This is also my favorite episode so far (2 left). The Christmas episode was great as well, but in a way that I wouldn’t say I liked it.
…as Banquet Bear, of the Sacred Order of the Banquet Bears, I can speak from authority here.
Season 2, Episode 7, “Forks”, gave me life.
That was probably my single most favourite thing I’ve seen on TV. I wrote this back in 2007. 16 fricken years ago.
The Bear has mainly focused on back-of-house.
But Forks.
Just so fricken good. Everything on point. Once I realized where it was going I basically had tears in my eyes through the rest of the episode. I left the hospitality industry in 2010 due mainly to burnout. But this bought all of the memories back. I don’t talk much about my time in hospo. Because its just so hard to explain the sheer euphoria one felt when everything clicked. Basically every scene, every beat…I could tell a HUNDRED different stories.
I’ve never been more seen before. What a glorious episode of television.
Though some of it kind of bothered me. Like in the Forks episode, Garrett tells Richie that they know so much about the diners because a staffer is charged with researching them (which is how they knew that the school teachers had been saving up for this night out), and we learn that the waiters are eavesdropping on the conversations among the diners (which is how they knew that one diner was unhappy to be leaving Chicago without having had a deep-dish pizza). That seems a little creepy and also over-the-top.
I think that depends - if I remember correctly, the pizza remark was overheard and not in a manner I would consider eavesdropping. And I don’t remember how they found out the teachers were saving up - I imagine that most teachers would have to save up to spend $300 or so a person on dinner. If the research consisted of finding out they are teachers , I don’t find that to be creepy. If they basically ran a background check, that’s another story.
Instagram, I think. Public social media posts strike me as fair game.
Oh yeah - I think public social media posts are definitely fair game. If a person posts something on public media or mentions something it in a public place where people can overhear without even trying to , I don’t think it’s creepy to use that information to surprise them by getting them deep dish pizza or comping their bill.
Thanks for this suggestion. Mrs. solost and I had started to watch the show, got through 2 or 3 eps, and she found the tension too uncomfortable to continue. Lately I’ve been wanting to get back into watching the show on my own, with the continued buzz about it and the start of S.2, but I always find it tough to get back into a stalled show. Do you start where you left off, or start again from the beginning to make sure you’re getting all the plot threads?
So last night I watched the S.1 final, and it was great. It seemed like the makers filmed it knowing that people would, or could, watch the S.1 ender first-- the soliloquy that Carmy delivered at the Al-Anon meeting was a nice piece of well-delivered exposition. Even if you hadn’t seen a single ep you’d be caught up from that alone. Now I feel free to go back and watch the S.1 eps I haven’t seen, or just go forward to S.2.
Want to try making some beef braciole now! Coincidentally, I just saw and bookmarked a good-looking recipe for it on Youtube a few days ago. Google must have known before I did that I was going to watch the last show of S.1.
I had a question about the S.1 ender, other than the question others in this thread have already asked about the brother hiding 300K when the restaurant is 300K in debt-- what was the point?
My question is more simple logistics-- how did nobody accidentally open a tomato sauce can with money in it until that episode, when so many cans were filled with money? By then the brother who hid it had been dead for like several months, right? Is there something I missed explaining that?
the sauce was strictly for family dinner, and Carmy declared no more spaghetti for those meals. There was no reason to open one. I don’t know if the money thing was ever properly explained beyond “he was on a lot of drugs”
I see, thanks. That is a lot of cans of sauce to keep around just for family dinners! Good thing Carmy didn’t decide to donate those cans to a food bank or something, since he didn’t think they’d be used!
I finally started watching this about a week ago and just finished the last episode (of Season 2). I really liked it and hope there’s another season.
Something I haven’t seen anyone mention yet is the episode that took place a few years earlier. The one with Jamie Lee Curtis (and all the other guest stars). First off, the shooting style kinda threw me at first. The entire feel of that episode was different, but still very much the same idea. From my point of view, what we see in all the other episodes is controlled chaos. Yes, everyone is yelling at each other, things are falling, lots of noises, dishes aren’t being made properly, but this is how they thrive. OTOH, at the Berzatto house, it’s very much the same. People yelling, dishes not being made properly, things falling, but there’s no order, no control, no logic, no one knows what’s going on and everyone is talking past each other. But instead of this whole chaotic scene being fueled by Carmy trying to get everyone to work together, it’s fueled by Donna’s alcoholism.
And, I think that’s all reflected in the way that episode was shot.
And, I hope the show, and Jaime specifically, win some awards for that one.
Also, the Dutch chef is the “You guys are getting paid” guy (We’re The Millers, is a really good movie, BTW).
Did I miss something leading up to Sydney at Marcus’ house? I get that there’s supposed to be some attraction there, but it seemed to come out of nowhere. Like, she was just…there.
I also think the writers did a really good job of giving everyone a character arc that seemed real. Especially Tina and Richie. Both went from telling, or wanting to tell Sydney to fuck off, to respecting her without it feeling cheesy or forced.
