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Arab News
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
REVIEW: ‘The Bear' season four is a triumphant return to form
DUBAI: We should've had more faith. Fears (including from this reviewer) that 'The Bear' was floundering after the glacial pace of its third season can now be put to bed. Season four is pretty much everything fans of the show could've wanted: tense, dramatic, joyous, thought-provoking, funny and deeply moving. And with plenty of further proof that this might be the most talented ensemble cast currently on our screens. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Season three ended with the fate of the titular restaurant in the balance as the team — led by star chef Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), his mentee Syd Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), maître d'hôtel Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and business manager Natalie 'Sugar' Berzatto (Abby Elliott) — awaited a make-or-break review in the Chicago Tribune. That's quickly resolved: Despite some highly positive comments, the review is ultimately a dud — thanks largely to Carmy's stubborn insistence on changing the menu daily; a choice that isn't just leading to inconsistent performance from his team, but in heavy hits to the budget as they can't bulk buy from suppliers. So, that old enemy time takes center stage, as financial backer Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) and his ruthless cost-cutting friend The Computer install a countdown clock in the kitchen, giving the team 1,440 hours to save itself. That clock hits zero in the excellent final episode. In between times, the development of several characters' back stories that contributed to the feeling of aimlessness last year starts to pay off here, as much of the action is taken out of the kitchen and into a deeper exploration of what the show is really about: family — the ones we're born into, the ones we choose, and the ones that choose us. Once again, there's a Berzatto (extended) family get-together at the season's heart in a one-hour episode set at Richie's ex-wife's wedding. The stage is set for another dysfunctional social disaster. Instead, we get something altogether warmer but equally dramatic. It's exceptional television. At the heart of it all is the characters' continued quest for self-improvement — from Tina's attempts to improve her cooking speed, through Syd's efforts to silence her self-doubt, to Carmy's endeavors to allow emotional connections into his life and stop self-sabotaging. This season may still be a little too slow for those pining for the claustrophobic hyperactivity of season one, but the creators have found a sweet spot here between that and the stagnation of season three. 'The Bear' is back.
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Bear season four review – finally becoming the show it was always destined to be
Recalibrate your palate: The Bear is not the show it used to be. The relentless drama you were stunned by in season two – when you finished an episode and said it was the best show you had ever seen, then played the next one and said it again – is not coming back. Season four starts with Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), the family friend who has invested in the fledgling Chicago eaterie The Bear, installing a countdown clock that says the business has 1,440 hours to save itself. But much of the new run isn't even about the restaurant. The show is outgrowing its premise, leaving behind 'yes, chef!', lingering closeups of seared beef and screaming matches in the pantry in favour of a different intensity, one that draws even more deeply on the characters and how they fit together. Indulge it – and you will have to indulge it, in a few ways – and you will find this experience just as rich. The restaurant is reeling from negative press – the Chicago Tribune's reviewer reports understatedly that they observed 'dissonance' – but the show returns seeming almost arrogantly relaxed. The first two episodes potter, enjoying extended montages of folk cooking to the artfully curated sounds of the Who, Talk Talk, the Pretenders and, in a preparing-for-service sequence that goes on for longer than you think it would dare, a brilliantly deployed excerpt from Tangerine Dream's soundtrack for the 1981 movie Thief. Between courses, characters set out their self-improvement goals: Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) wants to train herself to cook a pasta dish in under three minutes; Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) wishes the little speeches he gives the waiting staff were more inspiring; Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) would like to help pull the numbers out of the red by becoming a commercial visionary. Dealing with the big stuff as usual are the head chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), and his faithful, frustrated assistant, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). He wants to 'do better': communicate more, apologise more, explain more, shout less. She continues to wonder if she should jump ship to take a job at a flash new startup. A whole episode, co-written by Edebiri and Lionel Boyce (who plays Marcus), is given over to Syd visiting her cousin's house to have her hair done and discuss