"The Bear" Is Beastly Good TV

Food, family, friends & Chicago offer a tasty full-course show

The 2004 Emmy Awards take place on the 15th of this month. The Hulu series “The Bear” set a record this year for the most Emmy nominations as… a comedy? Rather oddly, as it’s much more dramatic than humorous. I suppose it could be classified as a dramedy, but that clumsy locution still only encompasses some of the richness to be savored in a series that is in some ways its own beast as far as categories go.

Within what I call the New Golden Age of Television that dawned in the 1990s as cable TV began a creative surge, there are some shows that occupy the pantheon of series mastery. “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” stand tall together atop the pinnacle, with a number of fine and notable works a smidgeon below them that also merit high stature. This honor roll can be subjective; a few of my stand outs of yore would be “Mad Men,” “Oz,” “Breaking Bad” and “Six Feet Under.” I imagine, dear readers, there are shows you rate highly in this era in which TV rivals cinema in smart, quality viusal entertainment.

“The Bear” slots nicely into such esteemed company as a genuine modern TV masterwork. It boasts a Jeremy Allen White backstory from his engaging portrayal of Lip Gallagher in “Shameless,” also, like “The Bear,” set in Chicago. That character has some parallels to his star turn in this show as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto: smart and gifted yet plagued by self doubt. This character and place lineage provides a familiarity for those of us who followed “Shameless.”

The Carmy & Sydney chemistry crackles on the show

The series begins with Carmy returning to Chicago, where he escaped from to New York City to train, work and win awards as a gourmet chef. His older brother has died and named Carmy as an heir to the family’s Italian beef sandwich restaurant in the Windy City’s downtown. He begins to make moves to upgrade the joint, encountering pushback from the family and friends who work there. In a key move for the restaurant and the show, he hires Sydney Adamu, a budding gourmet chef, played in a career-making role by Ayo Edebiri, a 28-year-old actress, comic and TV writer who has already won Emmy and Screen Actors Guild awards for her sublime portrayal.

The first two seasons are another take on the notion of “Kitchen Confidential,” diving deep into the inner workings of the professional kitchen and restaurant business as Carmy strives to transform the largely take-out sandwich shop called The Beef into a gourmet eatery named The Bear. He struggles with resistance from the staff and must contend with an older building and cookery equipment in dire need of upgrade.

The Chicago lineage is furthered by veteran actor Oliver Platt, also a star of the Dick Wolf-produced series “Chicago Med.” On “The Bear” he’s a family friend known as “uncle” to the Berzatto clan who invests in Carmy’s plan. Another Windy City element that’s personally touching to me was a snippet of radio that opened the seventh episode of the first season with DJ Lin Brehmer, a longtime friend who I worked with in college radio at Colgate University. He went on in that field to become a star air personality and beloved Chicago voice on the city’s top-rated FM rock station WXRT for three decades. Just after the series debuted in 2022, Lin went public with a diagnosis of prostate cancer, from which he died in early 2023.

With season three, which I feel is in many ways the show’s strongest, things do get a bit tricky. After a largely hurly-burly linear storyline in seasons one and two, on the next “The Bear” breaks a bit out of that mold to bring nuance and some backstory to the characters and mise en scene. Read a few gripes about it on social media and the show dropped from a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critics rating to 85%. But for me, its third season used the tools of long-form TV storytelling to add depth to the tale.

And what a tale it is. A deep dive behind the scrim into a restaurant and its kitchen aiming towards the stars (from Michelin). A look at the genetic families we are born into and the proverbial ones we form with friends and at the workplace. A superbly-scripted story that feels like real life with characters marvelously played. Fantastic musical choices. And the city of Chicago and its urban personality as a major secondary character. It’s TV at its best, not to be missed.