Season 3 of “The Bear,” available now on Hulu, is a volcano of self-loathing. Appropriately for a show set in Chicago, “The Bear” tends to move in a loop, revisiting the past and bringing old wounds into the present day aboard a clanging, wailing beast. This go-round makes all the local stops: enchanting food porn, bitter screaming matches, elegant monologues, small moments where the audience can learn culinary techniques, a character’s back story that boils down to “they were poor and needed a job.” Doors open on the right at repressed rage.
When we last saw our Bear pals, the friends-and-family preview night for their revamped restaurant had collapsed because Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) locked himself in the walk-in fridge — but really because of the fragility and volatility of the clique at large, and the fact that the characters mostly hate their friends and families. Everyone yelled even more than usual, with Carmy and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) whipping themselves into hysteria through the fridge door, and Carmy and Claire (Molly Gordon) breaking up. Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) was left with all of the responsibility but none of the authority. The action of this season begins moments later, a blue cloud of dejection hanging over everyone.
I used to think of “The Bear” as claustrophobic, but now I think it’s claustrophilic: This show loves tight spaces, the pressures of close quarters. Its hugs are all rib-cracking, suffocating, too much. Even dermatologists don’t require such detailed examinations of every mole and pore on people’s cheeks.
The show often name-drops actual restaurants, and many real chefs appear as themselves. (This season, they appear a bit too much: Save it for the endless mutual appreciation societies on “Top Chef.”) The omnipresent jargon, the if-you-know-you-know details and the fly-on-the-wall style give everything a rush of legitimacy — it may not be not true, but it’s real. Or wait: maybe not real, but true.
That veracity is tempered by the show’s appetite for contrivance. Barnburner monologues give way to dialogue so repetitive it might as well be a Meisner exercise. Comic relief becomes sitcom buffoonery from a dumber planet. The show’s high-profile cameos can yank you out of the action and make you think “ooo, Jamie Lee Curtis” and not just “ooo, dysfunctional Christmas.”
Characters on “The Bear” struggle to express themselves and struggle to be understood, so they repeat everything, over and over, louder and louder. What grates is when the show itself does this, too, always adding another line for good measure — just to make extra sure you definitely, 100 percent got what it was going for. In one scene at the end of this season, Carmy and Luca (Will Poulter), Carmy’s old chef pal, reminisce about how many peas they shucked for a certain dish while working together. Sydney says it sounds like “a trauma dish.”
“It’s a big-time trauma dish,” Luca chuckles. “The messed up thing is Carmy made a dessert version.”
“He kinda repurposed your trauma, then, I guess,” Sydney says.
“It’s all we can do, right?” Luca says.
We know! We know! Oh my god, “The Bear,” we know! The premise of the show is repurposing trauma into a dish!
“The Bear” has an arms-length relationship to sex and romance, and that was one of its zestiest calling cards in Season 1: plenty of knifing, but no forking or spooning. The attempts to graft Claire into the mix were laughable in Season 2 — did her character get lost on her way to “Chicago Med”? — and Season 3’s insistence on her mesmerizing excellence feels forced and phony.
Luckily she is less present this time, and Carmy is such a piney guy that additional pining doesn’t ruin anything. The show’s highs remain incredibly, dazzlingly high, and its ability to overwhelm you is thrilling — it’s the front car of the roller coaster for 10 episodes.
