Latest news with #BruceSpringsteen
The Advertiser
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Three hurt during Bruce Springsteen concert in Germany
Three people have been injured by a metal object during Bruce Springsteen's concert in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen. Police said the object weighing several kilograms fell from the ceiling during the US rock legend's show on Friday night. Two women, aged 22 and 50, and a man, 48, were injured and taken to hospital. Despite the incident, the concert continued, a police spokesman said. Gelsenkirchen is nearly 60km north-east of Dusseldorf in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. Police said initial findings showed that a piece of more than a metre detached from a corner of the video cube. The area beneath the cube was cordoned off. Police are investigating why the metal object fell and also whether other parts could have potentially come loose. Thousands of fans attended Springsteen's concert at Gelsenkirchen's Veltins Arena. It was the rock star's third and final performance in Germany as part of his European tour, following earlier shows in Berlin and Frankfurt. Three people have been injured by a metal object during Bruce Springsteen's concert in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen. Police said the object weighing several kilograms fell from the ceiling during the US rock legend's show on Friday night. Two women, aged 22 and 50, and a man, 48, were injured and taken to hospital. Despite the incident, the concert continued, a police spokesman said. Gelsenkirchen is nearly 60km north-east of Dusseldorf in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. Police said initial findings showed that a piece of more than a metre detached from a corner of the video cube. The area beneath the cube was cordoned off. Police are investigating why the metal object fell and also whether other parts could have potentially come loose. Thousands of fans attended Springsteen's concert at Gelsenkirchen's Veltins Arena. It was the rock star's third and final performance in Germany as part of his European tour, following earlier shows in Berlin and Frankfurt. Three people have been injured by a metal object during Bruce Springsteen's concert in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen. Police said the object weighing several kilograms fell from the ceiling during the US rock legend's show on Friday night. Two women, aged 22 and 50, and a man, 48, were injured and taken to hospital. Despite the incident, the concert continued, a police spokesman said. Gelsenkirchen is nearly 60km north-east of Dusseldorf in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. Police said initial findings showed that a piece of more than a metre detached from a corner of the video cube. The area beneath the cube was cordoned off. Police are investigating why the metal object fell and also whether other parts could have potentially come loose. Thousands of fans attended Springsteen's concert at Gelsenkirchen's Veltins Arena. It was the rock star's third and final performance in Germany as part of his European tour, following earlier shows in Berlin and Frankfurt. Three people have been injured by a metal object during Bruce Springsteen's concert in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen. Police said the object weighing several kilograms fell from the ceiling during the US rock legend's show on Friday night. Two women, aged 22 and 50, and a man, 48, were injured and taken to hospital. Despite the incident, the concert continued, a police spokesman said. Gelsenkirchen is nearly 60km north-east of Dusseldorf in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. Police said initial findings showed that a piece of more than a metre detached from a corner of the video cube. The area beneath the cube was cordoned off. Police are investigating why the metal object fell and also whether other parts could have potentially come loose. Thousands of fans attended Springsteen's concert at Gelsenkirchen's Veltins Arena. It was the rock star's third and final performance in Germany as part of his European tour, following earlier shows in Berlin and Frankfurt.
