I’ve been in hospitality for approximately the last 8 years of my life and I’m relatively proud to say that. I think hospitality is a rewarding and important part of society and should not be dismissed as the bottom rung of employment that it is far too often described as. However, that does not make it easy, and there are two essences of difficulty that hospitality can be reduced to, that being the physical day-to-day stress and the other being putting your heart on the line for sake of your passion. The reason I have been absolutely terrible at posting on this blog is often due to my work. Studying and writing feel easy to dismiss and do when they need to be done for the sake of doing. When it comes to my work I can’t help but put my whole self into it and that means attaching a little part of your soul to your work and taking every bad day and every good day as inherently personal. It’s unhealthy and some may argue that the dismissive nature of hospitality should encourage one to not take it on yourself but I find myself incapable of taking it that way. This is why I wanted to write about The Bear, there is a scene in the second season where one of the main characters has a conversation with a floor manager of a high end restaurant where he impassionately exclaims the high standard he sets is because he loves this, an authentic expression and a fascinating note that compelled me to write this.
I do not work in a high end restaurant or anything really close to the world The Bear is exploring, in fact I’m not even a chef but a barman, yet there is something that this show manages to unpack and that is the most authentic exploration of hospitality I have ever seen. There have been plenty of dramas and comedies set in kitchens like the stellar Boiling Point that attempted to explore a disastrous night in a high end restaurant through a well-fixed gimmick and intense choreography. But something I always missed in these dramas is the specificity towards drama in the world of hospitality and instead there is often a focus on the drama to be personal and from the outside affecting the inside. Often a kitchen is an easy setting to explore characters as its high intensity makes emotions heightened, yet it misses out on the inevitable question of “well why would you ever work in a kitchen?” Which is in essence what The Bear explores best, the risk of reward, the type of person you have to be to really want to work in hospitality and the amount that personal complications can swirl around a restaurant amassed by the heat of the ovens.
The first season of The Bear operates on a simple premise: a high end chef inherits a struggling sandwich shop, with a focus on tension and anxiety. It rides on the slow reveal of the people these characters are with a focus on simultaneously explaining and exploring why these people are in the position they are in. Carmen’s complicated relationship with his brother and intense drive to be prestige moulded him into a man unable to not be riding life on the line, Richie lost his best friend and was never given the opportunity to step up and is in the shadow of a cousin he frankly doesn't respect, Sydney admires Carmen as a chef yet is far too over qualified and ambitious for a place run by a man who will struggle to have any true respect for her. These are these people’s lives that come to the forefront and influence how they function in the environment, yet they all are informed and built around their work, the external factors are just as important as the internal factors. It’s a series built on failure and collapse, a collection of people flailing in the fire and struggling to ever grow because the inherent rot in the walls is too thick it has seeped into the people themselves. There’s a point with most hospitality jobs I’ve worked where I realise I either give up now, or I will be dragged down further. It's usually the moment I start to put my heart on the line, the emotional investment is a strain on your commitment and you have to make the decision to change or to give up completely.
‘Rip it up’ are the iconic words that rattle through the first season’s finale. An admission of defeat that is so emotionally earned, a stunning conclusion encouraging Carmen to authentically tame the bear by becoming the bear himself. That decision, that precipice of inherent confusion that I feel like I have reached myself many times before, it's a repeating pattern of committing oneself to the full and the failure consistently chipping away till you have to make a decision. Carmen decided to start again, do something so ridiculously stressful and put his heart once again on the line, but for what reason, why do we do this to ourselves? And that is the essential idea season two explores, if season one is exploring the stress and destructive nature of hospitality, season two is exploring why one puts themselves through that. The stakes are established as high and the inherent idea is that ‘every second counts’ so one braces oneself for a season exploring the difficulties and tension with opening a restaurant. But instead, the show’s pace begins to slow and suddenly we begin exploring more external ideas that build an emotional backbone delivering into a phenomenal finale.
