Yes chef

The Bear slows down

23 Jun

Dirt is a daily email about entertainment.

Carmy and Ritchie in the premiere episode of The Bear.

Terry Nguyen, Dirt's senior staff writer, on The Bear season two, hotel bars, and SSENSE.

The second season of FX’s The Bear starts off slower than the first, even though it seems to pick right back up days after the prior season’s finale. Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is on edge, determining the budget for the high-end restaurant vision he hopes to transform The Beef into. His crew of cooks are lobbing numbers at him, while he, Sharpie in hand, jots down the estimates on a pizza box. Even though every other word out of Carmy’s mouth is still basically an expletive, there’s a noticeable shift in the show’s pacing. The frenetic energy that defined The Bear’s first season has settled into something softer, perhaps even tender, as the restaurant’s crew takes a twelve-week pause from the immediate demands of the kitchen for the renovation.

Last season, Carmy was working against the clock to revive his dead brother’s sandwich joint, evening out his debts and revamping the menu. The stakes in every episode felt dire, and characters were routinely exploding in each other’s faces. As viewers, we felt what Carmy felt: There was no relief, no way out from pressure, grief, or self-loathing. This time around, Carmy has time to ruminate on his life in and outside the kitchen. Purpose—something Carmy’s cousin Ritchie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) brings up in the premiere episode—seems to be on every character’s mind. And instead of the daily adrenaline rush from cooking, the primary activity that brought the core characters together in the first place, the show has more space to explore their inner lives and motivations.

For all the thirst Jeremy Allen White received for his portrayal of Carmy, The Bear was deemed by some viewers a sexless show for its lack of romance. A more accurate point, I think, is that its characters, specifically Carmy, willfully sublimate their sexual desires in service of their craft. Yet, The Bear still manages to be a sensual show. The characters are overwhelmingly passionate about the food they’re preparing; Carmy specifically is charged with desire for perfection. I’ve only just finished this season’s second episode, which, at the very last moment, introduces Carmy’s love interest (Molly Gordon), an ER doctor he bumps into at the grocery store. Their chemistry in the scene affirms the show’s tonal shift. While I miss the fast-paced intensity of the first season and was bracing myself for its inevitable speed-up, this tonal shift feels necessary, a sign of the show’s willingness to develop emotional groundwork for future seasons.

All 10 episodes of The Bear season two are now streaming on Hulu.

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MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

NYT Magazine’s Letter of Recommendation column is always a delight, especially this one on hotel bars.
Fashion newsletter Blackbird Spyplane dives deep into SSENSE and the site’s impact on the “cool clothes ecosystem.”
- TLDR: Support emerging brands by buying them directly from their site or via local, heavily curated boutiques.
A Q&A with the director Gregg Araki. I really want to see Zendaya in an Araki film… (Metrograph)
And Just Like That season 2 is… good? (Vox)
Sarah Archer argues against the notion of “good taste” in interior design (Architectural Digest)
Kerry Howley on Ginni and Clarence Thomas’s baffling and bizarre love story (NY Mag)
- “No one can unlock the mysteries of the human heart, but the external record is clear: Clarence and Ginni Thomas have, for decades, sustained the happiest marriage in the American Republic, gleeful in the face of condemnation, thrilling to the revelry of wanton corruption, untroubled by the burdens of biological children or adherence to legal statute.”

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