New Straits Times
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New Straits Times
#Showbiz: Springsteen digs into the vault to rewrite his 'lost' '90s
WASHINGTON: Conventional wisdom among Bruce Springsteen fans holds that the 1990s were his "lost" decade – a period where he struggled to chart a new course after parting ways with his longtime collaborators, the E Street Band. It turns out "The Boss" never bought into that narrative, and now he's aiming to overturn it with a new collection of unreleased material, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, released on Friday. "I often read about myself in the '90s as having some lost period," the 75-year-old rocker said in a 17-minute documentary released last week. "Actually, Patti and I were parenting very young children at the time, so that affected some of your workout," he conceded, referencing his wife and E Street Band member, Patti Scialfa. "But really, I was working the whole time." During the Covid pandemic, Springsteen returned to his archives and "finished everything I had in my vault." The result is a sprawling box set compilation of 83 songs organised thematically into seven albums, spanning his output from 1983 to 2018. But the greatest spotlight falls on the 1990s – a decade long seen as a wilderness period for the New Jersey native, who was said to be struggling to find a solo identity during his hiatus from the E Street Band. Springsteen first burst onto the national scene in the '70s as a would-be heir to Bob Dylan, hit new commercial heights in the '80s with Born in the USA, and delivered what many view as the definitive artistic response to the 9/11 attacks with The Rising. One album in the box set revisits the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, evoking the namesake hit with a moody blend of synthesisers and pulsing drumbeats as he explores dark emotional terrain. "I'd made three albums about relationships, I had a fourth one," Springsteen said. "It was particularly dark, and I just didn't know if my audience was going to be able to hear it at that moment." Another record, Somewhere North of Nashville, is a rollicking, country-rooted romp. A third, Inyo, recorded in the late '90s along California's borderlands, is an ode to Mexican-American culture. Springsteen is far from the first major artist to unearth new material from songs that were originally shelved, following a tradition established by Dylan's Bootleg Series in 1991. Tracks II, as the name suggests, is a sequel to 1998's Tracks – and Tracks III is set to follow. Over the years, critics have often argued there's a reason some tracks remain unreleased – with "new" Beatles songs based on the late John Lennon's homemade demos often cited as proof that not every vault needs to be reopened. So far, however, Tracks II has been received favourably by many reviewers. "For any fan, it's a revelation to hear the secret mischief that Bruce Springsteen was making in the shadows, during his most low-profile era – the music he made for himself, after years of making music for the world," wrote Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone.
CBC
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
What Bruce Springsteen's lost albums reveal about him as an artist
Today, Bruce Springsteen decided to grace fans everywhere with not just one album, but seven albums of previously unreleased music. The box set, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, contains 83 new songs which showcase the Boss's love of country and orchestral music. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud chats with music journalists Carl Wilson, Vish Khanna and Niko Stratis to discuss the massive new release from Springsteen. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion on Serge Fiori's legacy and Lorde's new album, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: Niko, this is a box set that spans from 1983 all the way to 2018, the vast majority of it recorded in the 1990s. Where was Bruce in this era? Why did he have so much music stockpiled, but not released out to the public? Niko: The '90s are such a funny period for Bruce. He has referred to people saying that that's his lost decade. He has very few records come out in the '90s. He has two come out at the same time, Human Touch and Lucky Town. Lucky Town comes out in '92. He does Streets of Philadelphia in '93. And then Ghost of Tom Joad comes out in '95. And that's kind of it. It's not until The Rising comes out in 2002 that we get anything new from Bruce. So it is this lost period. He's moved to California at this time. He's in Los Angeles, he's having kids, he's having a family — and he's made a lot of music, we just never heard it. Listening through this now, it is interesting to hear: where was Bruce in this era that we didn't really hear a lot from him? What did he sound like? What was he doing? What was he trying to do? And how would this have felt if it came out in the years that he recorded them? Had he put a country record out in '95 when he also did Ghost of Tom