Latest news with #Carm
Winnipeg Free Press
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
After undercooked interlude, The Bear is back on the boil
Opinion SPOILER ALERT: This column discusses plot details of Season 4 of The Bear. The Bear (season 4 is now streaming on Disney+) is the story of a struggling Chicago restaurant and its conflicted star chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White). The titular resto's working dynamics parallel the messy closeness of the Berzatto family — everyone calls each other 'cousin' whether they're related or not — but also its entrenched, everyone-yelling-at-once dysfunction. The series gathered a fanatically devoted following in its first two seasons, with viewers tuning in to watch the loud, stressed-out interactions of these tragicomic Chaos Muppets, with their high-key craziness and low-key sweetness. As with the restaurant's standout dishes, there was a balance of flavours — a little sentimental hoke and a lot of rawness and realness, a pinch of knockaround comedy and an almost unbearable amount of trauma. And, of course, there were the spectacular food scenes, which had everyone saying, 'Yes, chef!' in their home kitchens and working on their knife skills. Because the show operated at such a high level in its first two go-rounds — Fishes, season 2's anti-holiday episode, is some of the most electrifying TV you'll ever see — many viewers were let down by season 3's wheel-spinning. They were frustrated with Carmy and his unrelieved mopeyness, with sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and her ongoing inability to sign important paperwork, with the continued non-appearance of Carmy's on-off love Claire (Molly Gordon). In that season's excruciating exercise in emotional procrastination, there were a lot of montages and melancholy '90s pop songs but not a lot of character development or narrative momentum. While asking the fundamental question of whether people can change, the show itself had become like Carm — folded in on itself, up in its own head, unable to move forward. Season 4, which dropped all 10 episodes on June 25, seems to announce itself as a deliberate course correction. Episode 1 starts with a riff on the movie Groundhog Day, as if admitting last season had somehow got stuck, repeating the same cycles again and again. That circular sense of time is brutally dispatched when Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), the restaurant's financial backer, brings in a doomsday clock — a digital countdown to when the money runs out and he'll have to pull his support. Time is now ruthlessly rapid and linear, those implacable red numbers underlining this season's urgent sense that something's got to give — and soon. Then there's the acknowledgment from front-of-house manager Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) that the mixed restaurant review by the Chicago Trib, which described The Bear dining experience as 'showoffy,' 'confusing' and 'dissonant,' actually made some fair points. The response by the beleaguered restaurant is to simplify. Carmy and Syd will have to turn out fewer dishes with fewer ingredients. Richie's motivational pre-opening speeches will have to use fewer words. (Really, 'At my signal, unleash hell' works just fine.) Likewise, the show itself has simplified. When it comes to the food porn, there are fewer scenes in which people are plating things with tweezers. It feels significant that the most dramatically effective food sequence this season involves Hamburger Helper (albeit zhuzhed up with tomato paste and toasted breadcrumbs). Matt Dinerstein / FX Jeremy Allen White portrays conflicted Chicago chef Carmy Berzatto in season 4 of The Bear. Matt Dinerstein / FX Jeremy Allen White portrays conflicted Chicago chef Carmy Berzatto in season 4 of The Bear. There are also fewer narrative distractions. The writers still want to acknowledge the kitchen's teamwork — in terms of both cooking and acting — but they are focusing more on the main characters, an approach that culminates in the extraordinary bottle episode that ends the season. This sequence takes place entirely in a dusty outbuilding in the alley and consists of two long, intense conversations, first between Carmy and Syd and then between Carmy and Richie. This episode sets up a very different direction for season 5, which is due for release in 2026. It might also explain why the show stalled out in season 3. That narrative hesitation could come down to Carmy's — and the show's — tricky relationship to perfection. Carmy's response to any problem is that he needs to do better, to be better. This demand for perfection makes for good food, but it can be bad for him and the people around him. The show