The Bear season 2 review: Last year’s show of the summer makes a brilliant return

It’s a simple sandwich. Like most such regional specialties—the cheesesteak, the Cuban. The Italian beef is meat (thin sliced roast beef); bedded by bread (a French roll); slicked and sent heftily waist-ward with a personal preference combination of mozzarella, au jus, and hot or sweet peppers. It’s elemental, almost primal, served in corner hot-dog joints and pizzerias and pretty much everywhere except places that aren’t in Chicago. Typically listed on one of those old-timey yellowing menu boards, it doesn’t really seem so transcendent, so special. Just as anyone anywhere with a can of cheese whiz and a butcher cut of ribeye can cobble together a facsimile of that Philly delicacy mentioned above, it may make you wonder: What’s the big deal?

And yet sometimes, in some places, something happens when you eat one, with the razor thin blankets of glistening meat, the juicy drip, the garlic hints, the sturdy soaked sponge of a roll hanging on for dear life amidst the giardiniera pop and the stockyard waft. At once muscular and tender, already overwrought yet still accommodating, welcoming to a veneer of half-melting cheese. There is a dripping psychic girth to it all and to the color of the places you might get one—vintage Coca-Cola signage, framed celebrity photos, ubiquitous folks with arms crossed awaiting an order—that’s almost inextricable from the city itself.

Especially if you’ve had one there and then tried a recreation in any type of city with less wide shoulders. Even the best in a place as nearby as, say, Milwaukee tastes like a copy of a copy. The saturated roast beast feels part of the city as most any of the characteristic stereotypes—the flag with the stars, the Bean, the silhouette of the Hancock—but in a far stranger, more specific way. Italian beef is not representative of Chicago like the Bears, per se, but more like Ditka’s mustache.

A simple sandwich. Sort of.

Of course, plenty in Chicago will not agree with the above description. Plenty in Chicago would be quick to read any outsider, or even insider’s, perspective, and give whatever might be the complete opposite reaction of “yes, Chef.” Plenty in Chicago like to argue, to, well, get worked up. Maybe not exactly as much as Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who is Richie in The Bear. This is a parody of a Chicagoan, as most Chicagoans will tell you. Sure. But like all things food, like anything hometown proud, it means something, something more, to say, “you don’t get it.” Or, in this case, something akin to “Johnnie’s is the best.”

Identity performance goes far by way of sandwich stances. Much like it does for takes on popular television. Combining both, especially when everyone and their cousin was stuffing themselves on The Bear in the summer of ’22, allows for an indulgence in strong proclamations showing how much one knows about food, life: “An Italian beef restaurant doesn’t have a sous-chef.” It allows a roll of eyes: “The menu doesn’t make any sense.” “Chefs don’t have biceps!” The Chicago Reader summed up season one by contrasting the “thrill of recognition” with the “contempt for inaccuracy.” (This piece also compared the show to the melodramatic yearnings of Hillbilly Elegy, so, here we are not taking the fictional restaurant world lightly.)

But we’re getting away from the beef. And actually, season two of The Bear (out June 22 on Hulu), or rather, “Part 2,” opens with every urge to get away from the beef. There is no mention of the sandwich that made The Original Beef famous in the first season, as the restaurant and employees are caught in a somber higher stakes moment of life, of faraway gazing and people wondering aloud, “How’s your life?” Amidst a brutal montage of pandemic shutterings, it is an epoch of restaurant purgatory, a time of googling “fun,” of attempting to poach kitchen help from workers on a back-alley smoke break, of a constant countdown till opening looming like a life deadline, of endless whine and pound of drills and hammers, of “Fuck my life to death” penned onto the calendar.

Opening with a hospital visit, with a sad morning scraping of windshield ice, beautifully, tenderly, there is the piano of Bruce Hornsby’s “The Show Goes On.” It is one of those winter days where the skyline hovers, but seems always out of reach. Soon we will be in a quiet basement with Richie, wondering to Carmy, “What’s my purpose, homie? Who am I to my history?” He’s philosophical on some reading he’s been at (Murakami, from the sound of it). And there is Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), looking service industry-miserable, sleep deprived, as the joint’s old-school signage is brought down and such aforementioned framed photos are removed from the wall—the camera lingering for a loving second on that of Anthony Bourdain, and then for even one second longer on that of Harold Ramis. Yes, did we mention we are in Chicago? Wilco too will make a soundtrack appearance before episode one is half out. (It’s worth noting here that only the first four of this season’s 10 episodes were allowed to be considered for pre-air reviews.)