Joad, would people have been into it? And it's impossible to know the answer to that question. But now we have 83 tracks through which to wonder: what would have happened if Bruce was just throwing spaghetti at the wall his entire life? Elamin: Suddenly, you get this moment, Vish, where you are not confronted with, but blessed with, shall we say, a gigantic flood of new Bruce Springsteen songs that range in their styles. We have a country-style album. We have some orchestral stuff. He's working with a lot of different styles. What's it like waking up and being like, "Oh my gosh, look at all this, the Bruce bounty?" Vish: I think those of us who follow older artists are becoming accustomed to people putting out outtakes or unreleased material collections. In my memory — and I might be wrong — I can't think of anything like this. I can't think of any artist of his calibre being like, "Here's seven complete albums I made. I put out other stuff instead of this. So here you go." So when these collections come out, one thing beyond just marveling at the music that we get to hear, fans have to reckon with what our favourite artists' decision making processes are, their indecisiveness, their contemplation, the fact that they really think about these things. This particular set had me thinking: what if Bruce and Dylan — Bob Dylan, by the way, is who I'm referring to there — what if Miles Davis, Neil Young, all these people had Bandcamp or SoundCloud? Can you imagine? These days everyone's just like, "Hey everyone, I made a record last week, here you go." These folks sit on these things and I think it's kind of interesting because we're like, "OK, you didn't put this out? It's perfect. This is great." And I think the other thing we wrestle with as fans is: the stuff that did come? I don't know if it's as good as this now. I just think it's fascinating that Bruce and some of the other people I mentioned are able to provide us these alternate histories, while they're alive. That's really unusual to have all these people be like, "Here's what I did, here's what I could have done, here you go." Elamin: Carl, when you look at this box set, what does it tell you about what Bruce Springsteen wants us to know about him right now? Carl: It doesn't tell us anything we don't already know after the last 15 years or more of outtake albums and bonus discs. We're aware that Bruce produced work like a MF at all times. There is this project, I think, in the last decade of really putting the archives in order, alongside telling his story and his autobiography, alongside doing the Broadway show based on the autobiography, alongside making these documentaries. Bruce Springsteen wants to tell the Bruce Springsteen story. And the interesting thing is that he's willing to tell it now in a broader way. When Vish was talking about the choices that were made to put these albums out or not, I think a big part of it is that a lot of those projects here didn't suit the story that Bruce wanted to tell about Bruce Springsteen at particular times. They're not the heroic man of the people, masculine Bruce Springsteen at all times. They're kind of the weird artist Bruce Springsteen, obsessively making stuff in the garage studio. At various points, he veers away from putting out the orchestral pop album, from putting out the synthesizer album, from putting out the more mainstream country album instead of the Woody Guthrie-esque country album. So all of those choices show up here. And there's a romance to the idea of lost albums. And there is also the indications of strategy and fears about public perception and all of those kinds of things that are the backside to all of that.
Toronto Sun
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Sun
On Springsteen's ‘Tracks II,' a trove of worthy castoffs
Published Jun 27, 2025 • 6 minute read Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform on, Nov. 19, 2024 in Edmonton. Photo by Greg Southam / Postmedia Network Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account A long time ago, in a century far, far away, Bruce Springsteen released two discrete albums of new music at the same time. 'Human Touch' was the one he had sweated over and second-guessed across three calendar years, 'Lucky Town' the one he had knocked out in a couple of months thereafter. These were the first records he had released since informing the E Street Band in 1989 that their services were no longer required. Springsteen's new box set, 'Tracks II: The Lost Albums,' marks the simultaneous unveiling of not two or three but seven complete records made between 1983 and 2018. That's the swath of temporal real estate in which the Boss became an MTV star; suffered a crisis of confidence and reemerged as a sombre, goateed balladeer; then – in the wake of 9/11 and the reassembly and expansion of the E Street Band – matured into a beloved elder statesman and international goodwill ambassador. