My cousin (“Cousin!”) texted me in 2022: “have u heard about this beef stand show??” Like the Berzattos, we’re a big beef family. I’d moved back to be closer to them shortly after college — shortly after dorm nights binging "Shameless" and developing a healthy appreciation for Jeremy Allen White’s upper arms. Suffice to say, I was all in.
For a while, that excitement remained. “The Bear” was fun to dip into: intense, entertaining, occasionally nostalgic. Unlike "Shameless," it was actually filmed here and seeing our city in the zeitgeist felt good. But I stopped watching at the start of season three. A yearslong romance gone finally wrong with a “Bear” production assistant might have had something to do with it.
The last time I saw the PA, we watched the 2023 Emmys together — “The Bear” swept comedy. To me, the categorization was an obvious scam (so as not to face off against “Succession”). We squabbled about it. He said awards shows don’t matter. In the morning we broke up. Not about that. It turns out we had nothing in common besides being from Chicago.
I decided “The Bear” was like that too.
But, you know … even haters get FOMO. Last week, after years of protest, I finally binged seasons three and four. On the beef scale, three was dry, caught up in the crippling neuroses of Chef Carmy (as played by a tense-as-ever White). “Maybe try to be less miserable first,” Chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) tells him in the season four premiere. Thankfully, he does try even if the season veers hard into cheesesteak territory.
I had to pause “Bears,” aka the wedding episode, a few times just to take a break from the extended clan’s lovey-dovey dogpile. What can I say? I’m a cold-blooded Midwesterner. I will, however, cop to a well-utilized Brie Larson.
Meanwhile, The Bear — the restaurant — continues to struggle. In the penultimate episode, “Tonnato,” a solution emerges to franchise the establishment’s oft-overlooked beef window. The beef stand is what I signed up for as a “Bear” viewer all those years ago. Now, it’s the beef stand that will save The Bear. Hell yeah. Will Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) lose it trying to oversee a northwest suburban drive-thru? Will quality decline à la Portillo’s going public?
In the finale, bigger questions emerge. Namely, what will happen to Carmy and what is The Bear without him? That’s right, River North’s resident sad boy is taking off to find himself. I for one am ready to see him go — I’ve outgrown brooding Chicago men.
In season five, I hope Sydney feels the same way.
