SPOILERS: This article contains potential spoilers for “The Bear” Season 5.
So, I recently got Hulu and decided to watch the award-winning show “The Bear.” I had watched from the sidelines as everyone had praised it when it originally came out in 2022, and I silently added it to the list of shows I would watch when I got the chance.
I took that chance a couple weeks ago and binged the four available seasons in preparation for its final season, released in its entirety on Hulu on June 25. I was not disappointed. While the show starts a bit stressful and slow in its first season, the second got me 100% hooked with perhaps my favorite television episode of all time, “Fishes.”
Rather than jumping across weeks or even months in a season, Season 5 takes place primarily over the course of a single day of work at the restaurant. At the end of Season 4, Carmen (Jeremy Allen White) told Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Natalie (Abby Elliott) about his plans to leave the restaurant and try something other than being a chef. So, with high tensions, a flooding problem and the busiest night in their restaurant’s history, they have to fight their way through to a successful night of service before he leaves for good.
I liked this concept for the season because it breaks away from the formula the past two seasons set up. Instead of multiple episodes of long, drawn-out conversations in a single setting, we get to see all the chefs in action, using their skills to solve problems thrown at them. We get to stay in the moment through all eight episodes and watch the chefs grow closer despite their conflicts. It was a much-needed break from the deathly seriousness of the previous two seasons.
I especially loved the character development of Sydney this season. She always seemed to be a bit unsure of herself in her leadership position, but I think she really stepped into her role as a leader, especially with Carmen stepping back. This newfound confidence certainly was rewarded when the restaurant was awarded two Michelin stars.
One critique I had was that I couldn’t quite understand Carmen’s decision to quit cooking.
It’s clear that he has many issues with trauma related to his deranged family, as well as an overbearing boss in the past, but his love of cooking was always apparent to me in the show. He always offered to cook for the people he loved and took clear care to develop his recipes.
I will say that if he were to do something other than cooking, I’m glad we see him apply to an architectural business. Through the seasons, his drawing skills are apparent, and he definitely would thrive in that field.
As for the other characters, I don’t think they had that much time to develop. Carmen’s cousin and front of house manager, Richie, has been the same since Season 2’s “Forks,” and sous chef Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), manager of the window service Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) and sommelier Gary (Corey Hendrix) are given little to no new conflict to deal with besides the main restaurant problems. And I have always hated the Faks (Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri) who are family friends and employees of the restaurant because I think they’re helpless and annoying babies.
Pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) has some angst with his assistant chef Luca (Will Poulter) and with Marcus' dad who comes to dinner at the restaurant, but it really only leads to a mediocre fight to raise tension.
But I think my least favorite part of the season was the random side mission that the financial team, Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), Computer (Brian Koppelman) and Computer’s niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher), went on to try to find the air rights of The Bear’s building. They spend multiple episodes doing this, and it leads to nothing. It was just a huge waste of screen time that could have gone to more important characters like Tina and Marcus.
Overall, even with several flaws, I think this season works well as a finale. And while I know this is supposed to be the final season of the show, I think a continuation of some sort with Sydney as the lead chef would be fun to watch as she is my favorite character. But for now, I think this is a good chapter to end “The Bear” on.
