‘The Bear’ Season 3 Review

Editor’s note: The below contains full spoilers for The Bear Season 3.

The Big Picture

• The Bear
  Season 3 has standout episodes and characters, but feels undercooked and inconsistent overall.
• The season focuses on solving issues but lacks any actual solutions, with inconsistent tone and character growth.
• The season finale highlights Chef Terry’s career, rather than satisfyingly resolving Sydney’s feelings of being overlooked.

When The Bear first premiered, it was the kind of show that no one knew much about, but anyone watching it would rave about it. The kinetic camerawork, the chaos of a working kitchen, and the excessive use of “cousin” and “yes, chef” turned it into something of a phenomenon for FX. Not only was it startlingly realistic for those within the hospitality industry, but the way the show tackled the unpredictable world of food service and blended it with mental health struggles made it uniquely appealing. There really is no other show like The Bear. Then, when Season 2 came around, creator Christopher Storerknocked it out of the park yet again in a season jam-packed with cameos, diving deep into the characters beyond just the protagonist Carmy (Jeremy Allen White). The question remained: could the show capture lightning in a bottle a third time with Season 3?

‘The Bear’ Season 3 Starts Too Chaotic

One of the greatest highlights of The Bear was the way Christopher Storer seemed to conduct a symphony of chaos when it came to the kitchen staff and the insanity of working in a restaurant. Storer, who has a background in comedy, was the perfect conductor matching the aggressive intensity of restaurant service with the comedic camaraderie of a group of people who know each other very well. From moments like Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) stabbing Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to Carmy locking himself in the walk-in refrigerator and having a meltdown, these heart-pounding moments felt so deeply authentic that they were addictive to watch. However, Season 3 drags that kinetic energy away from the show, as the characters are still dealing with the fallout from Season 2’s finale. Though The Bear’s opening night was ultimately a success, it also caused serious rifts for Carmy — not only with Richie, but also with his erstwhile girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon).

The third season kicks off with a jarring premiere that tries to link the show back to Season 2. However, unless you recently rewatched, Episode 1 might only manage to disorient and confuse you, as it mixes scenes from Season 2 and also scenes from the future episodes of Season 3 together, weaving a timeline that’s shuffled and out of order. Although The Bear does better than most shows when it comes to season releases (the show has consistently released a season every year at the same time since Season 1), it might be asking too much from viewers to piece together such a disparate episode as this return to The Bear.

The episode replays a timeline of events in Carmy’s life leading up to his return to Chicago. We see shots from after that chaotic Christmas five years ago in the episode “Fishes” — where Donna’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) car is being towed away — with scenes of Sugar (Abby Elliott) bidding Carmy farewell as he flies off to New York. There are also snippets from Carmy’s traumatic time with David Fields (better known by some as Joel McHale‘s mean chef), to his time with Chef Terry (Olivia Colman) and Luca (Will Poulter), to his days in New York sleeping on his (actual) cousin Michelle’s (Sarah Paulson) couch and working at the Michelin starred restaurant, Daniel. But as Carmy’s work consumes his life, we are also shown intercutting scenes of Richie visiting Mikey (Jon Bernthal) and knocking on his door, only to get no response, and Sugar calling Carmy to tearfully tell him that Mikey is dead. If your first thought is about how all that sounds like a lot for a 37-minute episode, you would be right.

‘The Bear’ Season 3 Feels Rudderless and Without a Driving Force

Since the previous two seasons of The Bear have built up so many problems for Carmy, Season 3 focuses more on solving pre-existing issues rather than creating more obstacles. Normally, for a TV show, that would be a good thing. Digging deeper into a story is normally more interesting than expanding out into shallow character development. But Carmy’s issues aren’t easy to solve, and sometimes there just isn’t a solution. He not only has to deal with his falling out with Richie, after the two fought while Carmy was trapped in the walk-in, but he spends the season both obsessing over Claire and avoiding her.

There’s been a lot said about the inclusion of Claire’s character, but it feels like not even Storer knows what he really wants to do with her. Part of her appeal to Carmy, and perhaps the issue with the character itself, is that she seems to exist merely as an idea. She’s a loving, soft, and generous woman whose only real plot involves her romantic relationship with Carmy, which often consists of being ignored or insulted by him. It’s a devastating misuse of Molly Gordon, who is compelling in every scene she’s in but given so little to work off of. Instead of becoming a separate, self-actualized character, Claire is another thing added to the pile of things that stresses Carmy out.

As a whole, the 10-episode third season ping-pongs back and forth between comedic and wholesome moments and manic anxiety attacks. At one minute, Richie and Carmy are screaming at each other, and by the next, the Faks (Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri) are talking about buffing the restaurant floors with their brother, played by a random John Cena. This bouncing between calm and disorder should feel familiar, but unlike Season 1 and 2, Season 3 feels painfully inconsistent. There is no actual harmony between these moments, and as the show pitter-patters its way through an ocean of plotlines, the season is rendered rudderless, leading to no clear overall arc. Is the point of it all The Bear earning a Michelin star? Is it getting a good review from critics? Is it for Carmy to mend some of these broken relationships? Is it for Sydney to finally decide if she wants to cut her losses and leave? If it’s any of that, then none of it gets resolved by the season’s end.

