‘The Bear’ moved us to tears over five seasons, ending on a happy note

“The Bear,” Christopher Storer’s critically lauded, much argued over, award-winning series about a Chicago sandwich joint transformed into a fine-dining experience — to radically oversimplify — wrapped up its five-course meal Thursday with eight episodes (released at once), transpiring mostly across a single day. As a torrential rainstorm pummels the city, pipes burst, servers quit, shelves empty, money runs out even as the house is seriously overbooked, while chefs Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) attempt to navigate a new professional relationship — the show’s typical nexus of practical and emotional crises — leading to a frenzy of improvisation and ingenuity that brings all hands on deck.

In the end, the Bear gets not one Michelin star but two; now-broke Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), who spends much of the season trying to secure the building’s “sky rights,” finds financial salvation for it in Ebraheim’s (Edwin Lee Gibson) plan to franchise the Beef; Sydney accepts that she is the head chef Carmy could never be and names Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) as her chef de cuisine; Marcus (Lionel Boyce) comes to peace with his own greatness; Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who has never been on a plane, or seemingly outside Chicago, is invited to an international hospitality conference in Japan and finds new love with colleague Jess (Sarah Ramos). And Carmy is turning his creative force to architecture.

L.A. Times TV critic Robert Lloyd and culture critic Mary McNamara, both of whom have written about the show across its run, discuss the show’s final season and its overall legacy.

Robert Lloyd: The end of a story always frames what had gone on before, even when none of that might have been perfectly planned — as in a television show, which doesn’t know whether it will survive for one, two, three or four seasons — though in the case of “The Bear,” those early Emmys did guarantee, as much as anything in television is ever guaranteed, that they’d be coming back. Indeed, the final three seasons all run together into a kind of mega season. Maybe it’s obvious, but I’m going to say that in the end, it was all about love — learning to give it, learning to accept it, learning to love yourself — with most every major and minor member of the cast onstage at the end for a little girl’s birthday party.

Of all the things humans do for one another, food is possibly the most direct expression of love; it’s the first thing anyone gives us in this world — I know I’m romanticizing this, given the world’s many indifferent cooks, but as we see in a scene with Marcus and chef Luca (Will Poulter), even McDonald’s can be a gift if shared in the right spirit. Maybe it’s an obvious observation, but one of the things I loved about “The Bear” was its willingness to be nakedly sentimental. You don’t keep playing R.E.M. on the soundtrack if you want to be subtle. I gave this show no end of my tears. But I am a sap.

Mary McNamara: I confess that my most audible sob came with the tender nod to the late, great Rob Reiner, who made his last screen appearance in Season 4, as business mentor Albert Schur. In the final minutes of the finale, Ebraheim calls Albert with the news that the franchising has begun. When he ends the conversation with “As you wish,” I just lost it. I did not see that coming.

I did see the happiness of the finale coming though, and that is not a criticism; we could all use a little transcendence these days. Honestly, I hung in through the rather slow opening of this season in large part because I craved the catharsis of seeing it all work out in the end. And it was thrilling to see Storer turn conventional mythology on its head — Carmy got everything he wanted, including those stars, but not before he accepted that it wasn’t what he needed. His ambition was driven by ghosts and dysfunction, and he was well on his way to becoming one of those tormented “geniuses” who, in Carmy’s own words, just make everything worse. In another less courageous version, Carmy would simply learn to delegate and calm down rather than admit there was no healthy way forward for him at the Bear.

Even the goal of the Michelin star was kind of underplayed in the end — what seemed like the goalpost became a spiritual McGuffin.

As you say, it was all about love and family and connection. (Well that, and franchising the Beef.) Even at his haunted and neurotic worst, Carmy instinctively assembled and supported a team capable of rising to every occasion — it isn’t every chef that would hire someone as obviously talented as Sydney and continually push her to excel, or encourage Tina to dream bigger or see in Richie a potentially steadying and inspiring influence.

