One day while we were both at home, my brother told me he had recently watched this YouTube video on productivity. And in the video, it was said that every idea has a “shelf life”. The longer you keep it on the shelf, the further away it’ll get from your head and eventually it’ll just get lost in the shuffle.
That almost happened with this article. I got the idea about three weeks ago after finishing season 3 of The Bear, but it has been sitting here in my drafts with an empty text box the whole time.
I woke up today and knew that it was the day to finish this article. The first one on this website about a TV Show. And let me tell you, it is very worthy of that honor. There are some TV shows that stay with you, and “The Bear” is and will be that show for a lot of people, including myself.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
I think what gravitated me to this show so much was the emphasis on the importance of a communal aspect with food. Food saved Tina’s life when she needed a job, it kept Marcus going after the tragic loss of his mom and for Richie when he was going through his breakup + mid-life crisis. It brings people together no matter the situation.
Everything about this show catches the eye. The way it’s filmed, the acting & storyline are all incredible. Now I’m not a film or tv critic, but once I watched this I knew I had to write about it. There are a few shows in my lifetime that have made me say “wow” after watching.
Snowfall, The Wire, Sopranos, Power, Severance & The Bear are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head.
In this article, I want to focus on two episodes specifically.
Season 2, Episode 7: “Forks”
Season 3, Episode 1: “Tomorrow”
Without further ado, let’s get into it.
“Forks”
I mean, what an incredible episode of television. This episode follows Richie as he is sent to learn about the luxury restaurant business at Ever, where Carmy learned how to be a chef from Ever’s owner, Chef Terry.
At first Richie is treating this like some sort of punishment, not realizing that he is actually getting sent to learn under Chef Terry because Carmy believes in him (which we don’t find out until later). He has to get to the restaurant every day at 6 in the morning to shine forks, and this drives him crazy. He starts feeling like he’s losing his sense of purpose (callback to the first episode of season 2 where he asked Carmy “do you think we have a purpose?” in the basement of what was formerly known as “The Beef”).
During this whole ordeal of working at Ever, Richie is also dealing with his divorce and now having to co-parent their daughter. One day at work he gets on the phone with his ex-wife Tiff, and tells her that he was able to get three Taylor Swift tickets for the three of them to go. Meanwhile, she is on the other side of the phone crying because the purpose of the call was to tell Richie that she is getting married, and she knew that the news would break him.
And this is where the episode takes a turn. Richie, who’s 45 years old and divorced, has a choice. Either he lets this tear him down, or he finds a way to keep pushing and take something of value from his experience at “Ever”.
Immediately after that phone call, Richie walks back into work and he sees this table, who have been on the waitlist to eat there for years, get their meal fully comped. And he sees how that small gesture, makes them feel. This is a callback to earlier in the episode when Garrett (his supervisor) said that he dedicated his life to serving people after overcoming alcoholism.
This is a massive turning point in the episode, as Richie decides to give his all to this job. He gets to work early and sees that there is a suit waiting for him instead of forks ready to be polished. Garrett tells him that he’s going to be trailing him today. Later in the scene, Richie overhears a family saying that they’re leaving Chicago the next morning and they didn’t try deep dish pizza yet.
He goes and get the pizza himself and then requests to deliver the dish to the table. And this is where he gets the feeling of fulfillment in the service industry, just like Garrett says he dedicated his life to serving people after getting sober. He found his purpose that he was talking about in the first episode of this season.
The lesson I got from this episode is that life is whatever you make it. Richie was facing all sorts of obstacles and still prevailed. And to think that this show is “all about a restaurant”. It’s a lot more than that.
“Tommorow”
This episode is just special man. My brother told me after watching this, that this is his favorite episode of TV he’s ever seen.
At the end of season two, Carmy faces the confrontation that he is so deathly afraid of with both Richie and (unbeknownst to him) his girlfriend Claire. And the consequences of those two conversations end up being two very fractured relationships between Carmy and the both of them.
Let’s start with the music in this episode. The song used in the background throughout the whole 36 minutes of the episode is “Together” by Nine Inch Nails. This specific song contains a calming instrumental that will play a pivotal role in the episode.
Carmy has grown up in a life that surrounds him with chaos. Whether it is at home with his dysfunctional family, at his brother’s restaurant or when he’s learning to be a Chef at Ever, he’s always in a state of chaos. But no matter what, on the outside, he seems to have a calm focused demeanor.
When Chef David Fields (played by Joel McHale) is constantly bullying and humiliating him, Carmy ignores all of it and simply says, “yes chef” while going about his business. That guy was the driving force to make Carmy go insane. Every change he got he would put him down or try to make him feel as small as possible.
And this would bother Carmy for years and years, as shown later in the season. This man literally walked by Carmy while he was working and told him “f**k you” unprompted out of nowhere. That’s what he had to deal with at work constantly, and it changed the way he interacted with others in the kitchen.
And Chef Terry (played by Olivia Colman) saw that when he was talking to Chef Luca (played by Will Poulter). The difference is that she didn’t egg him on with this behavior, she immediately put a stop to it. Showing that the world of luxury dining can work without toxicity or chaos in the kitchen. Which was news to Carmy because he had never seen anything different.
I think in Carmy’s mind, he was trying to use his work as an escape. But in reality, the kitchen is just where his issues went to be intensified. His chase of the idea of “perfection” made him go nearly insane. It broke relationships with the people he loved the most (Claire & Richie) and it made him feel like he wasn’t even deserving of love.
And in this episode you slowly see these problems develop over time throughout the flashbacks. The flashbacks are so important to the context of both the show and the character of Carmy, because they show the things that were glossed over in previous seasons. Like Carmy originally leaving Chicago to pursue his dream or the phone call when Natalie told him that his brother had passed away.
This episode really made me think of a deeper topic that I think about quite often.
What is more important in your life? The journey or the destination?
As human beings we are all working towards a goal, whether it may be a personal goal or career goal, we are all working towards something. In this episode you see what Carmy had to go through to become this masterful chef and to have his own restaurant.
He got what he was always dreaming and working for, but at what cost? He drove himself crazy trying to accomplish his goals, and it ended up giving him permanent scars, sort of like the ones showed on his hands in the beginning of the episode.
I think that the journey is way more important than the destination. Because life will one day come to an end, and that’s guaranteed. So you can’t take your eventual goal or “destination” with you to the grave, you’ll be left with nothing at the end.
You can’t sacrifice all of your true friendships and relationships to get to your goal, because that goal will destroy you. And that’s what happened with Carmy.
My favorite part of this whole episode is when Carmy sends his brother a picture of plant while he was in Copenhagen. And Mikey shows Tina, who we later find out had just met him 10 minutes before that, and when she asks what the picture is he has no idea. He’s just proud to show off his brother.
Sometimes in life that’s all you need. Just some brotherly love.
Until next time, this is YSN, signing out.