The Bear

Rated TV-MA • Hulu

The restaurant dramedy The Bear has been asking the same question since its lauded first season debuted in 2022: Can love and ambition coexist? Season 3 drives the same question deeper with yet more masterful cinematography and stunning performances—and also with many more F-bombs than an eatery’s kitchen has forks.

The Bear follows chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and his crew of misfits-turned-gourmands as they transform a gritty family sandwich shop once called The Beef into a chic restaurant. The Beef becomes The Bear, and the inflexible line cooks, bakers, and salespeople become pastry chefs, maître d’s, and gastronomic innovators.

Earlier seasons drew critical acclaim for the close-quarters Berzatto family drama that leaked into the kitchen. Watching them hurt so bad, you had to laugh. Listening to their razor-sharp dialogue was so funny you had to cry.

In last season’s heart-wrenching finale, Carmy accidentally gets locked in the fridge, missing The Bear’s opening night. His co-chef Sydney (Ayo Edibiri) and the rest of the team forge on without him and succeed.

Season 3 commences in the icy aftermath of the diatribe Carmy delivers from the locked fridge. In subsequent days, the restaurant is packed. But it’s also bound by Carmy’s new list of frantic “nonnegotiables,” which he hopes will earn it a Michelin star. The list includes one particularly superhuman requirement: The staff must change the menu every day. This is too much pressure for the nascent Bear to bear. Yet the crew persists, yelling, “Doors! Hands! Fire duck! Fire cavatappi!” Wrapped up in the delicious tension and hoping The Bear succeeds, the viewer forgets to breathe. The Bear delivers consistently gorgeous visuals of food, people, and Chicago sites. All this beauty contrasts with the notoriously stressful and brutal restaurant industry.

In its second season, The Bear attracted major actors to minor roles (e.g., Molly Ringwald as an Al-Anon leader, Sarah Paulson as Carmy’s cousin, Bob Odenkirk as a family friend, Olivia Coleman as a chef who teaches Carmy’s staff). In the latest season, Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her performance as Carmy’s narcissistic mother. In the episode “Ice Chips,” she supports her daughter and The Bear co-owner Natalie (Abby Elliott) through labor. The Berzattos are broken, but Season 3 and “Ice Chips” in particular show that even broken people need each other and can experience moments of healing. The Season 3 addition of John Cena as a childhood friend of the Berzattos, however, falls flat.

The Bear has always been a show as well-crafted and fresh as the food Carmy and Sydney want to make. But more than the others, Season 3 takes its time. It lingers with characters—a slowdown that should not be confused with sloppiness. We travel back in time to see line cook Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) first stumble into The Beef after a fruitless job search. We linger in the hospital delivery room with Natalie for a full episode while she wrangles a traumatic past. We sit with pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) as he laments his mother’s death. Season 3 even tiptoes the line between documentary and drama by including actual chefs among Carmy’s colleagues. In the world of restaurateurs, every second counts. In defiance of this, The Bear says people count more than time.