The Bear

Pop Culture Happy Hour - NPR

The final season of 'The Bear' delivers a tense, rain-soaked day at the restaurant, packed with crises and emotional crescendos. Critics debate its ending, particularly Carmy’s abrupt pivot to architecture, while praisin

Key takeaways

• Season focuses on intimate, high-stakes workplace tension

Transcript preview

Look, I know your inbox is full of spam, receipts, reply-alls, all that generic marketing stuff that gets tossed out into the world, it doesn't speak directly to you. Well, here's how you can put something actually interesting in there. Subscribe to our newsletter for a hand-picked guide to the stories and podcasts that matter. It's essays and recommendations delivered straight to you. No paywalls, no digging required. Sign up at NPR.org. slash pop culture newsletter. The Bear is here and it is a scaled back scaled down dish focused on the fundamentals that highlight the quality of its basic ingredients. Most of the season takes place over the course of a single day as the crew prepares for a maker break evening of service amid an escalating series of catastrophes. I'm Linda Holmes. I'm Glenn Weldon joining us today on NPR's pop culture happy hour is vulture TV critic Roxana Hadati. Hey, thank you for having me. Of course. So the final season of FX FX and hoolus. Emmy Magnet, The Bear, 21 Statuettes and Counting, thank you very much, takes place during a day-long thunderstorm as the restaurant gets hit with wave after wave of crises during prep, a burst pipe, a busted roof, a broken reservation system, dwindling supplies, and the usual interpersonal drang to go with all that stirm. The dynamic between Sid and Carmi, for example, is more strain than ever because Carmi is quitting the restaurant game. They're played of course by Iowa Debry and Jeremy and Jeremy I'm just trying to be... I'm trying to be helpful and do a good job. I'm sorry, I miss read that. Sorry, I... No, I'm sorry. I didn't, um... Thank you. Too much. Me, I, like... I'm overcompensating. Yeah. I have even mentioned that there is one guest who seems an awful lot like the Michelin critic they've been watching out for. How could they have picked this night of all nights? The Bear is streaming on Hulu and we're going to be talking about it all the whole... the finale so you know know that. Linda you reviewed this last season for NPR what you think? You know I really liked this season for the most part I will get to my two notes I think the first note is that it is a little slow in the beginning I think the first three episodes or so all of which are short I think they all read a little bit like one long scene and this is sort of the earlier in the day part where it's raining it's dark it's gray everything is dimly lit. score that they have that's sort of this to me melancholy tension kind of thing it made it feel slow and heavy to me that's my one beef but then once they get into the service itself I think those episodes are really good I very much enjoyed it I loved seeing all the restaurant people working together again they've done a lot of these one-off episodes and I've enjoyed a lot of those for what they are they've been great you know the episode where they go off and Sid is with her cousin and her cousin's daughter, great episode. Some of the flashback episodes, they're great. But I was really happy that they focused back in the restaurant. I had a great time. But then, and this is where we get to the point where we're discussing the whole season, so I showed that one more time. At the very end, in the finale, Carmie, Karmi decides to become an intern at an architecture firm. Now listen, I know that they did, and I didn't remember this until someone reminded me, but I know that they did show Karmi a season ago. Nevertheless, this kind of comes out of nowhere for me. And I felt this way last season too that I didn't think they really persuaded me that Karmi leaving restaurants was a good idea and I think they want you to feel like it's a healthy idea. I don't know if I think this is going to help him at all. I think if you don't deal with your stuff, I think if you don't deal with your stuff you can easily become just the same messy person in a different job. I think if you I did not find that a satisfying ending for him personally. It feels to me a little bit like, Karmi will just go get some job. And that's all they really did. And then he has this long scene where he speaks at great length about that last service and how it went and his whole life and it's very philosophical. And I assumed he was pitching a book to this woman who was played by Bonnie Hunt. And then at the end of this long speech, she's like, you're here to talk about an architecture firm internship And then that's the end of it. And they don't ever really say like, did he get that job for some reason even though he's totally unqualified and gave that speech? I didn't feel like that was satisfying at all. But listen, the Ritchie stuff I think is fantastic. I have loved the character of Ritchie who is Carmie's not literally cousin but you know spiritual cousin who became such a really great hospitality guy. The Ritchie wins for me were fantastic. inevitable they were going to get their Michelin star. They ended up getting two. I thought that was very satisfying, although I wanted to see Ritchie find out they got the stars. We didn't get to see that. But overall, I enjoyed this season a lot with the slow first episodes and the WTF architecture kind of caveats. Okay, Roxana, you also wrote about this for Vulture. One specific aspect of it, which we'll get to, but what was your overall impression? I also am generally pro? I mean, I think the which worked so well for me is that it is just a restaurant. It is a claustrophobic restaurant with a lot of people who have decided that they don't care about anything because that's the only way to get by in this world coming together to like make sandwiches. It's fine. It's very small scale. I think it is as ideologically