The first two seasons of The Bear were an unholy, tightly meshed mix of breakneck plot, feverish restaurant action, yelling/swearing, and character unfolding. Those two seasons represented the best of this Golden Age of the screen. Season 3 is altogether different and far more radical. It sees Christopher Storer boldly slow the action down to the point where the plot does advance (the core elements being: when will the upcoming Chicago Tribune review spill and will it make or break Carmy?; will Carmy apologize to Claire Bear?; will Syd sign the restaurant co-ownership agreement?) but glacially, with maximum ratcheting up of tension. Storer somehow feels freed up, so that he can, for example, devote the entire first episode (of ten) to an examination of the entire restaurant’s crew on the day after the tumultuous final scene in Season 2, with never-ending flashback scenes from Carmy’s New York apprenticeship days, accompanied by the sublime tinkling piano of Nine Inch Nail’s “Together”. Storer can devote an entire episode to a Tina flashback in the dark old days and another episode to Sugar in the maternity ward with their estranged, terrible mother (played in a best-of-career performance by Jamie Lee Curtis). The climactic episode is one long, agonizingly drawn-out paean to Michelin-level restaurants. Normally allergic to slow pace, I found myself riveted by the existential agonies experienced by so many in Carmy’s team, in a restaurant milieu painted in its glory. If Seasons 1 and 2 were near-perfect offerings of characterization-and-plot dramas, Season 3 is a perfect, arty cinematic take on modern life and love and ambition.
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