What You Need To Remember Before The Bear Season 3
Note: there are no spoilers for "The Bear" season 3 here. In fact, there are no details about season 3 at all. What follows deals entirely with "The Bear" season 1 and 2, now streaming on Hulu.
Christopher Storer's excellent FX series "The Bear" returns for its third season on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, bringing us back into the Chicago kitchen of frequently stressed, frequently smoking chef Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White). As you head into season 3, you might need a refresher on where things stand, especially if you haven't had a chance to go back and re-binge the previous two seasons. You're in luck: I'm here to offer you a quick recap of "The Bear" seasons 1 and 2. As stated above, there's no info about season 3 here, so you don't have to worry about spoilers. So grab your apron, turn up the heat, and let's get cooking.
The Bear season 1
"The Bear" season 1 introduces us to Carmy, a brilliant but troubled chef who returns home to Chicago after his brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) dies by suicide. Carmy takes over Mikey's sandwich shop, the somewhat rundown The Original Beef of Chicagoland. Carmy, who is an award-winning chef who has worked in some of the best restaurants in the world, wants to improve things at the Beef, a decision that has him clashing with employees like Mikey's friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and line cook Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas). Other employees include Marcus (Lionel Boyce), who starts off as the restaurant's bread baker before becoming a pastry chef, and Neil Fak (Matty Matheson), a family friend who is sort-of/kind-of the Beef's handyman.
To help get things up and running, Carmy hires Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) to be his sous-chef. Eventually, Carmy, with Sydney's help, begins to turn things around. However, he learns that Mikey owed a considerable debt — $300,000 — to Jimmy (Oliver Platt), a family friend that Carmy and his sister Natalie, aka Sugar (Abby Elliott), think of as an uncle. Through a series of trials and tribulations and incredibly stressful moments, the crew at the Beef grows closer. The season ends when Carmy finds the $300,000 Mikey had borrowed stashed away in a bunch of tomato sauce cans. The Beef closes down, with the plan to now use the money to transform the place into a fine dining restaurant. The planned name of the new restaurant? You guessed it — The Bear.
The Bear season 2
"The Bear" season 2 is all about the struggle to transform the Beef into The Bear. The old restaurant is gutted as Carmy and company race against the clock to get the place up and running in three months. To help achieve things, they turn to Jimmy and borrow even more money. In the midst of all this, the characters evolve and change. Natalie learns she's pregnant, while Richie, so used to his old ways, struggles to find what his purpose is. Carmy, meanwhile, runs into a childhood friend, a doctor named Claire (Molly Gordon), and the two enter into a relationship. Sydney, in turn, starts to worry that Carmy's relationship is distracting him from all of the work that needs to be done to get the Bear open. Marcus travels to Copenhagen to learn to become a better pastry chef while also grappling with the fact that his mother is sick. In the midst of all of this, a flashback episode, set about five years before the ongoing events of the show, provide more insight into Carmy's family, including his troubled, alcoholic mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Richie, meanwhile, finally finds purpose by learning to become the Bear's maître d'hôtel. Defying all the odds, Carmy and company are able to get the Bear up and running, and plan a soft opening for family and friends. However, tensions rise almost immediately. Marcus and Sydney have a falling out after Marcus asks Sydney out for a drink and she turns him down. Donna shows up at the opening, only to leave before anyone other than Natalie's husband Pete (Chris Witaske) can see her. And then Carmy accidentally gets stuck in the restaurant's walk-in freezer, requiring Sydney, Richie, and the rest of the staff to carry on without him. In the midst of a breakdown, Carmy, thinking he's talking to Tina through the locked door, spirals out of control and proclaims that his relationship with Claire is nothing more than a distraction. Unfortunately, Claire is on the other side of the door and hears all of this. She leaves, heartbroken. Things devolve even further when Carmy and Richie end up in the midst of an angry argument (again, through the locked door).
Ultimately, the soft opening is a success — all the guests seem happy, and the staff was able to keep things going despite Carmy's absence. However, it's clear that Carmy is still mentally and emotionally troubled. Where does "The Bear" go from here? We'll find out soon enough.