With only 12 weeks to open, the team behind the Bear (the restaurant) is chugging right along on The Bear (the show). In “Pasta,” the series’ writers shift the focus from table-setting and plot to emotion and introspection, and it works out well. The only way this crew can ever really succeed is if they get their own individual shit to a good place — maybe not a perfect place, because we are talking about The Bear here, but at least a better one.
For Carmy, that means not only figuring out the logistics of launching and running a whole restaurant, including the fact that a $5,000 door pull isn’t exactly priority No. 1 right now, but also becoming a bit more whole himself. It’s great that he lives, breathes, and sleeps food because that’s gotten him to where he is, but it also hasn’t left him time to grieve his brother, have a relationship, or get his imported jeans out of his oven. Opening the Bear might mean that he’s dealing with a heap of pressure and decisions and bullshit, but we should applaud him for being able to delegate the work that’s required — and not just to Sydney. Everybody has jobs, and he’s trusting everyone to do their best. So far, it seems like it’s working out okay for him.
That’s pretty clear from the conversation Carmy and Sydney have when they’re menu-planning in his sad apartment. While I still don’t understand what “chaos menu but thoughtful” really means, it’s nice that Carmy’s letting Sydney in both literally and figuratively, telling her how good it felt to wear a monogrammed chef’s jacket and about the nightmarish pressure he was under when he was working at that three-Michelin-stars restaurant in New York, even if all he had to do was retain the stars rather than earn them. I think we can all relate in a way to his sentiment about how, in a situation like that, your “brain bypasses any kind of joy and just attaches itself to dread” — because who among us hasn’t had to serve the entire United Nations Security Council on short notice? Carmy also relays the story of why he signs “I’m sorry,” which is clearly something Sydney falls in love with a little. The usefulness of having a way to say “I know you feel something, and I apologize — but we have to get through this and will talk later” is super-applicable in all sorts of situations, so maybe that’s what we can all take from The Bear this season instead of saying “Yes, Chef” over and over and over.
Speaking of Sydney, it’s interesting how guarded she still is, even with someone like Carmy. He asks about her mother and she sort of demurs, but as we learn later in the episode, her mom has actually been dead for what seems like quite a long time. In fact, Sydney is older than her mom was when she died, which is pretty heartbreaking. In Sydney’s conversation with her father, played by Robert Townsend, we get the sense that her mom was a real spitfire and they both miss her very much but also that maybe Sydney’s dad doesn’t get his daughter quite as much as she’d like. He respects her love of food and wants to trust her, but he also seems to have a hard time wrapping his head around her not getting paid for six months when she could be waving in planes on the tarmac at O’Hare. He’s practical, clearly, but also, does she really need that much money when she’s living at home and spending every waking hour at the restaurant?
You know what else is frustrating? That no one seems to know, or at least acknowledge, that Sugar is pregnant. I don’t know if this is a thing that only women of a certain age notice or whatever — because the second a friend stops drinking socially, my antennae raise right up — but of course she’s pregnant. She admits it to a plumber later in the episode, but I knew from basically the first minute she spoke in episode one. The timing’s not great, she says. She’s nauseated. She looks pale. She’s tired. She “sometimes looks like February.” I don’t blame Carmy and Richie for not knowing, I guess, because they’re them, but I’m wondering if at least Tina has a bead on the situation.
I definitely don’t think Sugar should be around a bunch of mold if she’s pregnant — especially the kind that falls from the ceiling and is basically a fine, powdery dust. Luckily, it seems that Richie, Marcus, and Fak are taking that fall after a battle over some lockers, calling “Mom,” and a quick dalliance with a YouTube video about deep-cleaning. I love that Richie thinks he needs to be the alpha in any situation, but I also wouldn’t personally say that Fak has “weak pheromones.” Somehow, Fak has emerged as one of the smarter people working in the whole restaurant, which I never saw coming but do enjoy.
And now, let us turn to Carmy’s run-in with Claire, played by Booksmart star Molly Gordon. It was big news when she was added to this season, and it was always pretty clear she’d be a love interest for our main man, but I was still pleasantly surprised at how much chemistry I felt during the run-in at the grocery store. They seem to know each other from growing up, and she’s got her life together in the sense that she’s doing her residency to become an ER doctor — another high-pressure, long-hours position! — and he must have trusted her enough at some point to have shared with her the name for his restaurant.
I wonder if he actually didn’t remember who she was when he first saw her in the store or if he was playing it cool, because it also seems like he gave her a fake number at the episode’s end, telling her to call him at 773-555-0902, when earlier in the episode he told someone to call him at 773-555-0901. While it’s certainly possible his cell number is one off from the restaurant’s number, I think it’s more likely that he’s not ready for something that feels so very real. Of course, as viewers, we know that’s futile and this little romance is far from over, but we’ll just have to wait and see how that plays out in the episodes to come. I’m rooting for these two, if only because I think everyone with a crush on Carmy Berzatto deserves a little more fanfic fodder.
Small bites:
• Things that are potentially on the chaos menu at the Bear’s launch: something with beef consommé, smoked bone marrow, and frozen Concord grapes. Hamachi crudo, if it’s not too cliché. Tenderloin. Cherry vinegar. Piripiri sardines.
• The only thing in Mikey’s sealed locker was a hat from June 5, 2010, when the Original Beef had a booth at Taste of Chicago, or “the Taste,” as people in Chicago refer to it. First of all, the Taste was held from June 25 to July 4 in 2010, and I can’t imagine a restaurant going for only one single day, but I’ll let it slide. It’s a total shitshow, drawing literally millions of people over its week or so run, so maybe a small shop could go for just a day, especially if it was concerned about the up-front cost of being there. Seriously, though: millions. In 2006, the event drew 3.6 million attendees, all of whom were jockeying for food from about 70 vendors.
• I look forward to getting a little more backstory about Ebraheim’s reluctance to go to culinary school. Is he just not confident in his skills, or is he afraid of the actual schooling?
• Wilco-sync count this episode: Technically zero, but the show did use Mavis Staples’s “You Are Not Alone,” which was produced by Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy, so let’s give it an honorary nod.
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