Review: The Bear | Season 4, Episodes 2-4

Every second counts, but they're sure ticking away fast, eh?

Review: The Bear | Season 4, Episodes 2-4
Photo: FX

A ticking clock is meant to create tension. When “Uncle Computer” plugged in the clock counting down to the point when The Bear would run out of money, it gave the characters on The Bear a reminder of the stressful situation they find themselves in. The review was bad. The budget is out of control. They need to figure their shit out, and fast.

Except, well, it’s not that fast. See, the literal motto of this restaurant is “Every Second Counts,” but this set of episodes demonstrates that many of those seconds are pretty unimportant. I was shocked when “Soubise” started with weeks having passed since the clock started ticking down, and “Scallop” jumped a few weeks further. By the time we get to “Worms,” we’re completely untethered in time, to the point we have no idea how long Sydney has been dragging her feet on making a decision about her future.

As you might gather, I think the clock is a problem. It’s a problem because it takes the show’s somewhat abstract approach to its characters’ motivations and ties them to a realistic timeline. Take, for instance, Carmy’s realization in “Soubise” that he needs to completely change how he does things: he agrees to let them trim the number of ingredients, and even realizes he needs to apologize to his sister for never even trying to meet his niece. There’s really no clear effort in the episode to outline how or why this happened: it just leans on the idea that time is passing, albeit not quite enough time for me to understand what changed. It doesn’t seem like enough time for this change to happen without outside intervention—therapy, Carmy needs therapy—but it also seems like too much time given that there should have been a forced change immediately.