The final season of The Bear has achieved what many thought impossible: a triumphant return to form. After a dip in quality during seasons three and four, season five is the most entertaining and purely enjoyable since the first, culminating in a finale that gives every character exactly what they wanted.
A Return to Form
No show has ever needed to end like The Bear. The series initially made its name as a vehicle of pure forward momentum, telling the story of a burned-out high-end chef drafted in to fix up and save his dead brother's sandwich restaurant. Through eight breathless episodes, viewers saw Carmy get repeatedly pummelled by the stresses of the job – fights, demands, an accidental stabbing – as he sought to rebuild it in his own image.
With the benefit of hindsight, this probably should have been the entire show. Because The Bear was in such an almighty clatter to get where it wanted to go that, when it got there, it didn't have the first clue how to proceed. Seasons three and four both stalled badly, in a morass of montages and flashback episodes that felt like placeholders. The drop-off was tangible.
A Single Day of Chaos
For the most part, season five is set over the course of a single day, where everything imaginable has gone wrong. Staff have left. The weather is bad. The plumbing is on the fritz. The money has run out. There isn't enough food and there are too many people. Which sounds incredibly stressful, but that's sort of the point. Despite what its producers might have thought over the past couple of years, people didn't watch The Bear to witness a berserk succession of food-based screensavers. They wanted to see a bunch of people deal with an endless procession of workplace obstacles. Finally, that's what we got.
Crucially, though, we got to see the competent version of it. This was the version of The Bear (the restaurant) as run by Ayo Edebiri's Sydney, following Carmy's resignation last year. Her cool handling of the multiple crises was an echo of the old favourite therapy motto that stress is universal, but acting on it is a choice. As such, a lot of the season scratched the same sort of itch that The Pitt does, where you get to feel the pleasure of seeing talented people solving problems together.
Fun and Comedy Return
And it was fun, too. After winning so many Emmys for comedy, despite its obvious lack of comedy, it felt like The Bear had something to prove. Almost every character was allowed to be entertaining this time around, from Ebra's ongoing determination not to be dazzled by Carmy's blue eyes to the highlight of the whole series – a Greek chorus of diners packed into the kitchen, obliviously Yes-Cheffing to the disdain of the actual chefs. It isn't impossible to read this thread as an affectionate jab at The Bear's viewers, who all went bandy for Carmy's heavyweight loopwheeled T-shirts all those years ago.
The Finale: Everyone Gets What They Want
The ending itself was another change of pace. Stripped of the Hans Zimmer-produced electronic pulse that accompanied much of the series (which itself replaced the show's once-characteristic dad rock needledrops), the finale was essentially an epilogue, consisting of several frictionless scenes where everybody basically got what they wanted.
The restaurant was recognised by Michelin. It solved its money problems by becoming a franchise. Cousin Richie, a man who once considered a 40-minute drive to be an epic road trip, finally left the country. And Carmy, as promised, left the restaurant industry. This was an interesting choice, because throughout the show he has demonstrated an innate talent for cooking, and a segment of the audience may well find itself disappointed that he didn't keep pursuing his passion.
The fact that he didn't do this opened up a more nuanced conversation, about what to do when you start to hate the only thing you're good at. The last shot of him – finally at peace, maybe for the first time ever – seemed to suggest that moving on is a risk worth taking.
An Extraordinary Rollercoaster
The Bear has been an incredible rollercoaster. Its highs were as high as you can get, but its lows were bafflingly awful. The fact that it ended as strongly as it did is nothing less than extraordinary. I cannot imagine saying this a couple of years ago, but I'm going to miss it.
