[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Bear” Season 5, Episode 8, “The Original Beef of Chicagoland” — the series finale. For a spoiler-free analysis, read our pre-air review.]
In the third episode of the fourth season of “The Bear,” The Bear won not one, but two Michelin stars. If you didn’t realize, I wouldn’t blame you — Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Syd (Ayo Edebiri) sure didn’t know Peter Clark (Gary Janetti) was there the night Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) treated a vacationing family to a snowy summer night in Chicago. They weren’t prepped and feeling the pressure like they were in Season 5, Episode 7 when Mr. Dearborn (Peter Grosz) showed up as the presumed “Star Man.”
But if you did know, you weren’t alone. Clark, after all, is also the name of a street in the Windy City — a tip-off Jessica (Sarah Ramos) mentioned for spotting a Michelin inspector — and “Scallops” offered a few pointed nods to the solo diner’s significance. The name is a dead giveaway. He’s also dining alone, seems extra-attentive, and makes sure to compliment the “vibe” of the room, the serving team of “mind-readers,” and Syd’s “extraordinary” scallops. By the time he got in his car, casting an extended, admiring look at the fake snowfall out back, I’d already written in my notes, “Mr. Clark is, by all reasoning, the Michelin rep.”
Much of Season 5 expects us to forget about Mr. Clark. His appearance back then is buried in an episode dedicated to Richie’s existential dread (about his ex-wife’s looming re-marriage) and Carmy’s romantic developments. (His big stoop talk with Claire ends the episode.) Timing his arrival so early in the season also helps to push him out of mind, all of which is key if we’re going to buy into the tension of the penultimate episode’s dinner service, where the whole team has to come through, again and again, in order to ensure Mr. Dearborn has the perfect meal. That he turns out to be just another guest emphasizes another bit of Jessica’s wisdom: The only way to win a Michelin star is to “treat every guest that walks through your door like they’re the chosen one.”
So wait: Are we supposed to remember Mr. Clark or forget him? The answer, it turns out, is both. How prominent Mr. Clark was in your mind while watching Mr. Dearborn — and the rest of Season 5 — likely affected your appreciation of “The Bear’s” ultimate ending. If you firmly believed the restaurant’s fate had been resolved months prior, the suspense in Episode 7, “Caramel,” was likely minimal. Sure, you’re invested in seeing Syd, Richie, Carmy, Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas),Neil (Matty Matheson), Marcus (Lionel Boyce), and Natalie (Abby Elliott) come together and perform at their best, but without the stakes of earning a Michelin star, all their anxiety is for nought.
That’s the point and the problem. They needn’t worry about any one guest, just like they shouldn’t worry about the future and the past at the cost of the present. So says the show. But it’s hard to live in the moment — like Season 5 asks us to, over and over — if it’s clear the moment has already passed. You need to appreciate life as it’s happening, much like you should be able to appreciate a story as it plays out, rather than shuffling through episodes in your mind to call up this moment or that moment as prompted.
And yet, in spite of its Clark and Dearborn gambit and an hourlong finale that ties far too many bows on top of bows, Season 5 works because its artistic machinations are rooted in character over plot, and the characters are what matters. The stockpile of memories is large enough to ensure the major moments land, whether or not you see them coming, because — to crib a cheeseball line from Luca (Will Poulter) — “The Bear” has something no other show on television has: family.
Particularly, this family and this cast. They’re who we keep coming back to see and, just like the series itself, the finale relies on that connection to carry us through some wonky structuring. (I’d even argue it goes the extra mile to acknowledge how much the characters matter by putting Emmy-winning casting director Jeanie Bacharach in the episode as Richie’s florist.)
Balance has always been an issue for “The Bear,” and the finale can’t help but throw a harmonious final season just a little out of whack. After shifting Syd to the forefront in the seven previous episodes, the closing hour puts her in the backseat: She gets her two stars, has a fun lunch with her dad, and then, presumably, passes out from exhaustion as planned. Aside from appearing at Richie’s daughter’s birthday party, that’s it. Syd’s full arc is satisfying enough — growing from Carmy’s fangirl/apprentice to his more matured successor — it just ends halfway into Episode 8. Shouldn’t the co-lead get one of the closing shots instead of, say, the supporting star and his new girlfriend holding hands?
