Five minutes into the pilot, chaos, rage, and misery, I backed out. Understandable. Too much going on — and I already had trouble reading subtitles on my k-dramas. I’m old.
But last week, I tuned back in, fully devoted to binging all three seasons. I loved the first one, featuring mostly unknown character actors with nothing and everything to prove, finding their groove together first before veering off into their own hinterland (seasons two and three).
Tiresome stunt casting followed “The Bear’s” hype, as it always does, in subsequent seasons that played more as character developments, navel-gazing circle jerk odes to the un-ironic cool kids star-fucking haute cuisine, and nods to actual restaurant workers than anything worthy of a fictionalized dramedy.
I would’ve balked if it weren’t for “Fishes,” a taut, harrowing sixth episode from the second season, starring Jamie Lee Curtis as Mommy Dearest Donna Berzatto and Bob Odenkirk as “Uncle” Lee “Asshole” Lane. That is a stand-alone episode worthy of a Broadway treatment, and reason enough to stay away from the holiday table, thank you very much.
Otherwise, I started to feel cringe for several of the forced-down-my-throat characters, including Sydney, Claire Bear, and the Fak brothers (John Cena again, really?), and real resentment toward Chef Carmen “The Bear” for treating his family and friends like shit — just to get back at Chef David Fields (the wonderful Joel McHale).
A new menu every day without infrastructure or support? Fuck you.
A major pet peeve of mine is watching some rom-com chick take over a potentially great story, derailing momentum, focus, purpose, altruistic interest.
It happened in “Pearl Harbor” and “Almost Famous,” and it’s happening in “The Bear,” after the pilot season, with the interference of Claire, the resident manic pixie dream girl.
Barf.
She seems to have all the time in the world to interrupt Carmen when he’s in the middle of reopening his dream restaurant, holding other people’s lives on the line. And she doesn’t hesitate to insert herself uselessly in crucial scenarios, blithering on like a bad Hallmark card.
Carmen locks himself in the walk-in freezer on opening night. Claire finds out and rushes over to — what exactly? Not get him out, no, of course not. That would be helpful. No, she’s leaning in to tearfully listen to him rant out of frustration and insanity, taking everything he says personally about focusing more on his restaurant, before poignantly walking away.
The entire time I’m screaming at the TV, “Somebody get the man out of there!”
In the third season, I’m forced to watch the Fak brothers act up and be unfunny, half the time wasted on Chef Carmen pining away for Claire and taking it out on his already shaky staff, burying the Richie lead — a criminal act in my opinion, unconvincing pill Sydney (see Margaret Jordan, who nearly ruined HBO’s “The Newsroom”) trying to be this deep, angsty heroine, with lots of uncomfortable close-ups of a withered old Jamie Lee Curtis and her make-believe, needy, annoying, whiny daughter.
I don’t care anymore.
Moving on to “Daily Dose of Sunshine” on Netflix. Maybe they can heal my ancient depression and zero will to survive.