Was there any reason to have Josh out back smoking meth/crack? It seemed like nothing really became of it. Honestly, I figured he was going to kill Marcus, but that didn’t happen. Then I was more concerned he would kill Sydney (in front of her dad). But, nothing. I’m WAGing that something was cut or changed that made that scene unnecessary. If they were just going for a ‘people in restaurant kitchens use uppers to keep them moving’ they could have just caught him snorting some coke in the bathroom.
My only real nitpick was the freezer in the final episode. Every walk in freezer I’ve been in has (by law?) a push handle/knob/button on the inside. Even if it broke off, and even if they couldn’t just yank the door open, the hinges were right there. Fak could have had the door off in five minutes.
Even if he didn’t have any plans for them, he’d have found a way to use them in something before discarding them.
She visited him to talk about work, but unless I’m spacing I don’t remember anything romantic. I do recall him asking her out and Sydney turning him down so I don’t think so.
At the time, I just remember they seemed more familiar with each other than it seemed like they would be since they were only supposed to have known each other for, what, a few weeks. It may very well have just been a blossoming friendship that I misread as the beginning of a relationship.
Honestly, it was something I hadn’t really thought about much since that episode until he asked her out.
I forgot to mention one other thing I noticed. There was a Community reference in the last episode when Richie used the phrase “Streets Ahead”.
Streets ahead stands on it’s own as a call back to Community, but for those that didn’t watch it, Richie’s ex was part of the main cast.
We just watched this one and, wow, that was a performance! A performance that many can relate to. It was tough for me to watch.
As I’m planning to rewatch this, I was thinking about a few of the questions I had.
Is it possible Mikey put the money in the cans, and left the note about with pasta sauce recipe, because he was planning to kill himself and he wanted Carmy to find the money.
And this one isn’t so much of a question as it is something that bugged me. In the episode where the order printer keeps going and going and going and serves to drive the anxiety throughout the episode (was that the one when Carmy was in the freezer?), towards the end, the printer finally stopped, they’re caught up, they can finally take a breath. But then, later, we hear the machine still making noise. As it turns out, there were still orders coming in, but the machine was out of paper.
What bothered me is that they never addressed it. It happened, Sydney heard it, and that was the end of it. I’m assuming the implication was that she fixed it and they dealt with it, along with all the craziness that was going on earlier, but I don’t recall them even hinting at that happening.
But why hide it in the cans? That seems like a lot of extra work. Who was he hiding it from that he couldn’t just put it under his mattress?
I don’t think there would be a tax issue. There’s a few, entirely legal, ways to handle it:
Enter it into their books as a loan from Cicero, which Mikey may well have done.
or
Enter it into the books as income and pay tax on it (which is AIUI, the typical way to handle a loan that’s forgiven or defaulted on), which Mikey or Carmy probably wouldn’t do because they’d have to pay tax on it.
Also, if it was never entered into the books at all, they can do that now, either for the current tax year, a previous tax year for which they haven’t yet filed their return or even amend a previously filed return.
There’s also the possibility that Mikey or Carmy could report the money on their personal tax return as a gift, pay tax on it and then return it to the business as a credit against the drawing account.
I started watching The Bear based on discussion in the “series you have yadda…” thread. I’ve finished season 1 and the first episode or two of season 2. It makes me think just a tiny bit about Sweetbitter. In the aforementioned thread, I described Sweetbitter like this:
Sweetbitter, about a young woman working as a waitress in a high-end NYC restaurant. What made it interesting to me was just how alien it was to me. There is not one element of the series that I related to, not one element of the series that I aspired to or found appealing, and not one character that I remotely liked. Apparently the target audience was supposed to like the characters, though (unlike, for instance with Seinfeld or Always Sunny in Philidelphia). It might as well have been a documentary about filter-feeders in the muck beneath the methane lakes of Titan for the amount it made me want me to visit that world.
The Bear works as a drama for me because while I really have only the most minimal of interest in restaurants or their operation at least it has a few interesting characters I like. (Although I find the work environment shown to be far more toxic than anything I would put up with in real life if I had any choice in it.)
The show didn’t necessarily look like a show I’d be interested in, but if they’re going to go to the trouble of putting my beloved R.E.M. back in the pop culture conversation, I probably at least owe it a look.
I read something somewhere once that for a character to be relatable and believable (and I feel both about all the Bear characters), they have to be specific. That why Twilight fails for a lot of people is that they’re all so bland and generic. If you get really specific, instead of being more unbelievable because you personally can’t relate, they seem more real and human because most humans have some interest or thing about them you can’t understand. That feast of 7 fishes episode was one of my most uncomfortable experiences because it was so specific (and for me personally relatable).
Speaking of that 7 Fishes episode, this is where you seen Sugar’s husband:
Season 3 comes out on Thursday, June 27th. Just enough time to watch the first two seasons again.
I’m also seeing that Season 4 has already been recorded (unless it’s still being recorded). S3 and S4 were filmed back to back so I’m not sure if they’ll release Season 4 soon(er) or wait until next June.