There’s Too Much To Tackle in ‘The Bear’ Season 3, and Not Enough Time for Character Growth

One of the best installments of Season 3 revolves around Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas). The sixth episode titled “Napkins,” directed by Ayo Edebiri, focuses on how Tina ended up working at The Beef and how she first met Mikey. After five episodes of disorienting storytelling, this feels like a return to form. It also happens to be the one episode that is neither written nor directed by Christopher Storer. It’s reminiscent of the best Richie episode, “Forks,” or the Marcus-centric (Lionel Boyce) episode “Honeydew,” where we get to spend time just living in a character’s shoes. The Bear has so many complex and interesting characters that the show has lovingly cultivated that looking into Tina’s past feels right for the show. She’s the character who has grown the most, and seeing her talk to Mikey and describe her jealousy and relationship with a younger generation who seem “hungrier” to pursue their dreams reminds us of her initial friction with Sydney. It also makes all her previous scenes of her going to culinary school and excelling in The Bear that much more meaningful.

However, Season 3 is severely lacking in moments like this. The only other episode that hones in on a character is the eighth, “Ice Chips,” as Sugar goes into labor and has no one by her side but her mother Donna (another electric performance from Jamie Lee Curtis). And while Season 2 only gave us two episodes that acted like interludes, Season 3 makes them feel vital because so much of the rest of the season is centered around Carmy’s unsolvable problems. It’s never been more apparent that Carmy is the show’s weak link. This has nothing to do with Jeremy Allen White’s performance, which is top-tier as always and devastating as he runs the gamut of emotions this season, and everything to do with the fact that the show has grown far beyond his character alone.

In many ways, Carmy acts like the villain of his own story. He self-sabotages The Bear, forcing the entire staff to adapt to his three-star Michelin restaurant standards of changing a new menu every day, and becomes as exacting and critical as the mean chef of his nightmares. In some ways, it’s the perfect example that a good chef doesn’t equal a good business owner, but in other ways, it feels like a disservice to Carmy’s character. What chef worth their salt doesn’t know that changing a menu daily will result in high produce costs? For that matter, what person who has worked in a kitchen wouldn’t know that? As The Bear struggles to adapt to Carmy’s non-negotiable standards, the show ends up stuck. Once again, Carmy is bulldozing over Sydney’s ideas, ignoring Richie’s advice when it comes to front-of-house, or holding his staff to a higher standard than they can reach and then berating them for not reaching it. It quickly becomes exhausting in a way the previous seasons never were.

‘The Bear’ Season 3 Proves You Can Have Too Much of a Good Thing

While the “Fishes” episode was overflowing with cameos, it wasn’t distracting — or, rather, it didn’t distract from the drama of the story. However, Season 3 struggles with this, tossing faces like John Cena and Josh Hartnett into the mix but doing little to nothing with them. Worse than those cameos is when we finally make it to the season’s last episode, “Forever,” and the show endeavors to throw every successful chef in America into the finale in a show of authenticity. The final episodes of any season of any show should be its strongest, but this is where The Bear Season 3 really falls apart.

As a person who enjoys keeping up with the fine dining industry, it was surprising to see recognizable faces like Christina Tosi (chef and owner of Milk Bar), Genie Kwon (chef at Kasama and the first Michelin-starred Filipino restaurant), and Grant Achatz (legendary chef at the Chicago staple Alinea) grace the screen. But the problem with “Forever” is that these appearances result in the episode feeling more like a lecture and a pseudo-documentary than a part of The Bear. An earlier episode already does this to an extent, with the actual Chef Thomas Keller from the infamous French Laundry making an appearance during Carmy’s time staging at his Yountville restaurant. The Bear has never just been about fine dining, but the show chooses to fully lean into it as Chef Terry announces the closing of her fictional restaurant Ever, where both Carmy and Luca worked and Richie staged at.

With no pun intended, Storer gets too lost in the sauce in this episode. Listening to real-life chefs monologue about working for bad bosses and falling in love with cooking is fine, but it’s also a bit obvious. Crucially, the season lacks those quiet moments between characters where we are not only imparted wisdom from the kitchen but also given insight into their psyches. I’d rather watch another scene between Chef Terry and Richie peeling mushrooms, or Luca teaching Marcus how to form the perfect quenelle; at least those scenes serve the story. Instead, we’re treated to a fictionalized version of real chefs waxing poetic about the most basic aspects of the industry. It doesn’t take a genius to know working for a bad boss sucks; we’ve had three seasons of Carmy suffering from PTSD. White’s one brief scene with McHale’s David Fields is the most important scene of the season, and yet it is buried under schmaltzy, one-note dialogue from these guest stars.

In the end, Storer focuses too much on the industry and forgets that the people who fell in love with this show weren’t memeing “yes, chef” TikToks because they wanted to work in a restaurant; it’s because they loved the complex characters he created. What’s devastating is that the season ends with a bizarre celebration of Chef Terry’s career before we are reminded that one of the key subplots of the season was about Sydney’s journey at The Bear and whether she wants to stay there or not. Such a vital plot feels sidelined even though Sydney is one of the characters we have followed since the beginning. As she sinks to the ground in a panic attack after seeing a clipping from a newspaper praising The Beef, it’s a bitter reminder of the thoughtful scenes we just didn’t get enough of this season. And, as Carmy walks the streets of Chicago and gets a notification that the restaurant review for The Bear has been posted, the season ends with an ominous To Be Continued. Perhaps Storer’s follow-up fourth season will be a redemption, turning this one into a more transitional period for the show. But, for now, The Bear Season 3 arrives undercooked and lacks the proper components that might have made it as successful as the seasons before it.

The Bear Season 3 is now streaming on Hulu.

Watch on Hulu