The Bear Offers Apologies—and an Uncertain Path Forward

But there are diminishing returns elsewhere. The big Berzatto episode doesn’t earn its run time—an hour and nine minutes!—and it fails to capture the chaos magic that made “Fishes” so unique. The cameos are too fast and frequent to mean much, and, while I have no investment in the comedy vs. drama debate that perennially hangs over this show, it was an episode that felt like it needed to be meaningfully funnier to really work as a companion piece to its grim ancestor. And it highlights another stubborn problem: The show doesn’t really know what to do with Curtis’ gargantuan performance as Donna, the alcoholic, verbally abusive matriarch of the Berzatto clan. Her debut performance in “Fishes” is a genuine spectacle, a dark aria that’s hard to forget. But, despite bringing her back on a redemption tour for an episode each of these past two seasons, the camera is oddly ungenerous to her. Storer continues to shoot her in a way that almost fetishizes her wrinkles, her pancake makeup, her scarifying physicality. Bob Odenkirk doesn’t look like that, nor Oliver Platt, nor even Rob Reiner. The show is so insistent on exploring the crevasses of Curtis’ face, it makes you think it’s searching for an insight. I’m not sure it has one.

Of all the conspicuously self-conscious TV shows, I think The Bear might ultimately have the most in common with Ted Lasso. Both shows are about idiosyncratic geniuses with absent fathers who infect the people who surround them with their contagious spirit (Ted’s is positive, while Carmy’s, obviously, is negative); both are about ragtag fellowships that transform into chosen family; both are about lives lived under intense pressure. And both are relentlessly self-aware and self-referential. But, in both cases, rather than a postmodern chill, the show’s spiraling self-reflexivity produces, instead, an excess of sentimentality.

This isn’t new. In fact, The Bear’s near-constant emotional availability is one of its hallmarks and, occasionally, a great strength. Think about Richie screaming, “I fucking love you,” at Carmy through a locked refrigerator door, or how frequently friends— especially male friends—have to loudly and explicitly affirm their friendship to each other, or the beaming smile on Tina’s (Liza Colón-Zayas) face when we see her finally find a home at Mikey’s Original Beef in last season’s flashback episode. People don’t yell at each other like this, they don’t crank the Taylor Swift that loud on the car stereo, if their hearts aren’t filled to bursting.

But this season, the show’s emotions feel pushy. One character in seemingly every conversation has a paradigm-shifting epiphany, tells or realizes a long-hidden truth. Carmy has decided to become open to those he loves by saying “I’m sorry” to all of them. It shouldn’t be enough, to simply say that, but, over and over, we see the proof that Carmy’s apology tour is working. Even with the hardest cases—with Claire, with Donna—the sorrys thaw the ice. Storer and Calo seem to think that they, too, can be absolved of their missteps with enough emotional effort.