Review: The Bear, "Lamb" & "Mint" | Season 5, Episodes 2 & 3
The real-time-ish format comes into focus as the shift continues
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“I’ll be home a lot more when the whole industry goes away.”
In its third season, The Bear held a eulogy for fine dining. Olivia Colman’s Chef Terry decided to walk away from her restaurant, and the subtext was that it was the end of an era. Whatever The Bear has been trying to achieve, it is a standard that is being threatened by some combination of a pandemic and a business climate that threatens the restaurant business at large.
Myles McNutt
There’s a challenge in this for The Bear. On the one hand, I am invested in these characters and they are invested in the restaurant. They’ve put so much into this, and its success matters to me insofar as it matters to them. However, I do not care at all about fine dining, or the culture of fine dining. The show admittedly faces an uphill battle convincing a gastral neophyte with zero interest in trying new things that fine dining is a cultural good that needs to be preserved, but it’s a crucial part of its larger argument. Yes, we mostly want The Bear to succeed because of the people, but there would also be something fundamental lost if these people were no longer able to make a living creating these experiences for their guests.
Now that it’s expressly clear that season five will be taking place over a single day, I’m curious how The Bear faces these big picture questions. They’ve laid the groundwork for a lot to happen in this single day: it could well be the last day of the restaurant’s operations, but those problems are happening alongside Jimmy’s attempts to rescue himself financially, as well as Ebraheim’s anxious efforts to bring the franchise agreement forward. There are the pieces here for a deus ex mise-en-place that “resolves” the conflicts that have placed the restaurant and its workers in this difficult situation, but having that all happen in one day seems unrealistic. I get where it’s dramatically useful, but the lack of room to breathe also means a lack of room to connect the dots to the show’s broader thematic interests.
