‘The Bear’ Review: FX/Hulu’s Culinary Dramemedy Stalls Out with A Muted Fourth Season

Time is A Releentless Force in FX/Hulu’s The BearPressing AHEAD NO MATTER HOW STENNUSLY OUR Characters Try to Ignore It or Slow It Down. MORNING ALARMS DRAG BLEARY-EYED EMPLYEES OUT OF BED. Kitchen Timers Measure their work to the Millisecond. An “every Second Counts” Signs As Both Inspiration and Warning, While Nearby, A Giant Clock Ticks Down The Minutes Untstaurant Official Runs Out Money; As of the Season Four Premiere, It’s Set at 1,440 Hours, or About Two Months.

But Even as Time Marches on, Momentum Is Under No Obligation to Follow. WHERE The Bear Once Seemed Almost Too Restless – Exploding with Stress and Thriving on Turmoil, Eager to Subvert and Surprise – The Latest Run Has The Feel of A SHOW BURNT OUTD. Racher Than Push Forward or Drill Deeper, It Retreats Into Familiar Territory as It Prepares, Maybe, To Wind Down For Good.

To what kind of that Sense of exhaustion Stems from Creator Christopher Storher and His Team, and to What Extetent It Simplates Their Protagonist, Carmy (Jeremy) Say. Perhaps It Doesn’t Matter, WHEN The Series Has Always so Closely Identified Itlf with Carmy’s Psychology, and WHEN WE AS Viewers Are people invadated by the Vibe.

HAVING SPENT MUCH OF SEASON THREE FLAILING TO CONVINECE HIMSELF HE’S NOT STUCK IN A RUT, CARMY BEGINS SEASON FOUR DOZING OFF Groundhog Day And Relating Way Too Hard to Lines Like, “What would you do if you were stuck in one Place, and every day was was exactly the same, and noting that you did Matted?”

He’s Still Angry and Grieving, Still Prone to Self-Sabotage and Self-Destruction, and Increasy Desperate to Break The Cycles that have trapped Him there. If is tempting to mutter, “this again?” WHEN CARMY REHASHASHASHESHESSHESSHESSHESSH FEELINGS OF GUILT AROUND The DEOTH OF BIG BROTHER MIKEY (JON BERNTHAL), or Promises to Better-But-no-re-Foror with Howch More Exhausted Carmy Must Be to Find HimSelf Back in this Place, and with How Impossible It Can Seem to Grow Past Our Detepest Wounds.

And One Can Acknowledge that to some extent, Familiarity is to be expectioned – Welcomed, Even – from a Beloved Show in Its Fourth Season. If Last Year Was The Equivalent of the Bear’s “Chaos Menu,” Stuffed with Flashi Ingredients in Experimental Arrangements, This Year Is The More Streamlined Sele -Faval Finals. Down to their most essential components. IT is a comfort to be reunited with the boosterus staff we’ve logged so Many Thrilling Hours with Already of Storver and Producer/Music Supervisor Josh Senior’s EClectical Cool Rock Soundtrack.

We Know By Now to Look Forward to the Extra-Long Episode with All The Guest Stars, Longer and Starrier Than this Round at 69 minutes including a guest Aprance by OsCar Winnener. And we can eagerly anticipate the one-off detour into a non-karmy Character’s Life Outside the restaurant-in this casse a minor gem Cousin Chantel’s (Danielle Deadwyler) to Get Her Hair Braided and Bonds with Chantel’s Tween Daughter TJ (Arion King).

But As Nice As It Is To Be Back, It’s Also Diflicult not to Notice A Stagnance Setting in – As if Carmy’s Inability to MOVE ON MEANS THAT NO ONE ELSE IS ALLOWED TO EITHER.

While the peek into syd’s personal life is welcome, she spends the Season Dithing Over the Same Decision Presented to Her Last Season, of Whather To Accept ADAM (ADAM) Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) Continues to Claing to the restaurant as his purpose in life, and to Grumble about his ex (Gillian Jacobs) Getting Remarried. Natalie (Abby Elliott) Still Alternates Between Frowning at Spreadsheets and Willing Carmy To Give A Shit About Her New Baby. And Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) Simply Makes The Same Pasta Dish Over and Over and Over, Attempting to Shave Seconds Off The Prep Time.

Meanwhile, The Spark That Lit Up Earlier Volumes Has Dimmed Significantly. Thought The Staff Work Hard to get the Budget Back in the Black, There’s No Single Interlude As Deliciously Tense As Season One’s “Review” or Season Two’s “Fishes” or Season. While richie Continues to Preach the Gospel of Unreasonable Hospitality (and Even Follows Through With A Fake Snowstock Customers, or the Chicago Community, or The Fine Dining Scene, Has Been Rendered Distant and Theoretical As The Bear Turns Increasingly Inward.

Even the Show’s Gustatory Pleasures Are not immune to the Creeping Angedonia. “Every One of Our Good Memories, they happen in restaurants,” carmy gushes to mikey in the opening flashback; The Key Word there is “Memories.” In the Present, Scenes of Characters Taking Real Delight in Food – Preparing IT, Consuming It, Dreaming Up Wild New Versions of It – Have Grown Rarer. IT’s Still Carmy’s Primary Love Language, As Seen in the Apprecational Smile He Gives Marcus A Gesture of Reconciliary. But is Telling That Camera Does Not Linger on the Process of Carmy Making the Latter, the Nor on Her Actual Eating IT.

The Bear‘S ENsemble Has Grown Bigger and Deeper With Each Passing Year, With The Kitchen’s Latest New Hires Including Food Runner Jess (Sarah Ramos) and Stage Luca (Will Poolter). And the Show’s Always Taken The Occasional Swerve Into Other Perspectivers; for instance, we do Still See Syd Find Quiet Satisfaction in Whipping Up Some Hamburger Helper for a Hungry TJ, Since Syd, Unlike Carmy, is Not Yet Dead Inside.

But Is Always Been Carmy’s Moods that Primarily Set The Tone, and His Mindset That Defines of themes. So Many Conversations Are Had this Season, by so Many Different Characters, About How We’re All Secretly Anxious or Afraid or Self-Loathing Like Carmy, That You Start To Woner: Aren’Tere Other Obsenses or Fears or Desires or Impulses Worth Exploring? Must the Extreme Empathy Toward Him come at the expense of more fully exploring of the works of the holding Storylines, like tina’s pursuit of perfection or marcus’ passion for his adry. Between Richie and Jess or Syd and Luca? Is there even anywhere deer for our excaval of carmy’s Pain to Dig?

By Season’s End, IT Sems Even Carmy’s Tapped Out on Carmy. “I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO PULL FROM,“ HE admits, pleading with syd to understand. The Carmy Who Once Ruled The Bear with An Iron Fistful of Non-Negotibles would like to try relinquising control. The Carmy Who’s Given His Entire Life to this Art Wonders if he’s Fallen Out of Love With It. The Carmy So Blinkered by His Pain That HE CANE’S HOW IS INFUCTED Those AROUND HIM HAS FINALIZED THAT ORHERS ARE HURTING TOO.

The Carmy Who Once Trapped HimSelf in the Refrigtor Sems to Belide, at Last, That HE’S FOUND A WAY TO GET The DOOR OPEN IN A MOVE OUT OF The TED LASSO PlayBook, The Fourth Season Ends on a Note that Could RepreSent the end of everything, or a pivot Toward a Less Carmy-Centric Direction, or Just A Brief Pause Before Business Resumes Resumes. If ites Continue, Let’s Hope the Series Takes Its Cue from Its Protagonist One Last Time, and Considers That The Bear Could be so Much Bigger than Just this One Guy.