Honestly, “The Bear” was Richie’s story more than anyone’s — he was certainly the “least likely to succeed” when the series began, just as deeply wounded by Mikey’s death as Carmy and far more directionless. Syd was always going places, but Richie and Tina — and, of course, the fabulous Fak brothers, Neil (Matty Matheson) and Ted (Ricky Staffieri) — were the miracles of the piece. I think Carmy was being too hard on himself when he said he made things worse. He laid the foundation for the Bear, even if he could not stay.

Lloyd: As to the slow start of the season, that just struck me as a realistic reflection of the restaurant work day, the way a workplace slowly comes together in the morning. The calm before the storm — during a storm. It’s a realistic portrayal, even as it’s quite theatrical. The show was always brilliant at orchestrating moods, with its slow-fast, quiet-loud contrasts, its extreme close-ups and noisy action scenes. As the man from Michelin wrote, “The room felt alive without being precious or trying hard.”

I completely agree about Carmy. I felt at times the show didn’t give him enough credit, but, of course, not giving himself enough credit was part of his character. (That might be me projecting his behavior on Storer, as it were.) As to the staff, remember that, apart from Sydney, who was confident in her talent, which Carmy could recognize, he inherited them all from his much-loved, highly problematic brother, and they didn’t trust him or his “Yes, chef” at all. On one level, it’s “The Bad News Bears” — the ragtag assembly and a coach in need of a second chance. (“Redemption” is the popular word.) It’s a very satisfying, powerful trope, and gets remade all the time. The way everyone was shown to blossom was no less moving for being (of course) manipulative. If I were Carmy’s life coach, I’d have suggested he become a teacher — the whole series is an ode to mentorship, and menteeship, not just on his part. Despite some vague hints, I wasn’t at all prepared for his choice of a new direction, the season’s only real reveal, such as it was, coming at the end of a long monologue delivered to Chicago’s own Bonnie Hunt.

That speech, in which Carmy reckons with and contextualizes his own compulsions and choices, put me in mind of your third season essay, in which you considered the show through a lens of alcoholism — it struck me as the sort of thing you might hear at an AA meeting.

With the exception of Sydney, Carmy inherited the staff from his brother. He was able to coach them into fine-dining chefs.

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McNamara: “The Bear” has always been a chronicle of recovery — from addiction, grief, self-doubt, unfortunate circumstances or misplaced ambition — and recovery always involves accepting that you are not alone in the mess you’ve made of your life or in the efforts to pull yourself out of it.

It also involves facing the truth and taking responsibility, which we also saw all of the characters doing. In the second season, we were introduced to Carmy and Mikey’s mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), whose dysfunctions, including alcoholism, certainly helped create the family’s addiction to chaos. I still consider “Fishes” to be one of the best episodes of television ever, in part because it reminded the audience that the all the rage and hyperactivity that had kept us so entertained was, at bottom, quite unhealthy. (When, in this season, Syd went outside to scream, Carmy pointed out that he would have stayed inside and screamed at the staff.)

Donna, too, has been granted a road to recovery. Obviously a turning point came in Season 3’s “Ice Chips,” when Sugar (Abby Elliott) goes into labor and the only person who answers her call is Donna. What begins as the ultimate mother/daughter stress test turns into an actual maternal moment in which Sugar feels safe enough to confess how scared and unsafe her mother made her feel for much of her life. And you see Donna really hearing her and accepting that painful truth. Since then, Donna has been trying to become a less disruptive force in her children’s lives and by this season, Sugar even trusts her to watch the baby on her own (albeit with a monitor because, well, she’s still Donna).

For the record, I also cried when, in the final minutes, Carmy texted “all good” to Mikey’s long dead phone. It was a bit like a scene from a ghost story; after the buried treasure or family secret is discovered, the disruptive spirit that catalyzed the action is finally allowed to rest. Mikey was always the ghost at this feast but he was also the force that, indirectly, brought everyone together to uncover secrets and find the treasure. Ghost stories are usually love stories too.

Now who’s the sap?