the dilemma with her cousin's young daughter. It's a lovely digression, but is it necessary? Well, yes. It may not feel like it during this year's slow start, just as it didn't during that apparently directionless third season, but Christopher Storer, the showrunner, knows what he is doing. More than ever, this is a show about family – the traumas they inflict on each other and the power they have to soothe them – and how families extend to friends and colleagues who can be just as beloved and just as maddening. That Richie is not actually Carmy's cousin and Uncle Jimmy is not anyone's uncle has always been an endearing quirk of the setup, but now it becomes essential and endlessly moving. Where once The Bear made pulses pound, now it lets the happy tears flow; the second half of the season is like one long therapy session. Syd isn't just deciding whether or not to take a job – she is deciding whether or not she is becoming a Berzatto. Once again, the centrepiece is a double-length episode dedicated to a family get-together. The whole gang is there, so that unbelievable extended cast – including Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk and John Mulaney, plus new additions Josh Hartnett and a hilarious Brie Larson – is reunited, this time for the wedding of Richie's ex-wife, Tiff (Gillian Jacobs). With the unstable Berzatto matriarch, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), in attendance, passive-aggressively transferring her anxieties to whoever she is speaking to, the potential is there for another psychodrama along the lines of that sublime but gruelling Christmas flashback from a couple of seasons ago. But having put his creations and his audience through hell, Storer now lets the light in via a torrent of tenderly written, fiercely performed interactions where broken people who love each other start to heal, saying variations on those two beautiful phrases, 'sorry' and 'thank you'. Payoffs big and small ping in every scene as narrative seeds carefully sown – including in that bad third season! – burst into bloom and these people we have come to adore are rewarded. Not that it's ever easy: if the wedding episode is a classic, so is the painfully fraught, stunningly acted finale, where we don't know whether the most troubled of our cousins will find the courage to open up. Storer has shown a lot of courage in giving them the chance. This new Bear is doing much better. The Bear is on Disney+ in the UK and Australia and on Hulu in the US
Times
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Bear season four review — all emotional torture and not enough haute cuisine
Season three of The Bear never really recovered from its first episode. Fans of the Disney+ comedy-drama, set in a chaotic Chicago restaurant run by a neurotic Italian-American family, had waited for a year and had every right to expect what we were used to: smashed plates, raised voices and even a car driven through a living-room wall on Christmas Day. What we got was a 35-minute long, almost dialogue-free tone-poem montage of exquisite plates of haute cuisine and grand vistas of the Chicago skyline; the kind of thing that gets left to play on loop on a wall of 80in Oleds at the back of Curry's. Now we've waited another year and season four has not dared to make that mistake again, but has it gone too far? We're barely minutes into the more familiar fare of stress, debt, wagyu beef, anger and resentment when The Bear 's main financial backer, Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), and the absurdly named Uncle Computer (Brian Koppelman) stroll into the kitchen carrying a giant LCD clock that's counting down from 1,440 hours to zero. 1,440 hours is two months. That's how long they've got to get a Michelin star or the restaurant shuts down. At this point your humble TV critic must proceed with caution. The Bear makes the ingenious move of pre-owning its detractors. At the very start our heroes, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) — are still burning from the fallout of a bad review in the Chicago Tribune, which cousin Richie — always the best thing about The Bear — rather satisfyingly dismisses as 'the musings of some scustumad millennial jack-off'. (Yes, I had to google it, which isn't easy when you've never seen it written down. I'm sure a Gen Z-er could do it in no time, but it took this particular millennial jack-off about half an hour.) So when I say that putting a bomb under The Bear, complete with its own, enormous bright blue countdown clock, is an extremely hackneyed variation on an extremely hackneyed plot device, I do so in the full knowledge that I too have been seen coming. Yes, there is greater subtlety of plot to be found in most episodes of Paw Patrol, but come what may, there's going to have to be an explosion now, isn't there? Well, no, not really. What made The Bear such a hit was partly that it was set in a high-end restaurant. Which means the high-end-restaurant-venerating middle-classes can be guaranteed to gobble it up as unthinkingly as in that old experiment where that Russian guy used to ring a bell, then give his dog a meringue. But mainly it's because it used to be very clear about what was its main course and what was its side dish. The restaurant was the star of the show; the tension, the stress, the shouting and the friendship. The family's past