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. These long-shelved records transcend eras, genres and sartorial regrets. They also reveal that what looked like distinct, easily sorted phases in the latter half of Springsteen's 60-year career were in fact illusions based on whichever creative identity the Once and Future Boss felt like foregrounding at the time. An example: When he recorded 1995's downbeat set of border tales 'The Ghost of Tom Joad,' and then set out on a long tour in support of that powerful but almost willfully uncommercial album, the knee-sliding, amp-blowing Boss of lore didn't go into a coma. We now know this because 'Somewhere North of Nashville,' one of the previously unknown albums included in this treasure trove, was recorded concurrently featuring the same players. And it's a barn-burner, more country-fried and twangy than his albums with the E Street Band, but still the kind of boisterous, upbeat music that the rowdy fans who couldn't abide his nightly requests for quiet on the folkie, solo acoustic 'Joad' tour might've welcomed. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'The L.A. Garage Sessions '83' is the outlier. Its 18 tracks are a decade older than any of the other music here. Die-hards will probably know them – from their infrequent live performances, from 'Born in the U.S.A.'-era B-sides (later compiled on the first 'Tracks' set) or from long-circulating bootlegs. They capture a self-described 'gun shy of fame' Springsteen continuing to experiment with home recording on the opposite coast after 'Nebraska,' a record for which he famously chose to release his four-track solo cassette demos instead of the subsequent full-band studio takes, which he found lacking in magic. Empowered, as longtime Springsteen historian Erik Flannigan explains in his liner notes, by the discovery that he could explore new paths without dragging his band into a studio for two years, Springsteen continued working in that vein. While bits of lyrics from these often ghostly, reverb-heavy tracks found their way onto more familiar releases later, only 'My Hometown,' included here in a version on which Springsteen sounds more hoarse than usual, made it onto 'Born in the U.S.A.' the next year. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. It's puzzling that Springsteen has opted at last to share these era-bridging recordings this way, instead of on a past-due 40th-anniversary edition of 'U.S.A.' A jumbo-size reissue of the Boss's best-selling album – the one that turned him, for better and worse, into a mainstream celebrity – would've felt like a given after the tricked-out deluxe versions of 'Born to Run,' 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' and 'The River' he put out circa 2005-2015. Anyway, after the '83 stuff, we still have more than four hours of music that even former Backstreets magazine subscribers (RIP, Backstreets) have never heard in any form. Want wintry mid-Atlantic depressive Bruce? I give you 'The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,' an introspective set recorded in the same percussion-loop-based style that begot his Oscar-winning song for Jonathan Demme's film 'Philadelphia.' Fans for whom decades of rumours about a shelved Springsteen hip-hop record conjured images of, say, Warren Beatty rapping in the bizarro 1998 satire 'Bulworth' can relax. You prefer redemption-seeking searcher Bruce? 'Faithless,' compiling songs and instrumentals he was commissioned to compose 20 years ago for an unnamed 'spiritual Western,' is meditative and haunting, tender and rapturous. The film this music was written for remains unmade, but the movie it inspires in the listener's mind could've been directed by Jane Campion or John Ford. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. How about mariachi Bruce? (I'm sorry, it sounded like you said mariachi Bruce.) He's here, too, on 'Inyo,' which returns to the Texas and California border settings of 'Tom Joad' but accompanies its tales of striving migrants, conflicted cops and vanished loves with brighter and more varied instrumentation. It revives Springsteen's penchant for stealing movie titles with 'One False Move,' inspired by Carl Franklin's superb 1992 Bill Paxton-starring southern noir. No skips. A more surprising success than mariachi Bruce is easy-listening Bruce. 'Twilight Hours,' his experiment in Bacharach/David-style balladry, is at least as good a showcase for his age-70-plus singing as 'Only the Strong Survive,' the weirdly sterile 2022 set of soul and R & B covers that set out to emphasize his September-of-my-years vocals. Hey, Sinatra was from New Jersey, too. Like 'Somewhere North of Nashville,' 'Twilight Hours' was recorded in tandem with a more familiar album, the equally confident 'Western Stars.' Evidently Springsteen thought the cowboy hat fit him better than the fedora. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. None of this material is embarrassing, and much of it is inspired. At 83 tracks and 5⅓ hours, 'Tracks II' is an investment, a commitment and an odyssey. It's 20-track sampler version, 'Lost and Found,' seems pointless in the streaming era. This new menagerie is a gift not least because of what it says about Springsteen's obsessive self-curation. 