The Smaller Cans Taste Better
The Bear shows us that we give love the best ways we know how—even if others can’t always feel love the way we express it.
Review by T. Wyatt Reynolds
You can’t start at f***ed, you get that right?”
Carmen Berzatto, the main character of Hulu’s The Bear, is asked this by his Uncle Cicero early in episode 2. To the viewer however, it’s very clear that Carmy has begun life, the show, and his career at his recently deceased brother’s restaurant all “f***ed.” In that spirit, this review will have a few spoilers, so if you don’t want your viewing f***ed, quit reading now. The show has 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. You don’t need me to tell you to enjoy it. The Bear sits at several strange intersections. The show’s cinematography is brilliant. Imagine, if you will, combining the emotional candor of The Perks of Being a Wildflower with the aesthetic detail of an episode of Chef’s Table, the musical candor of a Terrence Malick film, and a peek into the midwestern working class that J. D. Vance only wishes he could have given us.
One exchange in episode 4 characterizes the whole of Carmy’s life. At a large family gathering, an older man approaches him and asks,
“Carmy? I thought you killed yourself.”
“No, sir. That was my brother.”
Carmy has long lived in the shadow of his recently deceased brother, Mike. Despite having won a James Beard Award and working in the country’s best restaurants, only Sydney takes him seriously as a chef. Most of the characters take advantage or treat him like a project or emotional punching bag. We first meet Carmy in a dream or hallucination. He is walking across an empty bridge at night, but it’s not just any bridge. We later learn that it’s Chicago’s East Bridge, where Mike committed suicide. Beyond the bridge, the lights of Chicago gleam around Carmy and a cage that sits in his path. In the silence, we hear growls. A bear walks out of a cage and confronts Carmy. Not violently, but it is a confrontation nonetheless.
This bear lurks near the edges the show, popping back up in hallucinations or visions that mirror Carmy’s memories of his brother. It may not be readily apparent why the show bears its name—horrible pun intended. Carmy and his family have nicknames related to “bear.” His sister Natalie is “sugar bear” or simply “sugar.” Richie tells us that Mike’s nickname had been “Mikey bear.” It is also what Carmy renames the restaurant at the end of the first season. The nickname “bear” was given to him by Mike, who would never let him work in the restaurant, but left it to him after his suicide. We are never told to what extent Carmy’s role as family exile is self-imposed or if he was cast out. Nevertheless, names and family, both found and biological, are at the center of the show.
Oscar Wilde once wrote that, “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” This sentiment lies somewhere near the core of The Bear, which feels like a show for those of us who grew up on The Perks of Being a Wallflower. While Perks told us that “we accept the love we think we deserve,” The Bear shows us that we give love the best ways we know how—even if others can’t always feel love the way we express it. This happens between almost every possible duo of characters in the show. Many of the nicknames issued are attempts to show affection. Similarly, comments on each other’s cooking. At the center of several of these attempts from different characters is Sydney. She is a young African American woman who has worked in all the best restaurants after working her way through culinary school. She comes to work for Carmy at his hole in the wall because she believes in him. Eventually though, Sydney quits because of Carmy’s own actions. Later, he texts her to explain an error in her dish that prevented him from putting it on the menu. His body language expresses what he himself cannot: a desire for continued relationship with her. We almost never see Carmy sit in the entire season. He is always on his feet in the kitchen or out, only sitting while driving. But as he texts with Sydney, he crouches—almost touching the ground, under the weight of his actions. But Sydney, who only asks if her final paycheck is ready, doesn’t understand this.
We have to start with the simple and particular.
Mary Karr once wrote, and many of us know from experience, that, “A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” Carmy describes it as his “dysfunctional, nightmare of a household.” This is true both of the Berzatto family and the restaurant team at The Original Chicagoland Beef—the restaurant he inherited from his brother (Mike or Mikey Bear—played to perfection in brief cameos by Jon Bernthal). Carmy sits uncomfortably at the intersection. On one hand, he juggles his relationship with his dead brother, sister co-owner, uncle investor, and unseen mother. On the other, he struggles to hold together the restaurant team.
The relationship between Carmy and his “cousin” Richie Jerimovich is particularly dysfunctional. Richie, as his name suggests, is of Eastern European heritage and not related to the Berzatto family. Despite this, Richie and Carmy insist on referring to each other as “cousin.” Richie was Mike’s best friend. Amity Shlaes might call him the forgotten man of the twenty-first century. He’s divorced, working class, and doesn’t quite realize how much the world is changing. He wants the restaurant to remain exactly as it was when Mike was in charge. He mocks every outside technique and style Carmy tries to bring into the restaurant. He attempts to jury rig problems instead of fixing them. This bites them in the ass, for instance, when a new sanitation inspector (who hasn’t been bribed like her partner) shows up at The Beef.
Against the odds and their own intuitions though, the family begins to come together. All except Richie. He tries complaining to Tina, the veteran line cook, she responds to him that she loved the old times,
“But this, this is real, and alive and . . . ”
“And what?”
“And good. It’s good.”
Despite Tina’s rejection of Carmy at the beginning of the series—which includes calling him the wrong name for the entire season—she’s been won over to his vision. For every member of the misfit family, this occurs in some form, whether it’s chasing a perfect doughnut or finally getting a real job at The Chicago Beef. Richie alone continues to struggle with his place.
One of Carmy’s ongoing frustrations with his dead brother is that he always purchased small cans of crushed tomatoes instead of larger, more economical cans. The canned tomatoes are for a spaghetti recipe that Carmy doesn’t want to make. Mike made it for family meals, but Carmy thinks it’s disgusting and overly spiced. It isn’t until the last episode, when he receives an envelope his brother left behind for him, that he begins to understand the small cans. On one side of an index card, his brother had written the recipe for spaghetti including the note, “Use the smaller cans of tomatoes. They taste better.” On the other, there’s a note that says, “I love you bro. Let it rip.”
Are there flaws? Of course. A couple of the fake Chicago accents are grating. But there are so many positives I don’t have room to cover. The relationship between Sydney and Carmy, the pursuit of the perfect doughnut, Ballbreaker: both the tournament and the metaphor, violence, race, and the question of absent parents. But we have to start with the simple and particular. As Carmy explains when Sydney wants to know why the best chef de cuisine from the best restaurant in the country is in the kitchen of this hole in the wall, “I’m making sandwiches.”
T. Wyatt Reynolds is a Southern expat who is currently a doctoral student in history at Columbia University. Prior to the doctorate, he received his bachelor’s in history from Washington University in St. Louis and an MAR concentrated in the History of Christianity from Yale Divinity School.
The Bear was created by Christopher Storer and was released on Hulu on June 23, 2022. You can watch it here.
