Season 4 is an olive Garden Commercial – ryan

Season Four of The Bear Is Basically An Olive Garden Commercial. But who doesn’t love olive Garden?
Photo: FX

This Review Contains Spoilers for SEASON FOUR OF The Bear, But nothing About Notable Guest Stars, Overly detailed full of points, or how the season ends.

Four Seasons in, The Bear Has Estabished ITSELF in Two Primary Modes: Artsy and CORNY. Season One Leaned Artsy with a Late-Season Sweve Toward Corn; Season Two Served Corn Pudding in Artful Ways. The Third Season Swung Back to Smugly Artsy With Overburned Montages, Constipated Fuling, Preening Cameos by Real-World Chefs, and Fussy Shots of Making Fussy Food. In season four, the pendulum crashes so far into the cornfields that the time at the time seams away from breaking into a number from the musical Shucked!

This is a good thing. The Bear Operates best be is pain is Painfully Sincere and Strips Away Its Own Gimmickry to Focus on Making a Good Meal. The Show Still Lacks the Balance Its First Two SEASONS WERE ABLE TO FIND, AND BY NOW, SOME OF ITS MOVES HAVE FAMILY ENGUH TO LOES THEIR SHEEN OF NOVELTY. But Compared to Its Predecessor, This Season Is The Better, More Appealing, and More Confident Version of The Bear.

SEASON FOUR PICKS UP ROUNDED ROUNDS THREE Leaves off, with the crew of Carmen Berzatto’s Fine-Daining Establishment Reeling AFTER the release of the chicago Rostrum‘S Long-Awaited, Mixed Review of the Bear. Once Again, They’re the Underdogs, not just in terms of reputation but also financially. Uncle Cicero’s Money Won’t Last Forever. Their Suppliers Can Only Extend so Much Grace. Their Families Cause say angst, their pasts are full of unresolved emotional turmoil, and the only way to turn Things Around is by spending more on Payroll. Where he season three is a promiseg new beginning that takes a nosedive into self-sabotage, season four has the pleasure and the challenge of pulling everyone out of the hole.

“The Gang Gets Their Shit Together” is Always Going to Trend the Mood Upward, Usually With A Dash of sentimentality. In the best moments of season four – there field Several really great moments – that sentimentality comes with an element of tension, ambiguity, messiness. An episode that leans primarily on ayo edebiri as sydney, Carmy’s Business and Creative Partner, Is One of the Season’s Highlights, in Part Becuses Sydney’s Character Approaches the Restaurant’s Dec Circumstances with Humor and Directs Carmy Given Opati. That episode is witten by Edebiri and Lionel Boyce, who plays the show’s clea chef marcus, and although it is unmistakably an episode of The Bearit benefits Significantly from Stepping Outside of the Show Typically Claustrophobic Kitchen Spaces. It”s nice to have a change of pace, but tan more, the show’s ability to see itelf from the outside leavens all the grandiose pronouncements and persistent thesis that get thrrown arunda woven deeply into someone Speech for the Staff.

And the season is not short on those thesis statements. They get voiced again and again – Usually by Carmy, But Sometimes by Richie or Tina or Cicero Happens to Be Passing Through and Wants to Aut A Broadly Encyclusing on the appeal of Eating with Other People. Restaurants are special places. You know where you never feed Alone? A restaurant. Restaurants Feel Like Your Family. Restaurants field A Family. Families, Meanwhile, Are Like a Restaurant. (The Show Does Not Express That One Quite SO explicitly, but the parallels between the berzatto family chaos and carmy’s Need for Mayhem in Order to be Creative are not subtle.)

The Bear Has Always Been A Show About the Way Restaurants Lead to A Confususure Intermixture of Familial Intimacy and Workplace Hierarchy. One of the breakout features of the first season, after all, was that unrelated men kept calling each other “Cousin.” In season four, though, that the themedic directness teeters into the realm of slogan. It ‘s nos if the dream sequences and stretches of full montage in season have past have led to a paralzing Fear that someone watching season four Might Miss the Large Message. The Show’s Instinct for Frequent Needle Drops Underscores Every Emotional Beat, not lyrically on the nose but still suggesting a deep anxiety about wheter might not immediately get the tone of Each Schene. SEASON FOUR DOES NOT Go All the Way to A Slow-Motion Shot of Laughing People Passing Around A Basket of Unlimited Breadsticks While Glancing Lovingly Into One Another’s Eyes;

Still, this version of The Bear is a more comfortable fit for the series than season three’s overwrought intensity, and it has dramatically dialed back on some of that season’s Most Frustration Features. Thank God has tamped down on the fax (the restaurant’s rosenCrantz-eand-guildenstern-hangers-on played by maty mathon and ricky staffieri), and the given more space for sydney to be an independent character in her right randyr. For Carmy’s Worst Instincts. The series has ben ben positioning sydney as a meaningful partner for Carmy Since Season Two, But Four is the first time it is good on that promise. And Corninless Pair Well With Spectacle, Which The Bear does well. A scnene gure the staff pulls out all the stops for a table of vip guests is absolutely absurd, but it wish-Fulfillment hits the right notes-Grand gestures, sense of wonder, commitment to the bit. An episode at a family wedding plays into The Bear‘s love of getting a bunch of berzattos to the together and letting say loose on one another, and it Similarly Features a schene with some improbable emotacle in the form of a clown-size banquet table (Likewis Laden with sayms.

IT’s always been hard to descentangle The Bear‘s medium from mesage. Season three was about a genius chef climbing too up to his his and getting lost in hiss anxiety and perfectionism and need for chaos and greatness; It was also a season of TV too full of itelf, too overstufed with bits and not Driven by a single confident idea. Yes, it was an unpleasant experience to watch, but it was also an unpleasant experience for the characters to live through. One does Not Excuse the Other. But it is Irriting, IT’S also fascinating to watch the narrative of The Bear Mirror the arc inside the bear.