'I've always released my records with great care,' he writes in the set's introduction, 'making sure my narratives built upon one another.' Finishing these up for release was a pandemic project for the workaholic Springsteen. But he's been operating in legacy mode for more than a decade now, uncorking a still-flowing river of archival live releases, the memoir 'Born to Run,' its stage adaptation 'Springsteen on Broadway,' several documentaries, a podcast with President Barack Obama (!) and, most frightening of all, the upcoming feature film 'Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,' starring Jeremy Allen White as 'Nebraska'-era Bruuuuuuuce. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. While the first 'Tracks,' released a generation ago in 1998, included material from before Springsteen assembled the E Street Band and from after he dismissed it, the collection was still a band-forward affair. Nearly every member of the present-day E Street Band plays on 'Tracks II' in some capacity, but they don't feel present as a collective. Five of these seven albums are conspicuously LP-sized, as in 40 minutes long or less. 'Garage Sessions' and 'Twilight Hours' are each spread over four sides of wax – if you're willing to part with Something North of Three Hundred Dollars to hear them in that format. 'The joy of these records to me now are their imperfections,' Springsteen reflects in his introduction. Certainly I can think of a dozen songs from his 'regular' albums I would rate below anything in these lost ones – and not just most of 'Human Touch.' These albums may have been imperfect for their times, but for these times, they're close enough to perfect. Read More Love concerts, but can't make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances. Toronto Raptors News Music Toronto Raptors Canada
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Bear' Review: FX/Hulu's Culinary Dramedy Stalls Out With a Muted Fourth Season
Time is a relentless force in FX/Hulu's The Bear, pressing ahead no matter how strenuously our characters try to ignore it or slow it down. Morning alarms drag bleary-eyed employees out of bed. Kitchen timers measure their work to the millisecond. An 'Every Second Counts' sign scans as both inspiration and warning, while nearby, a giant clock ticks down the minutes until the restaurant officially runs out of money; as of the season four premiere, it's set at 1,440 hours, or about two months. But even as time marches on, momentum is under no obligation to follow. Where The Bear once seemed almost too restless — exploding with stress and thriving on turmoil, eager to subvert and surprise — the latest run has the feel of a show burnt out from the effort of trying to outdo itself. Rather than push forward or drill deeper, it retreats into familiar territory as it prepares, maybe, to wind down for good. More from The Hollywood Reporter How to Watch Emmy-Winning Series 'The Bear' Season 4 Online And the Emmy Nominations Should Go to... Bruce Springsteen Says Jeremy Allen White-Led Biopic Covers "Most Painful Days" of His Life To what extent that sense of exhaustion stems from creator Christopher Storer and his team, and to what extent it simply reflects their protagonist, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White, continually excellent), is difficult to say. Perhaps it doesn't matter, when the series has always so closely identified itself with Carmy's psychology, and when we as viewers are inundated by the vibe either way. Having spent much of season three flailing to convince himself he's not stuck in a rut, Carmy begins season four dozing off to Groundhog Day and relating way too hard to lines like, 'What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?' He's still angry and grieving, still prone to self-sabotage and self-destruction, and increasingly desperate to break the cycles that have trapped him there. If it's tempting to mutter, 'This again?' when Carmy rehashes once more his feelings of guilt around the death of big brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal), or promises to do better-but-no-really-for-real-this-time — well, one can surely sympathize with how much more exhausted Carmy must be to find himself back in this place, and with how impossible it can seem to grow past our deepest wounds. And one can acknowledge that to some extent, familiarity is to be expected — welcomed, even — from a beloved show in its fourth season. If last year was the equivalent of The Bear's 'chaos menu,' stuffed with flashy ingredients in experimental arrangements, this year is the more streamlined selection Carmy finally agrees to lock in — reliable favorites pared down to their most essential components. It is a comfort to be reunited with the boisterous staff we've logged so many thrilling hours with already, to be enveloped once more by their professional banter and unprofessional screaming matches, to fall into the rhythms of Storer and producer/music