Hi everyone and welcome back to The Bear, which I just heard has been renewed for a third season! Yay! Yay for us! I haven’t posted in awhile, let’s not waste any more time dipping into my recap of The Bear S1:E07 Review after the break!
We open to credits and a radio introduction to a song of Chicago and watch our Beef staff make their ways to work, where patisserier Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is hard at work on yet another batch of doughnuts.
The Original Beef of Chicagoland owner Carmine ‘Carmy’ Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) hustles through the cold while dishwasher Manny (Richard Esteras) looks pensive on the bus and sous chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) just looks late.
*I will tell you that I recognise nothing of Chicago in the trippy, Dream Academy-esque tune setting our stage today, but you know…I’m not FROM Chicago.
Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) reads aloud from an article about Chicago and we get it! You’re in the Windy City! Show us the fancy parking garage and let’s move on!
Whoops, never mind, he’s reading out a restaurant review of The Beef! Hm. They call The Beef ‘elevated’ and ‘elegant’ so they must not have been there when Richard ‘Richie’ Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) was calling everyone jagoffs while taking orders.
Carmy doesn’t want to hear it, we’re 20 minutes from opening! On the other hand, Sydney is trying REALLY HARD to listen right until she realises Ebraheim is reading out a review of her new risotto and braised short rib recipe that she served to a customer (this customer, turns out) right after Carmy specifically told her not to.
Carmy says it’s fine, it’s not weird, it’s good.
Now I want to know: did Sydney know the customer was a critic? One Carmy calls a hack? That’s what Richie calls him too, and where did this risotto come from? Even Richie knows they don’t serve risotto, basically he pushes menu buttons and calls people jagoffs when not selling drugs in the alley. Carmy says Sydney accidentally left it at the critic’s table.
Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) shows up late with her son in tow, Louie (Pedro Henrique) got suspended from school. So today, the day they’re bringing in the new system, Sydney will be teaching Louie how to work in a kitchen.
First. First Sydney has to get Richie tuned up about what’s going on at The Beef. Richie is not good with change. He’s worried that there is somewhere a herd of hipsters about to break down the door of The Beef looking for risotto with braised short ribs, pushing aside the customers he knows, understand and loves so much (the jagoffs).
Sydney defends serving her dish as a way to get more people in the restaurant, but Richie is kind of right, in a way. That review was good for SYDNEY, not necessarily for the sandwich restaurant they actually all work in, and there is no plan to put that dish on the menu at this point.
I get it, Richie, it’s disjointed, I just don’t know if patronizingly calling Sydney ‘boss-lady’ six times in a row is getting across that sentiment exactly.
This is the first day of the To-Go tablet, but there is a glitch in the system and one millionty orders are due in…8 minutes! Carmy yells at Sydney about her dish and then the whole kitchen is geared up to make every sandwich they can. We’re firing 32 chickens at once!
Marcus is STILL messing around with doughnuts!
Oh shit. Sydney is trying to make sense of the orders in her awkward fidgety way and Carmy has had all of that he’s taking today. He tells her to step the eff off and takes over.
I’ve never seen them at odds like this, starting with the risotto dish, I hate it when Mom and Dad fight! I want them both to be right!
Sydney slams into Richie in the kitchen and drops at least one cake because she didn’t say ‘corner’. Richie is loving this day of Sydney’s comeuppance.
Sydney even yells at Tina, who was being kind and compassionate. I hated seeing Tina’s face shut like that. Sydney follows that up by calling Richie a loser because she doesn’t want him touching her veggies for prep and Okay, Syd. Let’s take some deep breaths and calm down. When she says his daughter knows he’s a loser I had to pause.
Let’s just call this a very stressful day. Carmy loses it on everyone, but specifically Marcus, who has finally perfected his doughnut recipe instead of firing the billionty cakes on order right now. Carmy slaps that perfect doughnut out of Marcus’s hand onto the floor.
Sydney maybe accidentally stabs Richie in the butt. After threatening to do exactly that maybe 30 seconds previously.
Sydney quits 5 minutes before opening.
Carmy sees Marcus’s perfect doughnut on the ground where he threw it and leans down, putting a piece in his mouth. It’s a revelation.
So. Is he rejuvenated by this reminder of why he’s in the business or? Or is he completely freaking cracked and it’s all over? We don’t know! We’re out for now.
What a day!!!!! This is the TV equivalent of the movie Uncut Gems, which I hated, the tension racketing up and increasing without relief until the very end. The cacophonous music, the pace, all the yelling, one tiny little stabbing and maybe two quits.
Until next time, y’all.