explores this tension, adoring — even fetishizing — the end product of seared Wagyu beef but also acknowledging the personal costs of the process. Carmy's list of non-negotiables, his insistence on constantly changing the menu, his control-freakery are all responses to his chaotic childhood. Those high-pressure scenes where everything is about to fall apart and everyone is about to lose their damn minds may not feel great to Carmy, but — because of his upbringing — they do feel familiar. In the season finale, he admits that maybe he sets up this constant churn of stress to keep himself from having to deal with real, hard things. You know, like his emotions. Every Second Friday The latest on food and drink in Winnipeg and beyond from arts writers Ben Sigurdson and Eva Wasney. But it's not just Carmy. The show has also been a little hooked on the yelling and arguing and the epic emotional meltdowns. Stevie (John Mulaney), who has married into the Berzatto family and observes their dysfunction with a kind of arch, amused affection, gives the game away in this season's wedding episode, where the appearance of Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) threatens a big Berzatto blow-up. 'If they didn't bring it, I'd be a little heartbroken,' he admits. And it's true that calmer, quieter, healthier interactions might not be as hyper-dramatic or, as Stevie hints, quite as much fun to watch. But the show, in this season, seems to be searching for a different way for Carmy and his crew to be, in the kitchen and out of it. By the end of season 4, we realize the show has been gently pushing the idea that maybe we shouldn't be rooting for the restaurant's Michelin star. Maybe we should just be rooting for Carmy's mental health. And it could be that those two goals are simply not compatible. I guess we'll find out next season. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
The Herald Scotland
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
The Bear: Aiming to put the fun into dysfunctional
Storer opened with the make-or-break review from the Chicago Tribune we spent series three waiting for (yes, it was that exciting). As expected, it was a mixed bag, at once praising the restaurant's ambition while slating it for chaos and inconsistency. Sounds familiar. Storer had a choice here: to double down on the unhappiness of his characters, or strike out for pastures new. A major clue was the scene involving culinary wonderboy Carm (Jeremy Allen White) and fellow chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), the sensible one. After he is told it is okay to cut back on the chaos, Carm breaks into a smile, and something approaching a chuckle. The Bear gets happy - I kid you not. That's the good news. The bad is that the restaurant is bleeding money and will be forced to close in months if they can't land that star. Finally, a cause that everyone can rally around. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), still the show's secret sauce, can forget his ex is getting married. Sydney can seize the day and sign the partnership agreement. Carm can start helping people again instead of screaming at them. There was so much motivation in the air I half expected the theme tune from Rocky to strike up. Everybody loves a comeback tale, right? Whether the hard core fans of The Bear will feel the same I'm not sure. Can a show built on the unhappiness of its characters change so much and have the same appeal? Something weird is going on in TV quiz land. Tradition had it that celebrities only popped up to do a turn at Christmas. Now they are everywhere, all the time, elbowing the civilians out. And they're not even doing it for the sake of charidee. Celebrity Puzzling (C5, Monday) seemed to have done away with prizes altogether. There was presumably a fee in it for those taking part, but otherwise, what do they gain? A place to rest their weary bones as they go up or down the snakes and ladders of celebrity, perhaps. Host Jeremy Vine knows that game well, having once presented Eggheads. There was more quiz royalty with Carol Vorderman as a team leader, and taking her on was writer/producer/actor and 5 regular, Sally Lindsay. It was Vorderman and Lindsay's job to lead different 'celebrities' into battle each day, and yes, I'm afraid the quote marks were necessary in some cases. The games were a couple of notches up from Bridge of Lies, but nowhere near as ridiculously complex as David Tennant's Genius Game. Vine took no one to task for getting an answer wrong because it wasn't that sort of show and he's not that kind of guy. That style went out the window after the disastrous (and short lived) reign of Anne Robinson on Countdown. Just as crime turned cosy, so minor league quiz shows have become nicer, sillier, and just for fun. 