Once again, how well you remember past episodes might color how well you react to the finale’s emphasis on Syd (or lack thereof). The night they won the two stars begins with a lengthy, loving montage of Syd cooking up her prized scallops. Pink and purple lights flood the blue kitchen as she perfects the dish that will elevate her to culinary royalty, taking up nearly three full minutes before she passes it over to Carmy for the boss’ approval.
Her presence is magnified, and his is diminished — as it should be, not only because this is her recipe, but because the moment now signifies Syd claiming her spot at the top of the chef chain. It’s important at the time because the dish ends up on the menu, and it’s important in the long-run because the dish earns The Bear its Michelin stars.
Whether those moments carry the same depth of feeling by the time the finale rolls around is another matter. “The Bear” tries to evoke the memories in its dialogue, like when Peter Clark name-checks the scallops in his phone call to Carmy, and when Carmy makes sure to say “you got two stars” while informing Syd of their triumph. But the rest of the episode still prioritizes Carmy’s fate over everything else, and the literal last moments of a TV series matter when it comes to what viewers remember.
What should we make of what happens to Carmy? Writer and director Christopher Storer leaves the specifics somewhat open-ended, although I will always contend he went back to The Bear after that ridiculous job interview to be an architecture intern. I mean, come on. Are we really meant to believe because Carmy likes drawing and art he’s going to dedicate the rest of his life to designing parking garages and airport terminals? When he walks into Bonnie Hunt’s office, I believe he believes that’s what he wants. But as soon as she brings up the “vibrant” peas from his old restaurant, it’s over. He’s pulled back. He can’t let it go, nor should he. Not now, after he’s grown into the chef he always needed to be.
His final rambling (read: self-indulgent) monologue (in a series filled with them) tilts into an atypically romantic reading of his time as a chef. He calls his last shift “a complete and utter shit-show” but also the “most fun I’ve ever had.” He smiles. He even laughs a little — Carmy! Laughing! He’s happy. And that’s what matters. When he texts Mikey, “All good” — sitting in his office at The Bear in full uniform, gazing at pictures of the dishes they’ve made — it doesn’t matter if he’s back in the kitchen forever or back to help out before his next job interview. (There’s no way Hunt hired him after listening to all that.)
He’s found his way through his grief, through his heartache, through the shit-show in his head, to a new level of peace. He’s found his home. He’s found — dare I say it? — his family.
It’s a fitting end for Carmy, specifically when remembering where his story started. Where once there was a solitary man selling his denim for money to buy beef to cook, alone, in his dead brother’s sandwich shack, there is now, as he says in the interview, “a group of people supporting each other, trying to lift each other up.” There’s a full, functioning restaurant, run by a full, functioning family. Chaos transformed into calm, and that’s exactly what Carmy needed.
Whether it’s an ideal end for “The Bear” isn’t quite so certain. Everyone gets a happy ending, from Richie’s first flight to Tina’s promotion to Marcus’ resolution with his dad to Ebra’s franchise plan to Natalie’s blissful work-life balance. Individually, they’re hard-earned, but mushed together in an hourlong finale, it’s too gooey — like a tasty Italian beef drowned in cheese sauce.
That, overall, is “The Bear.” Off-kilter but earnest, arresting but fixed, intimate in expression but broad in its lessons, Storer’s series was always going to swing back to its main character in the end, even after a season with an added focus on Syd, and — like it or loathe it — the finale ensures what came before will be remembered sweetly. Once again, so much is said through Carmy’s monologue, and his words bear the weight of “The Bear.”
“The whole time I’ve been doing this thing, I think I just wanted to get to the end of the day. … I wanted to survive it,” Carmy says. “And I didn’t want to know my coworkers, I didn’t care to care for them, I just saw them as tools to help me survive in the kitchen.”
Maybe “The Bear” dwelled too long on Carmy learning to live rather than merely survive. Maybe, at times, that came at the expense of the rest of the cast. Maybe a better balance would’ve kept the finale from descending into schmaltz. But in the end, it didn’t matter who gave Syd her Michelin stars or where Carmy ends up working. What mattered was that they all felt like family — to each other, and to us. The moments that allowed that to happen are the memories worth keeping.
Just shuffle as needed.
“The Bear” is available on Hulu. FX is airing episodes from Season 5 every Thursday at 9 p.m. ET through the finale on August 6.
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