‘The Bear’ Season 5 is a worthy sendoff and my favorite stream of the week
‘The Bear’ Season 5 is a worthy sendoff and my favorite stream of the week
The show’s final season doesn’t tread a lot of new ground, but it still provides a fitting coda for beloved characters.
The first seasons of “The Bear” featured some of the best pure storytelling I’d ever seen on TV. I still find myself haunted by the Season 2 episode “Fishes,” a flashback episode that took viewers inside the Berzatto home for a fateful Christmas celebration.
But in the past couple of seasons, I’ve found the storytelling petering out a bit. The threat of the fine-dining restaurant known as The Bear closing became a peril so instantly after chefs Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto and Sydney Adamu worked so hard to get the place off the ground in the first place that I never felt the stakes were truly high. Some of that problem lingers in the show’s fifth season, but it was still my favorite stream of the week.
I guess the best way to think of “The Bear” Season 5 is as comfort food. It hits a lot of beats fans will find familiar from the fourth season: the restaurant is out of money, and Jimmy Cicero is actively trying to sell it out from under Sydney, Richie, and the rest of the crew, if he can clear up certain bureaucratic matters. Oh, and the building is actively falling apart amidst one of the worst storms in recent memory for the city of Chicago.
But just as with comfort food, I found myself not really worrying about whether I’d tasted parts of “The Bear” Season 5 before. The characters, the setting, and the show’s devotion to giving the chefs and staff of The Bear an honorable ending ended up being too good to put down.
As usual, I thought “The Bear” Season 5 was shot immaculately. The care taken with each shot is like the precision of the food itself; every frame tells a story in “The Bear,” and it feels so visually efficient while also being a rich viewing experience. The director of photography for “The Bear” Season 5, Andrew Wehde, deserves a ton of credit.
While there are a ton of fantastic characters in the show’s cast, the key relationship of “The Bear” continues to be that of Carmy and Sydney. Even with Carmen officially set to exit the restaurant, the season gives us the traditional “tension-turns-to-respect” conflict between the characters one last time. But I did appreciate how Sydney gradually became more of a leading presence as the season progressed.
Through four episodes, it’s Richie’s character who has undergone the least evolution in Season 5. To a degree, that’s just fine, since the character’s growth was a big focus of prior seasons. It’s funny to watch him struggle with the need to cancel 15 reservations, which strains the professionalism and love of the job that have become such key parts of his nature. I just wish he had a little more to do, but no doubt he’ll play a bigger role as the season wraps up.
Thus far through my watch-through of Season 5, the show hasn’t really focused on any of the characters’ lives outside the restaurant — something I was really hoping to see. Perhaps the close-out episodes of the season will have more of this, but it doesn’t appear to be trending that way four episodes in.
All in all, however, I still love watching the Faks bumble around the restaurant pretending to help. I relish Tina’s continued journey in building the confidence she needs to thrive in the kitchen. And I keep rooting for Ebraheim to get a chance to show he has a good idea stashed away, if anyone gives him the opportunity. “The Bear” Season 5 is a fantastic comfort meal, even if it doesn’t close the series out with any brand-new flourishes.
Viewers can stream “The Bear” Season 5 from start to finish on Hulu. New episodes of the show also air on FX at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday evenings.
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