiables” are designed to inspire discipline and inhibit conflict. Instead, perhaps inevitably, they elicit contempt and confrontation. “Vibrant collaboration? That can get fucked,” retorts maître d’ Richie (Ebon Moss Bachrach), who despite his newfound equanimity is still prone to the occasional outburst. 

While such tensions continue to simmer, you sense the show is wary of overplaying the chaos and crises. Compared with the drama of season two’s punishingly intense “Fishes” episode (a Berzatto family Christmas dinner where cutting words are launched across the table, then pieces of cutlery), or its gut-punch finale, the 10 new episodes seem uneventful, even anticlimactic. Though new sources of jeopardy — including a make-or-break review, accounting woes and a potential staff departure — are introduced, everything is set up to come to a head in the next season.

But if season three doesn’t always advance the narrative, it delves deeper into character. Not just the central trio of Carmy (who continues to unravel), Richie (who continues to grow) and Ayo Edebiri’s chef de cuisine Sydney (who begins to have doubts about her dream job), but the wider ensemble, all of whom are excellent. Two self-contained episodes — one revolving around the backstory of sous chef Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), the other a raw yet tender two-hander between Carmy’s sister (Abby Elliott) and mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) — appear digressive, but expand on The Bear’s overarching themes and atmosphere.  

Nothing else currently on TV is quite so unflinchingly honest on the subject of family and trauma, or as eloquently expressive of feelings of regret, shame and doubt. Nor is there anything quite so funny — especially whenever scene-stealing maintenance man Neil Fak (played by real-life chef Matty Matheson) is on screen. 

In almost every scene, The Bear strikes a balance between pathos and humour, human complexity and cartoonish absurdity, cynicism and a sincere sense of affection for these characters, the city of Chicago and the culinary craft. It boasts rich writing, yet is so delicately constructed you can almost imagine Storer and Co assembling episodes with Carmy’s micro-herb tweezers. What they serve up leaves you sated yet hungry for more.

★★★★★

On Disney+ in the UK and Hulu in the US now