The Hidden Life of Pitbulls and Bears (A Review of “The Bear”)

The first season of “The Bear” was great; this season is sublime.

It’s Christmas Eve, and while noise of pots clattering and people shouting at each other fills the background soundtrack, Cousin Michelle Berzatto (Sarah Paulson ) is telling “Cousin” Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) a story about a woman who told her about bears.

COUSIN MICHELLE:

"She was a biologist,
and she studied bears.
And did you know that bears
are kind and-and sensitive
and devoted and also, um,
altruistic and empathetic
and-and very commonly known
to be adept at grieving?”

“COUSIN” RICHIE:

“That all
does check out.
Also, it is important to note
that bears are incredibly,
incredibly aggressive.”


I have a Facebook friend who puzzles over the pictures and videos of nuzzling, cuddling pitbulls (now often called “pitties” by their owners) on the pages of social media. “How did these ferocious killers turn into squishy faced lovers?”

But Pitbulls didn’t “turn into” anything. We got to know them. And we saw that their infamous aggression is devotion that had grown twisted, like a bonsai tree deformed by inept hands. What happens when so much muscle, such sharp teeth, so much capacity for ferocity is joined with so much feeling, so much desire to be loved? We know what can happen when the wrong hands shape all that power, all that feeling. But a pitbull raised on tenderness will look at you with eyes that go straight to the warmest part of your heart. And looking back into those eyes, what we didn’t know about them will break your heart.

There are a lot of Pitbulls among the Berzatto family and friends, but throughout much of season one of “The Bear” we don’t really get to look into their eyes. We see explosive “cousin” Richie in a constant state of screaming agitation, always ready for a fight (and he almost does kill someone.) We watch irritable Line Cook Tina (Liza Colon-Zane) play nasty tricks on ambitious newcomer Sous Chef Sydney (Ayo Edibiri.) All that we know about Michael “Mikey” Berzatto, Carmen’s brother (John Bernthal) is that he was a magnetic personality who, possibly due to his addiction to painkillers, left his restaurant “The Original Beef of Chicagoland” in ruins, killed himself, and bequeathed the mess to Carmy (Jeremy Allen White.) The volatile, impossible-to-please alcoholic mother Donna Berzatto (Jamie Lee Curtis) doesn’t appear at all in the first season, but we know there’s something toxic there, because Carmy has come back from Copenhagen without getting in touch with her. When his sister Sugar, who is always trying to make it better, urges him to see her, he wordlessly communicates how impossible that feels. At this point, we don’t know what the problem is; we find out in the second season, which is now streaming on Hulu.

Carmy himself isn’t overtly combustible like Richie, but we sense there’s a lot being tamped down, and perhaps about to boil over. In the original script by Chris Storer his sister Natalie (“Sugar”) (Abby Elliott) alludes to his punching someone at the restaurant he’d been working at, and later in the episode he throws a pot of gravy—sauce to non-Italians—against the wall. In the final version that we see, however, it’s just a can of Marzano tomatoes that he throws in the trash (without even looking at the contents, which turns out to be ironic.) Storer apparently made the (wise) decision to let Carmy’s inner struggle build up until he finally melts down in the penultimate episode of the first season. Until then, he lives on Tums and his turmoil is mostly externalized for the viewer in the drama of getting the restaurant and its diverse team cleaned up and in shape. No surprise that lots of reviewers praised The Bear as a realistic look into the stress and chaos of the restaurant business. “You may never get a more extraordinary glimpse inside a restaurant kitchen than this” is the headline of a fairly representative review.

The show always was much more than that. In flashbacks like the one below (“Mikey Tells A Story”) we saw how much Mikey’s exuberance and confidence, while overshadowing pretty much everyone else in the room, was adored by his more reserved brother and sister, who expertly put together the braciole while Mikey and Rich entertain. (Watching this scene again after learning more about the family in the second season, I imagine Mikey was also an antidote to their mother’s depression. What Carmy didn’t know at the time was that Mikey was wrestling with his own.)