In this restaurant’s quest to find itself, to be born again, is the squad’s pressing need to make a plan, for a “facelift and a gut,” to deal with the fact the “frier is fucked.” The viewer is very much not the frog slowly warmed to a boil in the proverbial pan, but the one tossed directly into the overheated reunion of caustic ball-busting. The goal is to ditch The Beef and build The Bear, a vaguely envisioned high level dining and hospitality “destination spot.” Sydney is enchanted by notions of a Michelin star—“just one”—amidst the agitated propulsion and staticky air and Richie yelling and Neil (a pitch perfect Matty Matheson, playing himself, basically) braying, and then Richie yelling louder from closer. As Sydney and Carmy propose a partnership with Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), an alarm echoes unstoppably in the background, feeling like the unfettered firework pops of the penultimate scene of Boogie Nights, lending an urge for everyone, viewer included, to get out of the room, the scene. It seems there is no simmer for the mounting agitation. Everything is propelled, ratcheted by conversations intersecting and Altman-esque cross speak, rising voices bouncing about the angles and off corners of the claustrophobic stainless steel itself. “Go fast boats mojito … all one word,” suddenly Richie is yelling into the phone the password to the security company, releasing a valve. Always in the background, ready to close in, he follows this with an eloquent “Yeah bitch!” from the next room. At times it can feel like endurance viewing, with so much vitriolic but loving rancor, so much guttural speak, so much frantic and desperate Sharpie-on-cardboard math-ing. Carmy does his best crunching endless numbers, thinking he’s “pretty much right on a couple of ‘em.”

If an old-school neighborhood beef joint was closed by family members, renamed for an animal, spruced, elevated, sent their pastry chef to study in Denmark (as Marcus is, in a wonderfully quiet tangent of an episode), and drank the Kool Aid for Michelin stars, everyone in the neighborhood would instinctively despise it. But such thoughts are for Chicago-er than thou cynics, realists.

This is a fiction rather, a dream-follow narrative. And real life or not, it is easy, comfortable to feel zapped back to last summer’s rhythm, with rat-a-tat dialogue fire to be swept away, into the food service world—one we all either know too well or take wildly for granted. The thrust feels in lockstep with the assured cadence of the show itself, where tension is amped, puffed, sweated over, then popped with a zing, resolved, before eventual steady meaningful glances remind of Mikey, the Beef’s deceased owner, The Bear’s presiding ghost, the story’s King Hamlet. And then the needle drops to tug at appropriate heartstrings. Though the show’s own, it is a formula. And it might feel almost fast-casual if not for the execution. For the Shazam-worthiness of the playlist (Edwin Starr, Tommy McGee, the dreamy sweetness of Mulatu Astatke). For Sydney’s tough but amicable genuineness, her dogged wide-eyedness. For the way Carmy can exude frustration and still maintain sweaty disgruntled hand-on-head magnetism. For the way Richie (despite what anyone tells you, spend some time in a Chicago bar watching a primetime Bears game at a local’s watering hole and see if there aren’t three Bud Light-swilling Richies) exudes something of the character of the second city, searching for the purpose of searching for a purpose and unable to do much in that regard anyway except get in your face. He struggles to refrain from slurs and to explain “failed Jewish lightning,” and is half-lovably ridiculous in his inability to help himself. He counters with the tenderness he can coax out for his daughter, despite the impossibility of the car seat, despite the need to say tearful farewells with apologies: “I love you. I love Taylor Swift too, I just needed a break.”

From the first bite are all the markings that made the show a massive hit last year. Twenty five minutes of patter and flow and it feels almost like time for a drink from a big plastic pitcher. And maybe a wet nap. Or, since we’re going in that direction, perhaps an amuse bouche?

