Reviews of season three of The Bear are starting to come in, and it seems the highly anticipated series has gone downhill.
The restaurant drama starring Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, among others, dished its third course yesterday. After sweeping the Emmys earlier this year, winning Best Comedy series and multiple acting awards, fans are eager to get their teeth into another season.
However, the reviews are starting to pile in, and they’re not all as celebratory as fans might have expected. The season appears to not deliver on full enough story lines, character progression, and seems to largely repeat many of the same, albeit successful, tropes as the previous two seasons.
Many critics have noted the use of montage scenes in season three, something which is used in many episodes in the prior seasons. When pastry chef Marcus visits Copenhagen to refine his dessert-making skills, for example, or when sous chef Syd tests out some of the best food Chicago has to offer. These montages were popular before, however, these new additions don’t seem to have been received quite so well.
In a three-star review by The Independent, Nick Hilton wrote: “The third season’s opener is just an ASMR montage of people making ravioli and tweezing edible flowers onto flumes of luminous foam, which serves as an emotional amuse-bouche for the episodes to come.
“It is avant-garde stuff – evoking the confusion felt by the weird third course on a tasting menu – but one that comes dangerously close to being boring.”
Meanwhile, in a three-star review, The Guardian’s Rebecca Nicholson wrote about the first episode’s style: “Dogged repetition is the enemy of convincing storytelling. It needs to move. This means the excellent Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) is somewhat sidelined, both in the storyline and, to some extent, the season. What a waste.”
And in Variety, Alison Herman echoed: “It also tells us nothing we don’t already know, making room for cameos by a slew of culinary legends at the expense of moving the story forward. The structure would work for an extended cold open to establish Carmy’s mood; stretched to an entire episode, it’s an overindulgence.”
Another common theme which critics have picked up on is that while there was immense pressure on the show to deliver, the pressure within the story seems to have dulled. Both The Guardian and The Independent note that the stakes are “lower” now that the new restaurant, ‘The Bear’, has opened.
According to The Independent, this makes the season’s purpose unclear: “If the first series was about returning to your roots and the second about turning those roots into a nice, earthy terrine, what drives this third instalment?”
Variety, however, observed that the season’s repetitiveness and lack of direction may lean into the purpose of the entire show: “In some ways, the season’s sometimes aimless feeling is part of its purpose. Even, and perhaps especially, at successful operations, restaurant life is a grueling hamster wheel. There’s always another fire to put out, another benchmark to achieve.”
The Guardian observed that the episodes felt unfinished, perhaps due to the show’s filming of season three and four back to back: “For long periods, these 10 episodes feel like half of something. It is as if The Bear has done what the biggest blockbuster movie franchises sometimes do, and split its later instalments in two. I found the ending to be unbelievably frustrating.”
Variety echoed this point, writing: “Richie is still figuring out how to be a good dad; Sydney is still finding her voice as an artist and leader; Carmy is still a grown man who can’t text a girl he likes. As in Season 1, the sense of stasis is true to life — and frustrating to watch. Without a cathartic climax, even supposed reprieves like deploying the Fak brothers (Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri) for comic relief quickly wear thin.”
However, in a four-star review, Empire’s John Nugent praised the show’s sporadic coverage of stories, writing: “The show’s conceptual boldness and unwillingness to follow a linear narrative remains its strongest card, and the high points come in bottle episodes that deepen individual character arcs.”
This criticism of the comedic aspects of The Bear is again addressed in The Guardian’s review, as the Fak family appear to get a bigger storyline in season three: “The Fak family get a long-running subplot that seems to be a concession towards a lighter mood, but it goes on for too long and interrupts the weightier themes that are desperate to push to the front. Gallows humour is one thing, but slapstick surely belongs elsewhere.”
However, many critics still celebrate the show’s strengths, including its acting and directing. The Guardian, which called the series “still one of the finest shows on television,” praised two individual episodes as “knockouts”. Speaking about the episodes ‘Napkins’ and ‘Ice Chips’, it wrote: “Both conduct their own inventories of the past and hone The Bear’s sentimentality into a raw and tender magnificence.”
This is echoed by Empire, which called ‘Napkins’, Edebiri’s directorial debut, “the best episode this time round.”
The Independent praised the series’ award-winning cast, writing: “The cast are still exceptional – particularly Moss-Bachrach and Edebiri, elevated to TV’s A-list since the show first aired,” while Variety celebrates its stand-alone flashback episode, and the “long-overdue spotlight” on Carmy’s sister Natalie.
In a four-star review of season three, NME celebrated the show’s pace, celebrity cameo appearances and strong opening, saying “standards have not dropped.”
“Cracking along with its usual mix of slow-burns and fast-spurts, the balance in season three is just right,” reads the review.
“From Marcus poignantly delivering the eulogy at his mother’s funeral to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) dealing with her father as she settles on a new place to live to the pregnancy of Carmy’s sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), everyone gets a moment or two to shine. Once again, The Bear has come out of the oven baked to perfection; its pursuit of excellence puts other shows to shame.”
The Bear is available to stream now on Disney+.
In other news, Edebiri, who recently starred in new Disney/Pixar movie Inside Out 2, shared the story of when her father refused to let Martin Scorsese film The Departed in their family home.