At the point where season one begins, however, the pleasures of sibling get-togethers is a thing of the past. Carmy—who was hurt and angry when his brother didn’t want to include him in running The Beef or creating a new restaurant—had been without contact with Mikey for a long while, as he (Carmy) pursued a career as a chef. Inheriting the restaurant has brought him home—but no longer integrated in the family, and seemingly detached from Mikey’s death too. (He didn’t go to the funeral, and when Sydney, who applies to work at the restaurant, asks what accomplished Carmen “is doing here”—at The Beef—he tersely replies: “making sandwiches.”) That’s just on the surface, though—he’s not only grieving over his brother throughout the season, trying to keep him alive through his frenetic attempt to revamp the restaurant, but he’s still haunted by what he experienced as Mikey’s rejection; he joins Al-Anon in part in order to figure out who his brother was in those last years. (See second clip below: “Carmy’s 7-Minute Monologue”)

I’m not sure why more reviewers didn’t “get” how much the show is about what a long, ferocious tail grief has, particularly when that grief is over a beloved person who has hurt you and from whom you’ve become estranged. Maybe the hectic pace of the first season and the cleverness of the writing was as diverting to those reviewers who saw it as a “show about running a restaurant” as doing the running was to Carmy himself. But grief always catches up with you. Carmy left…time got away from him…and then his brother died. How to “process” that? By the end of the season, he’s only just beginning. He has his own belated meltdown and explosion, finally reads that good-by note from Mikey—“I love you. Let it rip”—starts to make that family spaghetti recipe that he’d bumped from the menu at the beginning of the season, and…well, if you’ve seen the show you know, and if you haven’t, I’m not going to tell you.

I loved the first season of The Bear, and my own pittie had to lick the tears off my face when it ended. But, as if in response to those critics who, while praising it lavishly, saw it only as a very smartly written show about the inner workings of a restaurant, the second season goes somewhere else. There are still the scenes of behind-the-scenes restaurant chaos, but the writers seem to have taken the advice of the book that Sydney’s father gives her and that she carries around for months: Leading With Your Heart. I had to ask my husband why Coach K (Krzyzewski), who wrote the book about his “Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business and Life,” would figure so prominently in the show. He tried not to make me feel like an idiot about sports greats. And because I’m a compulsive researcher, I actually read a few pages of the book, and about how he turned a losing team around by listening rather than bullying, getting to know every member of the team intimately, and keeping his composure when things seemed to be falling apart.

“Emotion doesn’t necessarily have to be shown with your fist pumping,” Coach K writes. There’s a “different kind of heart—a sturdy heart, an unwavering heart,” that’s for others to “grab ahold of” when a tornado is coming. But different people manifest that sturdiness in different ways, and “a true leader will give people the freedom to show the heart they possess” through the building of relationships: “Because if a team is a real family, its members will want to show you their hearts.” (pp. 31-32, Leading With Your Heart).

That’s the kind of team that gets created in season two. And, although when we leave Carmy in the last episode he hasn’t recognized it (he believes he’s failed because he lost focus, forgot to call the fridge guy, and got stuck in the walk-in during the most hectic time of “friends and family night”), he’s the one who has been most responsible for giving the others the freedom “to show the heart they possess.” It’s Carmy who sends Marcus (Lionel Boyce) to Copenhagen to study with Luca (Will Poulter) the same pastry chef who taught him, Carmy who sends Richie to “stage” for the elegant Ever restaurant, where he learns the pleasures of caring for others (and himself) through restraint and respect, and in a wonderful conversation with the owner (Chef Terry, a cameo played by Olivia Coleman ) realizes he can start over. It’s Carmy who sends Tina to culinary school (equipped with his own knife), where she shines. And ironically, it’s Carmy’s accidentally locking himself into the walk-in that forces Sydney—with Richie’s help—to take over, restoring the confidence that has been wavering all season and her own very sturdy heart. Carmy can’t see that—not yet. But—excuse the overworked cliche— he’s a work in progress.

If season one portrays the characters’ attempts to deny grief and loss (not just of people, but of confidence and hope) by shutting down, running away, keeping their bruises hidden to each other, season two is about each character’s opening up—to each other and to us. (And of course—not to strain the metaphor—they open up a new restaurant too.) There’s so much we don’t know during season one that we discover in season two, because we get to know all the main characters more intimately, and It’s all done with such tenderness! You can see it in the lovely, unhurried close-ups, which make every pore and scar seem beautiful (and these are mostly not symmetrical, conventionally beautiful faces.)