'It is going to a closing date.' The words no househunter in Scotland wants to hear, even if they were spoken by Phil Spencer, the planet's nicest estate agent and co-host with Kirstie Allsopp of Channel 4's Location, Location, Location (Wednesday). The reaction from Miriam, looking for a family home in Glasgow, was swift and familiar to anyone who has been in the same choppy waters. 'I actually feel sick,' she said. Such is the terror of the closing date. The personal trainer and her husband David, a health and safety consultant, had sold their first home and moved in with his parents. Miriam had packed for four weeks. Eight months on, they were still there. Miriam knew what she wanted, and that it was not going to be easy. 'My ideal house would be sandstone on the outside and new build on the inside. I don't even know if that exists.' First filmed in May 2021, this was that staple of property shows, a 'revisit' episode. Catch-ups serve two purposes: viewers like to see how stories turn out, and Location gets a return on its investment. Find or don't find a property, the production company gets a programme either way. Back in 2021 the first stop in the search was a house in Bellahouston. Kirstie had come along for a nosey. 'It's a bit of a project,' Phil warned. Having said they were open to a project, Miriam and David realised a doer-upper was not for them after all. On to King's Park and a terraced house with parking. 'It doesn't wow me,' said Miriam. Inside was a different matter. A modern home in walk-in condition, this was a contender, even if David, 6ft 5in, had to do some ducking. House number three was in East Kilbride, detached, lots of space. Miriam was keen on this one, while David was sticking with King's Park. They eventually decided on the latter, only for Phil to drop his bombshell about a closing date. Fast forward two years to 2023 and all was revealed. Now a one-baby, two-dog household, the couple didn't offer on King's Park. Instead, they found a home in Cambuslang, one that Phil had considered showing them but rejected because it was outside their top spots. So it's not always about location, after all. Soaps can make a name for themselves in all sorts of ways: with a shocking crime (the first episode of EastEnders); a disaster (Emmerdale, EastEnders, Coronation Street); scandal (Brookside, first lesbian kiss); or revelation ('YOU AIN'T MY MUVVA!'). Yet it's the quieter moments that are more likely to stay with viewers. In my mind's eye I can see Hilda Ogden opening her late husband Stan's glasses case. It seems like last month rather than 1984. I recall, too, the credits rolling in silence, save for Hilda crying. Soaps need a delicate touch at times, and if you can put a dash of humour in the mix, so much the better. The Hilda scene, for instance, was preceded by Vera and Ivy conceding that Hilda, for all her faults, was a decent sort. The lightest of touches was on display this week in River City (BBC1, Tuesday). Yes, that River City, the Glesga-set soap that's wall to wall gangsters if you listen to its detractors,and the drama that will be no more after autumn next year. The scene involved Angus and Bob sitting on a couch, about to watch some daft movie or other. Just two old pals shooting the breeze. It has been a rotten year for Bob. Last summer, his fiancée Kim died. It was possibly the least showy death in soap history. She sat on a bench, she closed her eyes, and she passed away. She did get engaged minutes before, mind you, and she had recently been in a horrific car accident. Viewers were genuinely upset. Bob was left a single dad. Now here he was, reassuring a nervy Angus about the joys of being a dad. It's the most exciting thing you will ever do, he said. 'As exciting as watching people trying to stop a shark from causing nuclear Armageddon?' 'Is it a great white?' 'A massive white.' 'I'd say it's on a par.' Written by Emma Lennox, produced by Deb Charles and directed by Meg Campbell, it was a small scene that said so much about what makes River City tick. There's a shared history here, a sense of humour that's in with the bricks. It takes years to build this kind of atmosphere, yet it can disappear in the flourish of a BBC executive's pen. Miriam, David and son in their new home (Image: Channel 4) River City has to go because it is not passing the value for money test, says BBC Scotland management. Compared to big hitters such as Shetland - average audience 700,000 in Scotland - River City isn't cutting it with just 200,000 viewers. Tell that to the viewers, many elderly, who have stuck with it through months of crazy scheduling. Tell that to the cast and crew who will be out of a job. What a shame.