horrors simmered away on the back burner. But by now it's all changed. The family drama is front and centre, which is fine, but the restaurant is almost an afterthought, and that's a shame, especially when good old Uncle Computer has turned it into something out of The Hurt Locker. Even though we're literally on a countdown clock, there's still bags of time for desperately unhurried and rather pointless diversions. We know we're ticking down toward annihilation, yet here we are spending almost a full episode on the teenage friendship crises of Sydney's hairdresser's daughter, whom we've never seen before and will never see again. • 'They wouldn't last a day in my kitchen': what chefs think of The Bear Episode seven looms large in the schedule, the double length, 70-minute-long wedding. Knowing what we know from previous series, I found myself taking a minute to steady the nerves for the inevitable hellfire before pressing play. I don't want to give anything away, but it's all far too peaceful. The Bear has always felt, more than most, like a show deliberately aimed at critics, just like it serves food aimed at writers, not diners (and is, rather ingeniously, being secretly kept afloat by the old beef sandwich business, which is now a serving hatch for delivery drivers). There are the endless cultural references via film clips and the ostentatious soundtrack. At one point Carmy really does wake up on Groundhog Day, complete with flip clock, buzzer alarm and Sonny and Cher. I also can't recall previously seeing so many long dialogue scenes take place over the unignorable sound of a singer singing — invariably REM's Michael Stipe. But just as Carmy won't be compromised in the kitchen, nor will director Christopher Storer and co in the edit suite. To be clear, I'm not doubting Storer's genius, but I'm not convinced that he realises that even the show's biggest fans might not be invested enough in the characters to have almost all plot stripped away (big clock notwithstanding), to the point where it begins to feel like a midlife reboot of Dawson's Creek. The back story has gobbled up the front story. There are no chips, just salt and vinegar. It's all pain, it's all emotional torture. Poor Carmy is a tortured soul, yes, but by the end, my goodness, so are we.
Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Bear season 4 review— all emotional torture and not enough haute cuisine
Season three of The Bear never really recovered from its first episode. Fans of the Disney+ comedy-drama, set in a chaotic Chicago restaurant run by a neurotic Italian-American family, had waited for a year and had every right to expect what we were used to: smashed plates, raised voices and even a car driven through a living-room wall on Christmas Day. What we got was a 35-minute long, almost dialogue-free tone-poem montage of exquisite plates of haute cuisine and grand vistas of the Chicago skyline; the kind of thing that gets left to play on loop on a wall of 80in Oleds at the back of Curry's. Now we've waited another year and season four has not dared to make that mistake again, but has it gone too far? We're barely minutes into the more familiar fare of stress, debt, wagyu beef, anger and resentment when The Bear's main financial backer, Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), and the absurdly named Uncle Computer (Brian Koppelman) stroll into the kitchen carrying a giant LCD clock that's counting down from 1,440 hours to zero. 1,440 hours is two months. That's how long they've got to get a Michelin star or the restaurant shuts down. At this point your humble TV critic must proceed with caution. The Bear makes the ingenious move of pre-owning its detractors. At the very start our heroes, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) — are still burning from the fallout of a bad review in the Chicago Tribune, which cousin Richie — always the best thing about The Bear — rather satisfyingly dismisses as 'the musings of some scustumad millennial jack-off'. (Yes, I had to google it, which isn't easy when you've never seen it written down. I'm sure a Gen Z-er could do it in no time, but it took this particular millennial jack-off about half an hour.) So when I say that putting a bomb under The Bear, complete with its own, enormous bright blue countdown clock, is an extremely hackneyed variation on an extremely hackneyed plot device, I do so in the full knowledge that I too have been seen coming. Yes, there is greater subtlety of plot to be found in most episodes of Paw Patrol, but come what may, there's going to have to be an explosion now, isn't there? Well, no, not really. What made The Bear such a hit was partly that it was set in a high-end restaurant. Which means the high-end-restaurant-venerating middle-classes can be guaranteed to gobble it up as unthinkingly as in that old experiment where that Russian guy used to ring a bell, then give his dog a meringue. But mainly it's because it used to be very clear about what was its main course and what was its side dish. The restaurant was the star of the show; the tension, the stress, the shouting and the friendship. The family's past horrors simmered away on the back burner. But by now it's all changed. The family drama is front and centre, which is fine, but the restaurant is almost an afterthought, and that's a shame, especially when good old Uncle Computer