Welcome back to The Bear season two recaps, where we’ve got a new purpose, a new look coming and somehow even a new Richie. Rolling into my recap of The Bear S2:E02 Pasta after the break!
We’ve got the Fine Young Cannibals, we’ve got The Bear, we are READY. Even if maybe I mix up the guy from FYC with Canadian band Danko Jones and I was gone down a rabbit hole for an hour or so. IT’S FINE. (you look and tell me you wouldn’t make that mistake!!)
We’ve got 12 weeks until opening, chef de cuisine Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) is spinning but owner Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is focused and resigned and how little can be salvaged. Sydney’s a little off kilter because her dad is worried about this shop, Carmy says it’s just because it doesn’t make much money, won’t amount to much or make any sense.
Hahahaha dishwasher Manny (Richard Esteras) and Angel (Jose Cervantes Jr.) are the demo crew with pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) helping with throwing things near Carmy.
Project Manager Natalie ‘Sugar’ Berzatto (Abby Elliot) eats in this space with all the flying phones and drywall and explains to Carmy all the things he’s not getting. Why does Carmy need $5000 USD worth of hand-cast Italian door pulls? We don’t know because he’s not getting them. Maybe some Danish teak, we don’t know, Sugar was inhaling a sandwich at the time and that’s a bold choice for an actor / director.
Marcus and Richard ‘Richie” Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are getting all the instruction they need from YouTube, oh yeah, this is gonna be great. Handyperson Neil Fak (actual chef Matty Matheson) tries to help but.
Richie isn’t listening. And he’s lazy. Neil has to go to the mattresses to get the lockers moved before painting.
Richie needs to be in charge so badly he can taste it. But he isn’t. And they move the lockers.
So those guys are doing demo, but chefs Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) and Tina Marerro (Liza Colón-Zayas) are being sent to culinary school. Tina beams, she’s so excited! Ebraheim…less so. He already knows how to cook, yes? Okay, he just doesn’t want to wear a uniform. He’s good!
The locker removal doesn’t go…great. They didn’t do the thing where you remove stuff from the stuff you’re trying to lift but oh. One of those lockers is Mikey’s locker and it hasn’t been opened since he committed suicide and started this whole ball rolling.
**Backstory: up until his brother Mikey committed suicide and left Carmy his sandwich shop in Chicagoland, Carmy was the chef at the best restaurant in the world (which is subjective but we just know he was very fancy) and most of season one was Carmy coming to terms with Mikey’s drug addiction and his relationship with his brother. The very end of it was Carmy finding the several hundred thousand dollars of borrowed money his brother had squirreled away in cans of tomatoes.
In the time capsule as locker, Carmy finds a hat from the shop from when The Beef had a booth in 2010. He gives the hat to Richie; all significance of which is lost on Sydney.
I feel like Sydney misses a lot, but she’s also the reason anything gets done.
Ebraheim prays before culinary school. Can he read? Is that the issue? He’s so tense and so tall and so grave.
Sydney is not just a misser of things emotionally significant and a doer of important things, she’s incredibly talented and even more ambitious. She asks Carmy how it felt when he got the 3-star call (he worked at the best restaurant in the world (subjective) with three Michelin stars (okay, less subjective); the span of time between joy and dread was less than 10 seconds. So, totally normal.
That’s it, though, right? With great accomplishment comes an insane amount of impending loss. You have something, now you have something to lose. And not just something understandable, something not many people in the world have, like a gold medal at the Olympics or three Michelin stars.
Sydney still wants one, though. At least one.
Whoops, Neil found mold.
Richie cautions Neil to not call ‘Mom’ again, they need to think before they call in the weirdos – the scientists and abatement people and I am going to try REALLY HARD to not take that personally.
Neil calls Mom.
Ebraheim struggles with his confidence in culinary school while cheerleader Tina peptalks by his side.
Sydney and Carmy are brainstorming recipes and life together; remember how Sydney had her own catering business before? There was a pasta incident slash a King’s Hawaiian rolls incident and that’s how she ended up living with her dad! There’s something about her mom going on that we’ll find out in due time.
They mess up a recipe, it looks super painful. Carmy rubs a circle over his heart; that means ‘I’m sorry” and ‘we’ll talk about this later’, so Sydney does it back to him.
Sugar sits on the floor on a blanket next to a toilet and tells us how much she hated being in the restaurant when it was Mikey’s and now she’s here all the time.
I absolutely knew she was pregnant and I don’t know why except the eating and the face but here we are and she is. I don’t know who she’s talking to or why this grungy restaurant has such a huge clean bathroom, but here we are.
She’s talking to a plumber…about a backed up shut off valve and I am trying not to work here, guys!
I’m trying, but now we have Richie defiantly poking a ceiling he swears isn’t full of mold.
Richie never says die.
Ebraheim stays late at school and buses home in the dark.
Let’s just say that Sydney’s dad isn’t the biggest fan of her life choices right now, but he loves her and she loves hearing stories about how he and her mom met. When he says “your mom was a southern belle” I realised just then that maybe Sydney didn’t know that, or her mom. Did she die? Did she leave? Why is it a story if the mom leaves but life if the dad does?
Carmy ponders ice cream for far too long, but just long enough for Claire Dunlap (Molly Gordon) to roll up on him in the midst of a similar life crisis. She has no idea how she’s doing right now either.
(I LOVED HER IN THEATRE CAMP!!)
Marcus and Neil help Richie clean up the mold while I try really hard to squint my eyes and accept that:
– A) mold looks anything like that
– B) that they can safely sweep it up with no masks (Neil does have one under his chin)
– C) that Richie can just stand there with dry mold spores all over his face and into his mouth and it’s not even bothering him
(Did I mention I work for a company that does mold and asbestos remediation?)
Richie was sure it was Neil who ratted The Beef out for the mold, but it was actually Marcus. Pound it out, bros!
Sydney’s dad really tries to be supportive for Sydney’s plan to get a Michelin star, even though she technically won’t be paid a salary for 6 months and Sydney’s cousin Monty has a job for her at the airport waving planes around.
Yes, Sydney’s mom died when she was younger than Sydney is now. I felt like that when I realised I had passed the age I think my dad died at. I’m not great with details.
Carmy’s friend Claire is an emergency room doctor (almost) she’s so happy he is doing the thing. She even remembers the name of the restaurant he told her back so long again.He can’t believe she knows it, no way she knows it.
She remembers!
She gets the digits. And a whole lot of eye humping. We’re out!
Well well well, look at where we’re at now. It seems like just yesterday Carmy was in pieces, flashing back all the time and using his stove for jean storage and now he will have a girlfriend in no time. That’s what is so different, Carmy’s energy. He was such an outsider last season, and now he’s all calm and collected in a sweater making dough in his functional home kitchen and hooded eyes at a lovely lady from his past.
I dig it. I love a developing character.
Until next time! Cheers, y’all.
