The Bear is a fast paced and intense show. It begins with Carmy taking over a restaurant and throwing the experienced and long time workers into upheaval. He doesn’t follow the system that the previous owner, Michael, has designed. We’re shown early that Carmy is having trouble paying the bill. The meat merchant delivers half the normal amount, because that’s all that was paid. He spends endless time on the phone haggling with vendors and utilities to buy more time. He sells his jean collection for extra money. His cousin, a firebrand, comes in swearing and tearing him apart. Everyone is at odds with each other.

This is the show. Normally shows will give you one or two major conflicts, they will trail out over the episode and you’ll have ups and downs and small victories and small wins, but eventually a victory right at the end of the episode. This is designed to create tension and intrigue to pull the audience in, and then give a victory and a good moment at the end, enjoy it, before another disaster hits.

The Bear takes a different direction. Every interaction is tension. There are no normal conversations. Everything is taken up to Eleven. He has to fight his way through every single person to get a single step closer to his destination. This is what pulls the audience in. We like Carmy. He’s a good guy and he’s really trying. It makes him different from my Last video about Your Honor. The judge in that show makes an immoral choice, one that the audience has a hard time with. Here, Carmy is making the right choices, but can’t ever seem to catch a break.

We are drawn into the story because we want Carmy to succeed. We like him. The intensity is drawn in by each little conflict in the show. Tina is yelling at him because he’s used her pot. The knives are all dull. The bread mixer is bad. The arcade machine is barely hanging on. The nutcases outside who want to play the arcade game attack Carmy. Sydney wants to reinvent the wheel. Richie is fueled by anger against Michael for killing himself, against Carmy for ruining the restaurant, and his own place in life. Carmy’s sister wants her brother to live unlike their dead one, and Carmy can’t find rest anywhere. The restaurant is small. People run into each other. People are rude. Everyone is at each other’s throats.

This tension will make you love or hate the show. If you can make it through it. If you can make it to the end, success will be all the greater. The triumph at the end is the sum of all the tribulations. But it means there is no moment of rest. It means that those who can watch it will be sucked into a story and can’t watch it fast enough and can’t watch enough or those who can’t will be anxious and leave it for Bob Ross.

Music by Simon Swerwer,
Cuggin's Cove,
Emergence,
Inith and Od Travel North