The Herald Scotland
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Review, The Bear, Disney+ returns to original recipe for new series
*** AFTER the blood, sweat, tears, burns and shouting - lots of shouting - the review is in. What review you ask? How quickly they forget. Season three of The Bear, the Disney+ tale of a Chicago restaurant desperate for a Michelin star, was taken up with waiting for a make-or-break review. Sounds dull, was dull. The new 10-part series, which dropped today, opens with said review. As expected, it's a mixed bag, at once praising the restaurant's ambition while slating it for chaos and inconsistency. Sounds about right, both for restaurant and series. The Bear's creator, Christopher Storer, had a choice here: to double down on the misery and introspection, or strike out for pastures new. That he opens with a clip from Groundhog Day is a detectable-from-space clue to where he is heading. As is culinary wonderboy Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) breaking into a smile, and something approaching a chuckle. The Bear gets happy - I kid you not. That's the good news. The bad is the restaurant is bleeding money and will be forced to close in months if the team can't land that Michelin star. Finally, a cause that everyone can rally around. Front of house manager Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), still the show's best character and its secret sauce, can forget his ex is getting married and his daughter has a new daddy. Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) can seize the day and sign the partnership agreement. Carm can start helping people again instead of screaming at them. There is so much motivation going on, I half expected the theme tune from Rocky to strike up and the staff to run out en masse to climb the nearest steps. Wrong city, but everybody loves a comeback tale, right? Whether the hardcore fans of The Bear will feel the same I'm not sure. Can a show built on the unhappiness of its characters change so much and have the same appeal? Storer gives viewers no time to ponder. All that good stuff of old comes to the table - breakneck editing, pumping music, a sense of the team against the world, everybody yelling 'Doors' as the restaurant opens, and of course calling each other chef. There's a new character, the maitre d from Olivia Colman's old joint, who looks promising. There's even an attempt at some comedy, though so far that's still a work in progress. While it is fun getting back to The Bear basics, the show will stand or fall on its main characters, led by Carmy. In the last series, however, he was the weakest of the bunch, and you do wonder how much he has left to say. Others can take up the slack, starting with Jamie Lee Curtis as Carm's mommie dearest, Richie and Carm's sister Sugar (Abby Elliott). They will have to. Whatever its more passionate defenders thought, The Bear did not change television in the way, say, The Sopranos did. It was always soapier than it seemed, and it's no bad thing to go back there.
The Herald Scotland
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Review, The Bear, Disney+ returns to the original recipe
*** AFTER the blood, sweat, tears, burns and shouting - lots of shouting - the review is in. What review you ask? How quickly they forget. Season three of The Bear, the Disney+ tale of a Chicago restaurant desperate for a Michelin star, was taken up with waiting for a make-or-break review. Sounds dull, was dull. The new 10-part series, which dropped today, opens with said review. As expected, it's a mixed bag, at once praising the restaurant's ambition while slating it for chaos and inconsistency. Sounds about right, both for restaurant and series. The Bear's creator, Christopher Storer, had a choice here: to double down on the misery and introspection, or strike out for pastures new. That he opens with a clip from Groundhog Day is a detectable-from-space clue to where he is heading. As is culinary wonderboy Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) breaking into a smile, and something approaching a chuckle. The Bear gets happy - I kid you not. That's the good news. The bad is the restaurant is bleeding money and will be forced to close in months if the team can't land that Michelin star. Finally, a cause that everyone can rally around. Front of house manager Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), still the show's best character and its secret sauce, can forget his ex is getting married and his daughter has a new daddy. Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) can seize the day and sign the partnership agreement. Carm can start helping people again instead of screaming at them. There is so much motivation going on, I half expected the theme tune from Rocky to strike up and the staff to run out en masse to climb the nearest steps. Wrong city, but everybody loves a comeback tale, right? Whether the hardcore fans of The Bear will feel the same I'm not sure. Can a show built on the unhappiness of its characters change so much and have the same appeal? Storer gives viewers no time to ponder. All that good stuff of old comes to the table - breakneck editing, pumping music, a sense of the team against the world, everybody yelling 'Doors' as the restaurant opens, and of course calling each other chef. There's a new character, the maitre d from Olivia Colman's old joint, who looks promising. There's even an attempt at some comedy, though so far that's still a work in progress. While it is fun getting back to The Bear basics, the show will stand or fall on its main characters, led by Carmy. In the last series, however, he was the weakest of the bunch, and you do wonder how much he has left to say. Others can take up the slack, starting with Jamie Lee Curtis as Carm's mommie dearest, Richie and Carm's sister Sugar (Abby Elliott). They will have to. Whatever its more passionate defenders thought, The Bear did not change television in the way, say, The Sopranos did. It was always soapier than it seemed, and it's no bad thing to go back there.