The episode everyone will be talking about and for good reason is Fishes, an hour long flashback episode exploring the Berzatto family with fantastic guest roles and stunning tension. It's an attempt at exploring the family we know and reinforcing the implied character beats from the first season in full intensity, it's a spellbinding hour of television with so many interesting intimate moments revelling in the contrast and the repeated patterns within the present day. But for me the true standout of the season is Forks, because it hit something really close to home that I was not expecting a show to be able to fully explore. As mentioned earlier, this episode revolves around Richie spending a week working with a high end restaurant learning about how they have maintained their reputation. I’m obviously way more biassed to focusing on the Front of House than I am the Back of House but there is something about a very interesting understanding about hospitality that makes this episode fascinating. Everything at this place rides on the highest of standards, there is no opportunity to slip up, it is an intense and gruelling workplace that films like The Menu pastiche. But this draws focus on why that level of intensity works, that being the moment it pays off, in a breathtaking guest spot from Olivia Colman as the Head Chef she explains how she spends hours peeling these mushrooms even if they don’t need peeling because “it’s something nice for the customer.” a simple but incredible sentiment that makes hospitality worth it. Going that extra mile of care pays off in such a unique way within hospitality, it's so small and easy to dismiss but it feels incredible for both the customer and the staff member.
That being said, it is not easy to go that extra mile, it's not even easy to be there day to day, throughout the series Carmen begins dating a woman named Claire whom he exclaims in the finale “he doesn't need amusement and joy” because it makes him slip up. He let everyone down because his head wasn't completely involved in his business, the man whose life is built around his identity within this role realising that means he can’t have a life outside of the role. A pretty brutal conclusion and maybe a slight subjective reach but I’m fascinated to see where the show explores this, whilst everyone’s arcs are about them growing as a person within and without their job, Carmen’s feels like him growing despite his job and that results in him letting everyone down on something as simple as forks. The Bear truly began to develop a rational and understood perception on hospitality, for all its lows the season began to explore the highs and the appreciation of good hospitality before leaving you with the question, is it worth it? Sydney’s devastating final conversation with her dad after throwing up from an anxiety attack where he states “this is the thing,” echoing back to her line about her uncertainty if she’s got another thing in her makes it feel all worth it, but at what cost? Richie, whose personal life is in complete disarray finally gets to take the reins and he succeeds massively but is he destined to go down the same path as his cousin? And a final appearance from Jamie Lee Curtis delivering the performance of the season in one scene as she can’t bring herself to see how well her family is doing because of the guilt wrapped up in her entire being, the Berzatto family a family proud of swimming in the chaos suddenly can’t adapt to being proud of something real.
There is a lot going on within The Bear’s extreme close-ups and montages of Chicago and I’m sure my interpretations are, as usual, a projection of my own personal anxieties which is exasperated when its a show about something I know as well as hospitality. Not to say I am anything close to an expert, I’m still young and have never exactly propelled into prestige hospitality, hell my experience written here probably feels inherently inaccessible for some people who work within hospitality. But there are feelings and moments that echo throughout The Bear that, even in a world I am so far away from, I understand from a basis of what I am going through at the moment. Regulating the amount I am putting on myself for my work is so tough because I hate giving up and I hate being defeated when I genuinely care, it's probably why I am inevitably not really built for something as chaotic as hospitality but that’s an issue for future Jo. Right now, I can’t help but appreciate the stress and the anxiety that comes from true care and emotional investment. I've always been a person who is in for a penny, in for a pound so to speak, I don’t really half commit to stuff and I love that I found a show that echoed that sentiment and helped me reinforce why I am like that, Forks is about that moment that negates all those questions in the finale, that feeling of providing a genuine moment is unlike many other feelings. I guess it's like delivering Grace at Christmas that makes everyone cry, or making an omelette for your co-worker that you admire and is maybe struggling at the moment, or reminding someone you love that you do in fact love them even at their worst.
These are the moments The Bear is built on, the interactions amidst the chaos that make hospitality that little bit more special, others have criticised the show’s shift to sentimentality as opposed to the first season’s adherence to chaos but I think that is the more mature step on a meta scale and within the narrative of the time. It's moving on from that negative “swimming in the chaos” attitude and instead holding on and focusing on what makes it all worth it, Fishes is about a family swimming in that chaos which moulded Carmen and Richie into indulging in an industry built around that attitude. Instead to overcome that inherent need for chaos, one has to ignore those urges, Carmen’s breakdown in that finale flashes back to the chaotic night from Review, as he feels himself diving back into that pool of chaos realising that inherent part of the Berzatto family still exists within him. I’ve waffled all over the place within this review, it has been so long since a show has hit me in the waves of familiarity and has also hit on a very relevant idea that is my current situation. The Bear was a show I needed to watch right now and has genuinely helped me come to terms with how I approach my work and how I want to develop as a person within hospitality. That is a very special thing to me, thanks chef.