Saying Goodbye to The Bear....

July 2026

 

It all started with that sandwich...

 

That mouthwatering beef on a bun...

Smothered with enough grilled vegetables...

To make you feel slightly less guilty about what you are doing to your coronaries...

 

And oh... how I wanted that sandwich....

 

But then The Bear wandered off into the wilderness ...

Of haute cuisine culture, restaurant economics, and Brezatto family drama...

 

For the next three seasons...

 

But in its final season, The Bear is back to first principles...

 

Food...

 

And, oh, it looks lovely...

And is filmed with great care...

 

Although this is the carefully curated cuisine...

Of an expensive restaurant...

That is plated to be a work of art...

 

So I still kind of wanted that sandwich...

 

But The Bear did redeem itself in this final season...

And a lot of the old magic was back...

 

Most importantly, the food...

 

And a cast of cooks and servers who have grown into their jobs...

 

Implausibly...if we are going to be honest...

 

And became more interesting and fully formed characters...

Played by actors who are largely up to the challenge....

 

And the goofy friends who talk in what I have often wondered...

Is some weird kind of Chicago speak that the rest of us will never understand...

 

And did I say.... the food

 

But this time Storer films it as plates and plates of the same artfully arranged nouvelle cuisine...

All lined up...

And ready to be served...

 

In an assembly line...

 

As if to make the point...

That the economics of a restaurant...

Depends on volume...

 

And turning over tables fast and efficiently...

Which means that no matter how well it is run...

This is a high-stress job from the kitchen to the floor....

 

So The Bear has always made a restaurant look like a terrible place to work...

 

While at the same time testing the audience’s tolerance for believability...

In so many ways that it would make this review a book-length treatise...

 

If I had worked up the energy to catalogue them.....

 

Now Season Five has the feeling of a dirge...

 

For the show...

And maybe the restaurant...

 

And not just because if Job had run a restaurant...

It would have been The Bear this season...

 

Because very imaginable calamity...

Happens in a single day...

 

But also because this business does not pencil out...

 

Especially when you factor in the stress involved...

For everyone...

From the money to the dishwasher...

 

But now there is less yelling at The Bear...

Syd looks like she can actually run this thing...

And the message of the final season is it takes a village...

To make all this work...

 

And now maybe it can....

 

Because the big takeaway of the final season of The Bear...

 

Is that Carmy was always the problem...

 

And not because he has some PTSD from growing up in that screwed up family...

 

But because it turns out that Carmy was the Andre Agassi of Chefs....

 

Someone who was immensely talented at something...

He didn’t really enjoy doing...

 

Now this is all revealed in a monologue...

That wraps the series up...

And is quite moving...

 

Although I wouldn’t suggest anyone make a confession like that in a job interview...

 

But it is a fitting ending for a series that started strong...

Lost its way in the middle...

And then found its footing again in its final season...

 

And in a fitting coda...

 

It turns out that sandwich...

 

Might be what saves them after all...

 

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