‘The Bear’ Grows Up | The Bear Adds Even More Star Power in Season 2 With These Guest Stars

‘The Bear’ Grows Up

In the second season, Carmy, Richie, and Sydney work on both themselves and their restaurant to make it become a premier dining establishment.

The Bear, a fast-paced show about a chef who returns to Chicago to run his brother's Italian beef restaurant after his death, was one of the biggest television surprises of 2022. The show was well-received by critics and long-time workers in the restaurant industry because it presented a new perspective on the sector that was both kind and honest. Season 2 brings back Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and company to take on the one challenge greater than saving your family restaurant: making it into a genuine fine dining destination.

Things were looking up for Carmy as Season 1 came to a close. For those who may have forgotten, here is a brief summary: Carmy, a fine dining chef of prodigy caliber, has returned to Chicago following stints in some of the world's finest restaurants. Since Carmy's brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) committed himself, he has moved back to Chicago to run the Original Beef of Chicagoland, a popular lunch establishment. The Original Beef becomes successful after Carmy makes some changes to the menu. The Original Beef, like any real eatery, needs a constant flow of cash to keep its doors open, and Mikey provides this in the form of a stockpile of cash hidden in tomato cans.

In Season 2, Carmy is able to move on from Italian beef sandwiches thanks to the money he made from the tomato cans. Carmy has the opportunity to realize his full potential as a chef and perhaps overcome the trauma he endured during his time in fine dining by painstakingly opening his restaurant, the Bear.

The new season shows the restaurant and its staff going through significant changes. Sydney, the sous chef played by Ayo Edebiri, is constantly brainstorming new dishes while reading self-improvement books to help her develop into a strong leader in the kitchen. Chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) travels to Copenhagen to stage at a temple of modernist cuisine with (ridiculously hot) chef Luca (Will Poulter), while snarky line cooks Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) enroll in culinary school to hone their talents. 

The restaurant Carmy and Sydney want to open will be cutting edge, so they are also renovating the space that was originally home to the Original Beef. During the first few minutes of the pilot, Carmy has already piled up over $100,000 in remodeling and upgrade plans. Sugar (Abby Elliott), his sister and the project's supervisor, makes it quite obvious that more money is required, and soon. Carmy and Sydney go to see Carmy's allegedly dodgy uncle Cicero (Oliver Platt), who handed Mikey the money from the tomato cans. He reluctantly agrees to be the project's financial backer after some convincing, but only on the condition that he possess the Original Beef building and sell it if they fail to pay him back within 18 months.

The Bear Adds Even More Star Power in Season 2 With These Guest Stars

The whole issue of funding is wrapped up pretty quickly — maybe too quickly, in fact — and Carmy and Sydney set an admittedly aggressive timeline of just 12 weeks to get their new restaurant ready for the public. While plenty of real-life restaurateurs will roll their eyes at the idea that Carmy somehow managed to get all of his building permits squared away in just a few weeks or that there weren’t massive delays in construction, The Bear still feels eminently accurate when it comes to the often crushing tedium of navigating the world of taxes, permits, and insurance. In what other show about the restaurant industry do we hear about the struggles of getting a fire suppression system to pass inspection, or get an inside glimpse into the absurdity of navigating a mold remediation project? Those aren’t exactly sexy subjects, but they are very real for actual restaurant owners, and The Bear manages to play them both for laughs in a way that actually succeeds.

While the Original Beef is being revamped, the men of the series are revamping themselves. Carmy attends group therapy sessions to deal with his imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and anxiety, and is even starting to process Mikey’s death in a meaningful way. He’s also allowing himself to be vulnerable with new-old love interest Claire (Molly Gordon), a girl from his childhood who makes a surprise reappearance. This relationship marks the first time we’ve seen him connect with someone outside of the restaurant. And it’s not just Carmy. While in Copenhagen, Marcus confronts his dying mother’s mortality as he learns how to gently scoop a quenelle of shiso sorbet. Even dopey cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is processing his feelings, trying to cope with his own insecurities of being left behind as the Original Beef transforms into the Bear.

Meanwhile, Sydney is struggling. She began the series feeling confident and ready to take charge of the kitchen, but in Season 2, she’s having trouble with her recipes. There’s too much salt or too much acid — it’s just not right, and Carmy is too distracted by his budding relationship with Claire to fully focus on helping her refine those flavors. Sydney’s struggles don’t get the same depth of consideration as Carmy’s, and that’s a glaring flaw in this season. We get a few scenes, especially in the finale, that delve into her fear of failure, but the writing doesn’t quite match Edebiri’s incredible acting.

The most emotional depth we get in Season 2 comes in the backstory of the complicated Berzatto family dynamic. In “Fishes,” a flashback episode, Jamie Lee Curtis delivers an incredible performance as Carmy, Mikey, and Sugar’s hard-drinking mother, Donna, downing wine by the bottle as she prepares a traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas. Bob Odenkirk is equally powerful as judgy Uncle Lee, who is the most emotionally measured member of this family. This reminiscence of a dysfunctional Christmas past, complete with emotional blowups, fork-throwing, and a shocking climax, explains pretty much everything we need to know about why Carmy moved as far away as possible from his family as he started his career, and how he ended up totally consumed by anxiety.

"Fishes" is the season's longest episode, and it's also one of the best hours of television I've watched all year. It's The Bear's signature brand of brutal realism, and it's at its most unsettling and unsettlingly compelling here. The delightful tension is upped by cameos by Sarah Paulson and John Mulaney, who also happen to be cousins. In its most severe form, the Berzatto family is a reflection of many of our own, and it serves as a sobering reminder that our personal histories and traumas color not just who we are, but also the art we create.

The Bear delves more into the specifics of running a restaurant, including fire suppression systems and ServSafe certifications, toward the end of Season 2. For an education in the art and, more importantly, the point of hospitality, Carmy sends Richie to a three-Michelin-star restaurant. Richie is well on his way to becoming a proper general manager by the end of Episode 7, when he has started reading Will Guidara's book on service. He's even taken to wearing suits. The space is finally coming together by the eighth episode, despite Neil Fak (Matty Matheson) getting electrocuted numerous times as he finishes wiring up the structure. Carmy is a little more focused by this point, working out his familial issues through a dessert inspired by that terrible Christmas meal.

The anxious and frantic atmosphere of the first season returns as opening day approaches. However, we have considerably more faith in its success this time around because Carmy and Sydney have solved this problem before.

Whether or not Carmy is happy is an open question. On the surface, he appears to be happy, especially during his brief escapes from the restaurant to spend time with Claire, yet this plot point is consistently underdeveloped. Although this restaurant may torture Carmy, it is clear that it is his true love. Claire's random appearances show that even Carmy is aware of this fact.

By the end, everything has come together perfectly. The restaurant is (basically) working as smoothly as any freshly launched restaurant could, the food is a hit, and Sydney is running the kitchen like a boss. Carmy is still clearly an emotional mess at this point. His worry and dread of failure persist, as does his tumultuous relationship with his mother. Assuming Carmy can get out of his own way, this doubt allows for a Season 3 that should be able to truly keep up its fast pace.

The Bear matured and came into its own over the course of these 10 episodes. If we were talking about a restaurant, this series would be like the brand new one down the street where the service, the atmosphere, the food, everything is perfect. Perhaps the plot moves a bit too quickly at times, but otherwise it captures the essence of working at a restaurant without going into tedious detail. And it keeps talking smoothly without getting too squeamish about chefs or the difficulties of running a restaurant. The fact that it does so while dealing with serious, human-universal feelings is quite remarkable.