Was ‘The Bear’ Series Finale a Delicious Dessert or an Unnecessary Add-On?

[SPOILERS are contained below for “The Original Beef of Chicagoland,” the series finale of FX/Hulu’s The Bear.]

ANGIE HAN: So this is the way The Bear ends: not with a bang, but with the pleasantly frivolous chitchat of partygoers deciding who gets what piece of birthday cake.

After a penultimate episode that, as you pointed out in your review, pretty much delivers exactly what you’d want or expect from a finale, the actual finale is mostly an extended victory lap around the world that Christopher Storer has created. It ties up a few barely loose ends, like the identity of the spoon thief, but otherwise is more about giving each of the Bears one last long hug before sending them on their merry way. (While bringing in a bunch of big-name cameos, of course, because that is the Bear way.)

Was it strictly necessary? I wouldn’t say so. I didn’t need further confirmation that Richie and Jess are A Thing, or that Marcus and Luca are parting on good terms, or even that Carmy approves Ebra’s franchising pitch; I’d already assumed all those things.

But you don’t order that last splash of Sauternes because you need it; you order it because it feels nice to linger over something sweet at the end of a satisfying meal. The finale felt like that kind of extra. Especially after a season so ruthlessly focused on a single shift, it was a treat to get to see Syd relax with her dad on her day off, or Tina and her husband giddily discuss her promotion, or even Carmy make an actual joke (!) by pretending to be stuck in the fridge again.

I did have a moment of worry when it seemed like Carmy might be about to pitch a TV show about a talented but troubled young chef, to be called something like, oh I don’t know I’m just spitballing here, The Bear. But he wasn’t! He was just emotionally dumping on a total stranger during an internship interview. If I were that manager, I would not hire this man. But maybe you feel differently. Dan, would you hire this slightly more enlightened version of Carmy?

DANIEL FIENBERG: I was absolutely CERTAIN that Carmy was going to meet with a television network about doing a show called The Bear, and my only question was whether or not John Landgraf would play himself, so I guess I’ll also give the finale some level of credit for not doing that one obvious thing.

Otherwise, I think we’re probably saying the same thing in the opposite way, because I thought the finale was wholly unnecessary and, in its superfluousness, actively irritating. It was one thing after another directed at viewers who should have been capable of making assumptions or imagining. I gained absolutely nothing from being told that Jess and Richie were eventually going to sweetly touch and then hold hands. I gained absolutely nothing from another scene with Luca and Marcus being sincerely appreciative and affectionate, if they weren’t going to kiss, and even then, I didn’t necessarily need that. I gained absolutely nothing from the fact that Bob Odenkirk and Molly Gordon were available to appear in the background of crowd scenes at Eva’s birthday, a bash at which she received an average-looking cake but not what she wanted more than anything in the world: a table even larger than the table they had at her mother’s wedding party.

I actually gained negative things from learning that Carmy’s long-avoided call was from the distributor of Michelin stars, revealing that The Bear didn’t receive one star…it received TWO, which gave Carmy and Sydney an excuse to hug, even if the lesson I took away from the first four seasons was that investing in frivolous things like stars and reviews was a path toward madness and away from artistry.

Actually, if I took anything from the first four seasons, it was that The Bear was special because what started off as a family restaurant for the literal Berzatto family evolved into a restaurant where everybody was family. Short of a bizarre cameo from Don Draper in comical old-age makeup pitching Uncle Jimmy on the tag line “When you’re here…you’re family,” the point couldn’t have been made more broadly and obviously.

Did the finale give you anything you required after the seventh episode? Did Ebra’s “As you wish” to Albert on the phone count as a sufficient acknowledgement of the departed Rob Reiner? Did you think Richie deserved the closing pre-cake divvying piece of the finale? Was this Richie’s story for you?

HAN: Personally, I was less baffled by Richie’s anxiety about flying to Japan than I was by why he decided what his daughter wants for her birthday is a party at his job, attended by all his coworkers. Just because the Bears are “family” in the Olive Garden sense doesn’t mean it’s fun for a kid to tiptoe around expensively breakable plates when she could be burning off her sugar high in a park or a roller rink instead.

I do think it would have made more sense to close on Syd, as The Bear has been in large part the story of Carmy passing the torch to her — and particularly since this has been such an excellent season for Ayo Edebiri, whose expressive face allows us to feel every single blow the character endures over the course of the shift from hell. But it’s been a persistent flaw of the show that it’s never seemed quite as interested in Syd’s internal journey as it has in Carmy and Richie’s struggle to get out from under the weight of their Mikey-related trauma and self-loathing.

That part, I won’t miss. I’m happy for Carmy that he and the rest of the Berzattos and Berzatto-adjacents seem to be in a healthier place than they were in season one. But the well of his angst had run dry some time ago, and I’m pleased to be done tapping it. Actually, as I think of it, I don’t think there’s much more I want out of The Bear in general. I have no interest in further excavating Nat’s complicated relationship with Donna, or Richie’s with Mikey, or anything involving anyone with the last name “Fak.”  

I will miss spending time with characters like Syd, Marcus, Tina and Luca, and it’s not lost on me that they’re the ones least related to the increasingly exhausting Berzattos. But even there, I don’t especially long to find out what the restaurant will look like under Syd’s stewardship, or whether Marcus will repair his relationship with his dad. Is that an indication the show has given me everything I required, or that it’s worn out its welcome? And while I mull that over, what are you going to miss or not miss about The Bear?

FIENBERG: The Bear will look a lot like it looked under Carmy’s watch, only with less shouting and smaller portions. I was baffled by the conversation with Nat and Sydney, where the takeaway was: “Let’s maintain the smaller portions, but we definitely aren’t going to lower the prices for diners.” That’s one thing I never felt the show did with any authority — make it seem like The Bear was a place I would ever want to eat. It was a strange in-between ground that Christopher Storer liked to maintain, in which the heroes were Ebra and the Original Beef counter-people yet none of the dishwashers and very-back-of-staff figures ever became real characters. There was the bizarre scene earlier in the season in which the three dishwashers — Angel, Manny and somebody else — were impressed and confused that Sydney thought to inquire about their well-being, but then they were never heard from or seen ever again. The series had interest in the employees it could position as upwardly mobile, but it abandoned other supporting characters entirely.

The truth is that while the third and fourth seasons suffered backlash, I liked those seasons. I liked the arty standalone episodes. I liked when Storer got a little pretentious and poetic. And that was all abandoned completely to charge toward “When you’re here, you’re family, except for if you wash dishes, in which case you won’t be invited to Eva’s birthday party.” (Eva had a bunch of friends at the party, too. They just didn’t get close-ups. Claire only barely got a close-up. Gordon and Odenkirk seemed so disconnected from the rest of the cast in that scene that I wondered if AI was involved.)

The truth is, I’m going to miss the ensemble. Jeremy Allen White was the immediate centerpiece and he got the biggest career bump, but his follow-up projects have illustrated his limitations or his questionable choices. Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach have been smarter and more selective, and I’m not just saying that because I’m in the middle of a Broadway theater trip that unexpectedly focused on The Bear supporting players. Edebiri is great in Proof, which got a bum rap from critics who wanted the show to blow them away like the original production did rather than exploring new themes that the primarily Black cast brought to the surface. It worked for me much more than Dog Day Afternoon, which is torpedoed by Jon Bernthal’s poorly considered Al Pacino karaoke but finds Moss-Bachrach in brooding, charismatic form.