supervisor Josh Senior's eclectically cool rock soundtrack. We know by now to look forward to the extra-long episode with All the Guest Stars, longer and starrier than ever this round at 69 minutes including a guest appearance by Oscar winner Brie Larson. And we can eagerly anticipate the one-off detour into a non-Carmy character's life outside the restaurant — in this case a minor gem of a half-hour following Syd (Ayo Edebiri) on her day off as she drops by her cousin Chantel's (Danielle Deadwyler) to get her hair braided and bonds with Chantel's tween daughter TJ (Arion King). But as nice as it is to be back, it's also difficult not to notice a stagnancy setting in — as if Carmy's inability to move on means that no one else is allowed to either. While the peek into Syd's personal life is welcome, she spends the season dithering over the same decision presented to her last season, of whether to accept a job offer from a rival chef (Adam Shapiro). Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) continues to cling to the restaurant as his purpose in life, and to grumble about his ex (Gillian Jacobs) getting remarried. Natalie (Abby Elliott) still alternates between frowning at spreadsheets and willing Carmy to give a shit about her new baby. And Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) simply makes the same pasta dish over and over and over, attempting to shave seconds off the prep time. Meanwhile, the spark that lit up earlier volumes has dimmed significantly. Though the staff work hard to get the budget back in the black, there's no single interlude as deliciously tense as season one's 'Review' or season two's 'Fishes' or season three's 'Next.' While Richie continues to preach the gospel of unreasonable hospitality (and even follows through with a fake snowstorm conjured for out-of-town visitors), whatever relationship The Bear used to have to its customers, or the Chicago community, or the fine dining scene, has been rendered distant and theoretical as The Bear turns increasingly inward. Even the show's gustatory pleasures are not immune to the creeping anhedonia. 'Every one of our good memories, they happen in restaurants,' Carmy gushes to Mikey in the opening flashback; the key word there is 'memories.' In the present, scenes of characters taking real delight in food — preparing it, consuming it, dreaming up wild new versions of it — have grown rarer. It's still Carmy's primary love language, as seen in the appreciative smile he gives Marcus (Lionel Boyce) for a new dessert or the French Laundry chicken dish he offers his estranged mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) as a gesture of reconciliation. But it's telling that the camera does not linger on the process of Carmy making the latter, nor on her actually eating it. The Bear's ensemble has grown bigger and deeper with each passing year, with the kitchen's latest new hires including food runner Jess (Sarah Ramos) and stage Luca (Will Poulter). And the show's always taken the occasional swerve into other perspectives; for instance, we do still see Syd find quiet satisfaction in whipping up some Hamburger Helper for a hungry TJ, since Syd, unlike Carmy, is not yet dead inside. But it's always been Carmy's moods that primarily set the tone, and his mindset that defines the themes. So many conversations are had this season, by so many different characters, about how we're all secretly anxious or afraid or self-loathing like Carmy, that you start to wonder: Are we, though? Aren't there other obsessions or fears or desires or impulses worth exploring? Must the extreme empathy toward him come at the expense of more fully exploring other promising storylines, like Tina's pursuit of perfection or Marcus' passion for his craft or even the adorable flirty chemistry between Richie and Jess or Syd and Luca? Is there even anywhere deeper for our excavation of Carmy's pain to dig? By season's end, it seems even Carmy's tapped out on Carmy. 'I don't have anything to pull from,' he admits, pleading with Syd to understand. The Carmy who once ruled The Bear with an iron fistful of non-negotiables would like to try relinquishing control. The Carmy who's given his entire life to this art wonders if he's fallen out of love with it. The Carmy so blinkered by his pain that he can't see how it's infected those around him has finally realized that others are hurting too. The Carmy who once trapped himself in the refrigerator seems to believe, at last, that he's found a way to get the door open — to escape or to let others in before the clock runs out and he's frozen in place for good. In a move out of the Ted Lasso playbook, the fourth season ends on a note that could represent the end of everything, or a pivot toward a less Carmy-centric direction, or just a brief pause before business resumes as usual. If it does continue, let's hope the series takes its cue from its protagonist one last time, and considers that The Bear could be so much bigger than just this one guy. 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