Most significantly—but also most problematically for the character—Carmy opens up too, to the possibility of personal happiness with a girlfriend. (Molly Gordon as Claire) And then, because he’s still Carmy, he torments himself over saying some bitter, self-hating words about how no amount of personal happiness is worth the misery he’s feeling, and is sure he may have ruined it all. It’s not clear whether or not he has (I tend to think he hasn’t, because Claire is such a perfect girlfriend.) But what is clear is that like his mother (Richie even calls him Donna as he berates him through the door of the walk-in) he’s addicted to self-flagellation, even as he’s created such glorious opportunities (and beautiful food) for those who love him, he can’t enjoy it. There’s still some unforgiving God waving a finger. And—oh, did I identify with this!—when he’s happy he’s always looking for that other shoe to drop. When it does, it just proves to him how fucked up he is.

Sydney realized that the best part of the day was when she made that luscious omelette ( boursin, chives, sour cream and onion potato chips, and lots of butter) for Sugar. Richie learned that the joy of making an exquisite dish comes from showing people you care enough to put the time and effort in in to peel a mushroom. Can Carmy exorcise the demons in him to allow himself to experience that joy? We don’t know; it’s kind of a cliffhanger ending, even though he’s being freed from the walk-in fridge.

Maybe what he needs to learn is what we—the viewers—find out in an hour-long episode about the most horrendous family dinner you’ll ever see or are likely to see (even though I’m sure there will be twinges of non-fictional recognition, particularly if you’re Jewish or Italian.) I’m not going to go into all the details that reveal why Carmen, Natalie and Michael find it so difficult to be happy with themselves, except to say that perhaps the worst burden a child can grow up with is being constantly reminded of your inability to save those you love and depend on the most. They all try, but their mother’s needs are a mass of contradictions and a bottomless tunnel that twists and turns out of reach nomatter what they do. Leave her alone and she feels unappreciated; ask if she’s okay and she goes into a fury (“What am I, a child?” “Are you asking anyone else if they’re ok?”) It’s an episode that’s painful to watch. But in a moment of escape from the screaming and recriminations, Mikey and Carmy are alone together (in search of saltines for Rich’s wife, who’s pregnant and nauseous) and one wishes that somehow Carmy had been able to take into himself what is clearly his brother’s love—to take that love into his heart and keep it there.

MIKEY: Saltines? You're kinda acting like
a saltine, you know that?
Why? Why?
What's going on with you?
I know there's something.
Just tell me. Come on, Carm,
I'm right here.
What's going on?
I gotta drag it outta you?

CARM:-I just...
I just, I thought,I thought when I was back,
I could work with you, alright?
At the spot.
We could talk about the shop, 'cause I've been
learning a lot of shit,
and, I don't know, I feel like I got some ideas.

MIKE: Yeah, but... (stammers)
The place is no good, Carmy.
It's-it's a fucking nightmare.
-Like, trust me, I'm doing you a favor.
And I'd love to hear your ideas.
I would. I-I-I wanna hear
about you, I do.

CARM: Also I don't need
you talking to Claire
and acting all nice if you
don't actually give a fuck.
You know?

MIKEY: Wh-what?
What are you talking about
I-I don't give a fuck?
Why would you say that to me?
Carmy, I give like a... I give like a huge fuck.

CARM-Yeah?

MIKEY-Yeah. fuck, yeah. I mean, I give... I-I...
I give like the biggest fuck. Alright?

CARMY; Okay.
I um, I got you... I got, uh, it's stupid.
I got you...Actually, I got you something.
-Can I give it to you?

MIKEY-What, you got me a present?

CARMY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I got you a present.
Just one second.

MIKEY: Alright.
Wait, before I, uh... why don't you give me, like,
like, three things about Copenhagen, man?
Anything.

CARM: It's the most beautiful place
I've ever seen.

MIKEY: Yeah.

CARM: Uh... I slept on a boat.
And, uh... I fed an invisible cat.

MIKEY: Hmm. Well, Carm...that's a home run. Out of the park.
Alright, go ahead.
Go ahead, go ahead.
What is this?
Oh, Carmy, that's a...

CARM: It's like, it's like
a little bit rough,
but I don't know, it's something--

MIKEY No, man, that's... It's beautiful. That's...
That's perfect.

CARM: Yeah, Mike, we could, um... We could do this, you know.

MIKE: Yeah.

-CARMY: Yeah.

MIKEY: Yeah, let it rip.

CARM: Yeah, let it rip.

MIKEY: Yeah, Carm.

It’s a sketch of the restaurant Carmy hopes he and Michael will run together. Later, we see it framed, hanging on the wall of The Beef.

Donna calls out and Carmy leaves the pantry with the saltines. What he doesn’t see is Mikey, alone, leaning against the wall of the pantry, crying.