Atlantic
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
‘The Bear' Isn't Wasting a Second
'You ever feel like you're stuck in the same day, like over and over again?' Carmen Berzatto asks another chef early in the new season of The Bear. Carm, of course, played in fine haunted fashion by Jeremy Allen White, is the jolie laide centerpiece of the series, the sad-eyed Chicago son whose face launched a thousand 'Yes, chef' memes and whose grief and PTSD preoccupied almost all of Season 3. Stuck? I can forgive The Bear almost anything, because it's one of the few shows on television now still willing to wrangle with the mess of being human—with what it means to try to live differently. We all know what it's like to feel stuck. Most of us have loved The Bear since it debuted in 2022: an impossibly gorgeous and teeth-grindingly stressful show that put viewers through the restaurant-kitchen wringer so that it could reward us with moments of transcendent payoff. Season 3, relentless in its examination of the sticky contours of Carm's trauma, offered fewer bursts of that kind of respite. These new episodes, though, bear fruit, in the form of progress, and forward momentum, and the impossible optimism of people changing for the better. In Season 1, Carm—a burner-scarred veteran of some of the world's best kitchens—returned to Chicago to try to save his dead brother's hopelessly dysfunctional sandwich shop, sparring with Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), his coke-dealing 'cousin' and a poster boy for woeful masculinity. In Season 2, with the help of his protégé, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Carm prepared to open the restaurant he'd always dreamed of, while Richie found his own sense of purpose. At the end of Season 3, the Bear—the restaurant—received a thoroughly mixed review from the Chicago Tribune, leaving the team scattered and uncertain. On the plus side, this means there's no time left to waste. The motif of the new season is a clock that Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) unceremoniously plonks down in the kitchen, counting the number of hours until the restaurant runs out of funds. If the team is going to save the Bear, it has to be now. Christopher Storer, the show's creator, turns the last minutes of the first episode into a rousing, synth-scored, preparing-for-battle montage reminiscent of a Cold War action movie. Every Second Counts reads the sign on one wall. 'Why am I crying?' I wrote in my notes, as lockers slammed shut and knives rasped against sharpeners ahead of service. The biggest obstacles, beyond money, are the ones in the chefs' heads: Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is still slower and clumsier with the desserts he's trying to perfect than he can afford to be; Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) can't turn the pasta around quickly enough; Sydney can't decide whether Carm's genius in the kitchen is worth the risk of sinking her own career and mental health. The Bear has always had an expansive understanding of what restaurants represent—the task not only of elevating food into an art, but also of making every guest feel cared for, affirmed, at home. And for the people who spend 80-hour weeks sweating all the intimate details of service, the job means so much more than work, the team so much more than colleagues. 'Please, help me out with this place,' Richie prays one night. 'If it's fucked, then I am fucked. It's like the last thing that's actually keeping me attached to anything, so please, help me out here. Amen.' Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson), whose work in the sandwich window is the lone financial bright spot in the Bear's books, seeks a mentor to try to figure out how he personally might be able to help. Sydney agonizes over the question of whether to abandon Carm and the Bear for a more functional (if annoying) chef who's trying to poach her. The new season, as is series tradition, makes space for some intriguing curveballs. An episode co-written by Edebiri and Boyce takes Sydney outside the restaurant to a hair appointment at a friend's house, where she considers what it means to have people who really know her, and to feel like she belongs. Another episode that runs upwards of an hour brings together virtually everyone in the show's history for an event that seems to promise chaos and destruction—say, a car driven through a house, a gunfight—but goes somewhere wholly unexpected. Almost more than ever, The Bear is preoccupied with what we as humans inherit and what we pass on in turn, and whether we can actually choose, as Carm wanted in Season 3, to 'filter out all the bad.' Carm's sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott), trying to raise her own child differently, starts using gentle-parenting techniques at work, almost unintentionally, with understandable lapses in patience. Richie's work on himself continues to, in my opinion, sustain all hope for humanity. ('Neil Jeff, you're beautiful,' he whispers to his and Carm's childhood friend, Neil Fak—Matty Matheson—in a heartbreaking instant of pure television.) Marcus and Sydney, both of whom have lost their mothers, interlock neatly with Carm, who still dreads seeing his own. In Season 1, the show seemed intent on conveying how toxic masculinity poisons not just kitchen culture but all hierarchies; now, because the team members have opened themselves up to more nurturing models of care and communication, their potential is fully unfurling. All of this wrestling with pain and purpose and guilt and growth is intermingled with Storer's musical callbacks and quick cuts of dishes being plated, red lines on charts running menacingly downward, clocks ticking, casual conversations that become so unexpectedly profound that they rip your heart right out. The pace isn't always so rapid-fire—when episodes slow down, it's for a reason. There are still a handful of dream sequences and surreal interludes that seem to want to underscore the show's deep psychological curiosity, and its unwillingness to be an easy watch. But after the slow-drip, languorous suffering of Season 3, it's thrilling to see the characters and the action move so purposefully and gratifyingly forward.
