Hiya, y’all, summer is somehow almost over after not really starting, but we’re here for some inside time with The Bear and not the bear spray.

Please take a lookie-look after the break for my recap of The Bear S2:E05 Pop!

We open at 1:30 am with chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) keeping Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) up way past her bedtime to inundate her with too many ingredient choices for the small elementally-themed dish that Sydney is working on. I appreciate all the cool things (washed in fennel water!), but it’s a lot on a 6 inch plate.

Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) sits by the water and smokes a cigar, introspectively.

Back at The Bear To Be, Carmine ‘Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) works on kitchen efficiency timing in the torn apart remains of The Original Beef of Chicagoland; he can’t get it under 7 seconds. Gary ‘Sweeps’ Woods (Corey Hendrix) swears his clocking is right, but ‘cousin’ Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) thinks the extra 2 seconds taken by Carmy is pathetic.

Are they…saving a life? Huffing paint? Running 1.4 times faster than survivors in a 3k dbd game?

They have all this time to watch Carmy walk very quickly between imaginary obstacles because the scheduling is all messed up on the construction completion. Project manager and Carmy’s sister Natalie ‘Sugar’ Berzatto (Abby Elliot) walks Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt – adore) through the vision, because that’s all there is. No walls. No flooring. Just vision and scheduling issues. The electrician is making a sandwich because plumbing isn’t there.

I am literally a project manager and I would be on that phone so hard right now.

Uncle Jimmy is on it.

I can’t seem to get enough of what happens whenever Richie opens his mouth around Uncle Jimmy.

There’s a drywaller wandering around eating sammies, Neil Fak (Matty Mattheson) is kicking around doing…not much, but really it’s the plumber not answering Richie’s calls that is the problem.

I would be four screens deep on White Pages right now.

Sugar sucks up and that helps stall Uncle Jimmy’s meltdown for a little while. Carmy’s “that was fucking gross, Sugar” makes me laugh.

Tina’s at culinary school with Carmy’s own knife, oooooh.

She’s starting to believe she can do this! Ebraheim is missing, though, and not answering calls.

Sydney works on place settings and specific plates and their sound and isn’t it wonderful that a world exists where that matters? I mean that sincerely.

Carmy has one million things on his plate, so instead of hanging out doing something fun with his new-old ladyfriend Clare Dunlap (Molly Gordon), he asks her to take a trip with him to drop off the liquor permit application that Uncle Jimmy procured in a totally not slimy way. By that, I probably mean driving him there since he probably doesn’t have a car.

Dose EYES.

Ohhhhhhhh Sydney does not know about Clare?

Clare the adrenaline junkie with childhood kleptomania, that’s who! Clare, the one dragging Carmy off to a party while he should be choosing plates and helping with the amperage problem at The Bear!

Omigosh ‘Pretty in Pink’ by The Psychedelic Furs is playing and I need a minute to cry and also, Clare is forgiven for dragging Carmy off but only for as long as this song is playing.

Tina is also partying, she’s accepted the invitation of a classmate from the culinary institute and I’m just worried they’re all going to be super young! Okay they mostly are, but not too bad! She does shots and sings karaoke, way to hang, lady! She’s got a great voice.

Carmy has never cooked a meal for Clare? What. That’s literally what he does. Literally the only thing, let’s face it. They talk about college; this is very much like a frat party, Carmy missed out on all of that. He was in Europe, not puking on anyone’s lawn or setting off illegal fireworks or kissing Clare, which I think is going to happen and then…police.

And now The Tragically Hip is playing??? WHAT IS HAPPENING. Oh. NO. Is REM. Still awesome!!

Carmy takes Clare to the restaurant, which is currently in a state of screamy chaos (as usual) due to Richie trying to steal power from the neighbors.

Richie keeps saying “I’m not like this because I’m in Van Halen, I’m in Van Halen because I’m like this” but I am not cool enough to get that.

Carmy kicks everyone out and then! Then he and Clare have their first kisses and we’re out.

Yay!

I love the music on this show.

There was weird stuff in this one, Sugar was being too passive / nice in ways that don’t make sense, Richie was even more of a caricature than usual but Tina was lovely and so was Carmy. You know I love anything with Uncle Jimmy, woooooo!

Until next time, y’all, much love and thanks for reading if you got this far. And sorry for the type on the GIF.

Cheers!

TTM