But The Bear remains far from food-as-metaphor. There is as much actual eats as anything this side of the Food Network. Ideation and research goes toward a “chaos menu,” but “thoughtful.” Discussions ricochet like popcorning Eater buzz words: veal chop demiglace, sardine piri piri, cherry vinegar, beef consomme, smoked bone marrow. There is “way too much acid” when we get to the trial phase. There is a repeated thing not unlike a spit take, but, rather, a salt take. There is marinated radicchio, burnt grapefruit, “a little chile in there.” There is drinking water out of plastic containers. They do this even at home, apparently? There are Chicago ventures: a Kasama’s breakfast sandwich with longaniza, Avec, a sundae from Margie’s Candies shining like a moment of Proust. Somebody has been binging Chef’s Table, mainlining David Chang content for this citywide food tour: so many closeups of tearing bread, of sheeny pho, of sated stomach eyes getting wide. Dumplings, pierogies. Soundtracked food closeups make beautiful television. It all ends with an architectural boat tour and inspiration. “You’re gonna have to care about everything, more than anything.”

This is sports-movie halftime talk. And really, these are largely another brand of those types. The frustrated lunatics unable, unwilling, disinterested to go toward the “backup plan” that Sydney’s dad, like any decent dad, wonders about. And yet there remains almost zero romanticism in the gruntery of it all. In this world Barkeeper’s Friend is a valuable life lesson. Culinary school is led by a gym teacher goon in a silly hat there to remind you know nothing about anything, have been a fraud, will continue to hack as a fraud in a windowless room until the business you’re not getting paid to help start inevitably folds and you go to a different windowless room. These are the types that don’t know what to do with themselves on an off day. This is a certain breed where extra time leads to dangerous thinking, back to the knowledge that this is a “terrible idea,” and will be moved toward anyway. Despite the reality it is mostly just dealing in the red-tape rigmarole of permits, IRS stipulations, “weirdos and the scientists and the abatement people.” The building is a moldy shithole. Walls need to be knocked down to keep the place up. It very much seems like pushing papers around a desk in an office, or waving at planes with mini-lightsabers, as Sydney’s dad offers through a connection, would be fine, peaceful, refreshingly normal. And yet, there is a compulsion, probably bordering on addiction.

When trying to entice his sister, Sugar (Abby Elliott), to come aboard, she is understandably reluctant: “Timing on my side is not great.” To which Carmy replies, “Never is.” Later, it is turned around: “Not enough money.” “Never is.” There is a constant need, for more, for a partner, no matter how trustworthy or good faith. It is a brutal world and takes antisocial-type dedications. In this latter realm, Carmy does something so unthinkable, so annoyingly absurd, so drunk on restaurantering romance, it is a frustrating reminder: Restaurants are not run by normal people.

Season one hit like the song of the summer, popping up with a strut and assuming an instantaneous kind of anti-foodie foodist proto-punk Bourdain buzz. It was at once like the Superiority Burger of television. And if food is indeed the new rock n’ roll, sometimes The Bear is like watching live footage of peak early Stones, sweaty and swaggery, kinetic and frustrated and lowdown, with a single-take episode relentless in twitchy anxiety and menacing kitchen camaraderie so tight it frequently edges on violence. But then there is that heart: Mavis Staples singing “You are Not Alone”; Sydney at a diner with her dad; Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) 1,000-watt beaming with promotion pride on a chilly street on her way home. And then, maybe some sly relief: “It’s not your fault, it’s the mold’s.” And there is another needle drop, seamless, manipulative, sure, but with a certain cockiness and amble mostly irresistible. There is Carmy, all mussed hair and haphazard tattoos and devil-may-care damaged accoutrement. There’s even something to the way he smokes, a style distinctive to those in the service industry, at once both meditative and desperate.

In the wake of Bourdain, chefs have likely attained too high a status in the present culture of cool. But, turn down any urge for the show to be a Food Channel documentary and he’s impossible to deny: the poetry of someone hunched over, focused, whittling away the bullshit of the world to make something that makes a little sense. Or at least gives a second of good mouthfeel.

At the top of any list of food films is the 1996 Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub vehicle Big Night. It is a bittersweet ode to the messy restaurant sandwich of frustration, competition, familial bickering, the struggle for understanding, stunted artistry, business anxieties, the singular hope of magic and it all going just so, and goddamn Louis Prima showing up for dinner. This against the absurd and likely cacophony of it all going wrong. The Bear feels like a natural successor, joining that film near the top of the pantheon of such stories—that of the character study of a restaurant.