The Bear is a show for anyone starving for some good fucking food
In the time since it premiered on Hulu as the surprise hit of last summer, FX’s The Bearhas often been regarded as stressful TV — usually in a complementary way. The comedy-drama, about the struggles of a Chicago sandwich shop to stay afloat amidst various personal and professional crises, is definitely one of the most relentlessly-paced series streaming right now, full of people yelling and alarms beeping and a catastrophic accident always seconds away. But calling The Bear stressful does a poor job of describing why it was so magnetic, or why anyone would blaze through its 10-episode first season in no time at all. A better word would be alive. The Bear has a pulse in a way few TV shows on the air do right now, and to watch it is to hear that pulse pounding in your ear.
Now in its second season — premiering all at once on Hulu, like the first — The Bear continues to follow the staff of The Original Beef as they tear down their old sandwich shop and attempt to turn it into something new — a bold, full-service restaurant that will take Chicago by storm. The trouble is, none of them really know how to do that.
The Bear is a work of controlled chaos, always crashing, shouting, scrambling to make it to the end of its 20-odd minute episodes. From this mess, something coherent, and delicious, emerges. In the first season it was a story about camaraderie and grief, as hot NYC chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) returned to Chicago after his brother’s death to keep his sandwich shop afloat but also class it up some. Carmy’s struggle to hold onto his Chef’s Table-esque approach in a grimy hole in the wall proved to be an ideal vehicle for the raw heart of the show — his arrogance kept him from seeing the potential or pain of
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