Review: The Bear, "The Original Beef of Chicagoland" | Season 5, Episode 8

Hey free subscribers—if you binged through the end of The Bear over the weekend, here's a taste of my review of the series finale. Until the end of the month, yearly subscriptions are an extra 15% off the already discounted rate, so join the community and have your say on the show's conclusion.

I’m not shocked by this, but I don’t know that I have a tremendous amount to say about the series finale of The Bear.

Now, to be clear, I don’t mean this in a derogatory way. Rather, it’s a byproduct of writing about the season that came before it. I noticed that many of my critical colleagues chose to wait to write about the season until they had seen the finale, and those who wrote pre-air reviews weren’t also going to write about every episode individually. By comparison, I’ve already written something like 7000 words about this final season, and given its contained narrative it was always already a reflective exercise. The Bear’s final season has been a rumination on The Bear as a TV show, and writing about it all of it means that I’ve sort of said my piece in a way others might not have.

Reviewing “The Original Beef of Chicagoland” is therefore, in my eyes, a fairly simple evaluation: does this feel like the right ending to The Bear? When the dust settles on the adventure of transforming a sandwich restaurant into a fine dining experience, does it seem like we’ve been on a satisfying journey? Does the somewhat inevitable happy ending that comes for these characters and their place in life connect the way it’s meant to?

My basic answer to this question is yes, although as I’ve written about over the past few days, the show has built itself into one of TV’s ultimate YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) shows. My gut says that fans of The Bear who have never bought into the narrative of its decline will embrace this wholeheartedly. However, if you have been worn down by the show’s whole deal over these past five seasons, I can’t predict how you’ll feel about this. It’s possible that you will appreciate the break from the show’s usual self-flagellation and embrace the happy endings that pile up on one another over the course of this finale; it’s also possible that you’ll feel the show’s sudden turn to hope and optimism rings as false as the screaming and yelling that have defined its identity up to this point.

I write in this format because I’d argue a crucial audience for a review like this one is someone who didn’t watch the show and wants to know if they should bother tuning in. We don’t have formal ratings, but it feels safe to say that there are lapsed viewers of The Bear out there who connected with the show and fell off over time. The show’s consistent yearly releases were vital to its cultural footprint, but it also made it easier to imagine someone falling off. “The Original Beef of Chicagoland” feeds into this idea by being much more interested in being the finale to The Bear than the finale to The Bear’s fifth season, a choice that guarantees a basic level of satisfaction across a range of different viewers.