has turned it into something out of The Hurt Locker. Even though we're literally on a countdown clock, there's still bags of time for desperately unhurried and rather pointless diversions. We know we're ticking down toward annihilation, yet here we are spending almost a full episode on the teenage friendship crises of Sydney's hairdresser's daughter, whom we've never seen before and will never see again. • 'They wouldn't last a day in my kitchen': what chefs think of The Bear Episode seven looms large in the schedule, the double length, 70-minute-long wedding. Knowing what we know from previous series, I found myself taking a minute to steady the nerves for the inevitable hellfire before pressing play. I don't want to give anything away, but it's all far too peaceful. The Bear has always felt, more than most, like a show deliberately aimed at critics, just like it serves food aimed at writers, not diners (and is, rather ingeniously, being secretly kept afloat by the old beef sandwich business, which is now a serving hatch for delivery drivers). There are the endless cultural references via film clips and the ostentatious soundtrack. At one point Carmy really does wake up on Groundhog Day, complete with flip clock, buzzer alarm and Sonny and Cher. I also can't recall previously seeing so many long dialogue scenes take place over the unignorable sound of a singer singing — invariably REM's Michael Stipe. But just as Carmy won't be compromised in the kitchen, nor will director Christopher Storer and co in the edit suite. • Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews To be clear, I'm not doubting Storer's genius, but I'm not convinced that he realises that even the show's biggest fans might not be invested enough in the characters to have almost all plot stripped away (big clock notwithstanding), to the point where it begins to feel like a midlife reboot of Dawson's Creek. The back story has gobbled up the front story. There are no chips, just salt and vinegar. It's all pain, it's all emotional torture. Poor Carmy is a tortured soul, yes, but by the end, my goodness, so are we. Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix, the best Prime Video TV shows, the best Disney+ shows , the best Apple TV+ shows, the best shows on BBC iPlayer , the best shows on Sky and Now, the best shows on ITVX, the best shows on Channel 4 streaming, the best shows on Paramount+ and our favourite hidden gem TV shows. Don't forget to check our comprehensive TV guide for the latest listings
Irish Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Bear on Disney+: A solid fourth season for chaotic Carmy and crew, but is his heart still in it?
The previous season of Disney foodie drama, The Bear , left a sour taste. After two years of moreish melodrama set amid the world of mid-level Chicago dining, a once bingeable affair had dissolved into a showy gloop of montages and flashbacks. It was as if it was in a holding pattern – trying to reserve a table in the affections of viewers without doing anything useful with it. That's all changed as the show returns for a solid fourth run ( Disney+ , Thursday). We rejoin Jeremy Allen White 's tortured chef Carmy as he recovers from the shock of a mildly negative review in the Chicago Tribune. That a disapproving write-up in a regional American paper could be life or death for an eatery is obviously hugely fanciful in 2025. But The Bear runs with it and keeps a straight face as it does so. The problem, says Carmy's bestie (and sous chef) Sydney ( Ayo Edebiri ), is that the Tribune's food critic was discombobulated by their multiple visits. Carmy's appetite for creative destruction might feed his creative instincts, but it makes a poor recipe for success. 'The Trip ate here three times at three different restaurants,' she says. 'They didn't like the chaos.' READ MORE Such misgivings are shared by The Bear's financial backers, Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) and 'The Computer' (not a computer, and played by Brian Koppelman). They threaten to pull the plug unless the ship is turned around. It is a signal to Carmy to pull out of his funk and focus on the survival of his business. [ Natasha review: Moving insight into brutal personal experience that became a national lightning rod Opens in new window ] The price of entry at The Bear is believing that a restaurant is more than just a restaurant. Carmy reiterates the point in a flashback in which he talks to his brother, Michael ( Jon Bernthal ), whose suicide originally led to Carmy's return to Chicago from his high-flying chef career in New York. '[Running a restaurant] is hard, it's gnarly it's brutal it's specific ... not everyone can do it ... I can do it,' he says during one of several over-written monologues. 'We can make it calm, we can make it delicious.' White is soon to play Bruce Springsteen in what will, in all likelihood, be an Oscar-garlanded biopic. As the anarchic Carmy, he summons all his now familiar mumbly charm. But you wonder if his heart is quite in it. Hollywood beckons and, set against the glories of Tinsel Town, how can a humble Chicago restaurant – even one bedecked with Emmys – possibly compete? The answer is, it can't. For all its renewed enthusiasm, it is hard not to suspect that last orders may beckon for The Bear. The Bear can be streamed on Disney+ from Thursday, June 26th.
