[Spoilers Ahead]
The first season of FX’s The Bear focused on Carmy’s attempts at shaking things up at the place his brother left for him to run, going from discord to compromise to cohesion. Season two kicks off with the hopeful note it left us on – instilling in the team of our favourite Beef of Chicagoland a, er, can-do fervour. They spring into action; on their feet all the time, their first and last thought in a day being the opening of their new restaurant, the Bear. These guys take us along with them, letting us see the silhouettes of their dreams slowly become real. This time for some reason, my diary was next to me. I think it happened to be there not by coincidence, because this watch gave me so many words that I would just write down. When I took a look at what I was writing, it was mostly sounds – which prompted this piece.
The clanging of pans, buzzing sirens, the call of a train, oil bubbling, lots of screaming contests, alarms going off, drywall tearing apart. Constant hammering. Constant fucking hammering.
The jangle of undoing and redoing everything led to auditory overstimulation, often making me pause for breathers. I love that about the Bear -- the choice of keeping everything loud, short and crisp. Decisions are made on instinct, some on Sydney’s and less on Carmy’s business acumen. These guys are not afraid of chaos and don’t have the option to. They just need to be mindful of it not spilling over into the service side of the restaurant – which is not a problem this time because it’s shut. So, they become a bunch of loud take-it-as-it-goes problem solvers, while mouldy, cockroach-infested walls of trouble surround them. They’re constantly taking over each other and there’s always something breaking, going off, triggering alarms. Soon enough I got used to the constant brouhaha, gaining the ability to follow every parallel conversation.
The clamour lends heaviness to the contrasting quieter moments. These breakaway scenes take us out of the little world of the Bear and zoom in on each of the characters and their growth as individuals. They are a reminder to us and them, that it is only a restaurant they’re trying to run after all. The world and their personal lives are much bigger than that. When we see pastry chef Marcus walking around Copenhagen, it’s quieter. He’s absorbing the city, savouring it with his eyes and mouth. I loved that the montage of the city was how it always is with Western cities in cinema – street signs, quick shots of buildings. This sequence that Marcus himself has probably also seen in a film is what he imagines new city montages to look like. When removed from the broil of Chicago, he gets a moment to himself in a place that gives it to him. We see this in his almost meditative interactions with Luca, his mentor. Marcus is making mistakes, his hands re-learning precision, getting the hang of things – and it all feels like growth. One of my favourite scenes in the season is where the two of them are calmly kneading dough and talking about their lives. At some point, Luca says, “You can spend all the time in the world in here, but if you don’t spend enough time out there – you know?” That pretty much encapsulated this season for me. Each of our characters realises that if the Bear is to be a success, they need to also love what’s outside of it. To retract from the place to get the breathing space to discover and re-discover their skill and themselves. We see it with Tina returning to school, Richie staging, and Carmy going to a house party for the first time.
But sounds of tasks that need attending to are present in those moments as well, serving as constant looming reminders. In one scene where Carmy’s sister, Sugar is crying on call, the broken toilet next to her gurgles in company. When Marcus breaks big news to his comatose mother, the EKG goes on in quiet alert. When Carmy and his brother share an emotional scene, it’s not long until his mother yells for him. There’s never enough time to process things and always some scurrying about to do.
Despite the sensory overload every episode brought about, there was also a lovable sense of interaction with the score. Characters sang along, screamed even at some points, and one couldn’t help but join in. I was scream-singing Taylor Swift to an audience of none while bawling my eyes out, but maybe that’s just me. Compare the hopeful clamour of the Bear to the quiet doom in the shows we have been raving about of late, the likes of Succession and White Lotus. These shows have given rise to the term “quiet luxury” -- that it takes the richest to identify the richest. They portray rich problems as compounding silently under reams of paperwork and rich people's whims, with outcomes that affect an uninvolved working class. I may not have the patience or nuance to enjoy a Succession. I simply couldn’t appreciate the fact that there was no one to root for, and I squirmed my laptop shut three episodes in. The Bear doesn’t have a completely novel plot; you’ve seen the usual shows around businesses and start-ups and the personal struggles that come along. But to me it was shameless and loud and gave me people to root for on a platter – and I ate it all up.
