The previous season of Disney foodie drama, The Bear, left a sour taste. After two years of moreish melodrama set amid the world of mid-level Chicago dining, a once bingeable affair had dissolved into a showy gloop of montages and flashbacks. It was as if it was in a holding pattern – trying to reserve a table in the affections of viewers without doing anything useful with it.
That’s all changed as the show returns for a solid fourth run (Disney+, Thursday). We rejoin Jeremy Allen White’s tortured chef Carmy as he recovers from the shock of a mildly negative review in the Chicago Tribune. That a disapproving write-up in a regional American paper could be life or death for an eatery is obviously hugely fanciful in 2025. But The Bear runs with it and keeps a straight face as it does so.
The problem, says Carmy’s bestie (and sous chef) Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), is that the Tribune’s food critic was discombobulated by their multiple visits. Carmy’s appetite for creative destruction might feed his creative instincts, but it makes a poor recipe for success.
“The Trip ate here three times at three different restaurants,” she says. “They didn’t like the chaos.”
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Such misgivings are shared by The Bear’s financial backers, Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) and “The Computer” (not a computer, and played by Brian Koppelman). Over the first five episodes of this latest season they threaten to pull the plug unless the ship is turned around. It is a signal to Carmy to pull out of his funk and focus on the survival of his business.
The price of entry at The Bear is believing that a restaurant is more than just a restaurant. Carmy reiterates the point in a flashback in which he talks to his brother, Michael (Jon Bernthal), whose suicide originally led to Carmy’s return to Chicago from his high-flying chef career in New York. “[Running a restaurant] is hard, it’s gnarly it’s brutal it’s specific ... not everyone can do it ... I can do it,” he says during one of several over-written monologues. “We can make it calm, we can make it delicious.”
White is soon to play Bruce Springsteen in what will, in all likelihood, be an Oscar-garlanded biopic. As the anarchic Carmy, he summons all his now familiar mumbly charm. But you wonder, from viewing the first five episodes of this latest season, if his heart is quite in it. Hollywood beckons and, set against the glories of Tinsel Town, how can a humble Chicago restaurant – even one bedecked with Emmys – possibly compete? The answer is, it can’t. For all its renewed enthusiasm, it is hard not to suspect that last orders may beckon for The Bear.
The Bear, all 10 episodes can be streamed on Disney+ from Thursday, June 26th.
