A year after the impeccable yet often stressful first season, “The Bear” returns with a season two that is even better and more exquisite than the last, full of complex and emotional characters that feel as whole and well-rounded as the dishes they meticulously create. 

Exploring Passion and Emotion 

In season 2 of “The Bear”, the stakes of the first season are both raised and the emotional beats are expanded, making the first season a launching pad for season two. Sure there is more cooking, more astonishingly great dialogue, more interpersonal drama and more emotional gauntlets to witness. Yet, there is also a heightening to what we have become familiar with. Instead of completely changing and reinventing the formula “The Bear” laid out in the first season, the second season elevates already satisfying television with an even more irresistible expansion of what made the original so great: the characters. The endless chaos of the kitchen is still present here but the characters feel like a true family and the stress is dialed back slightly to make room for more heartwarming and charismatic moments. 

This season even more than the last also explores passion and the roles and places it can take in someone’s life. It’s about lifelong learning and making mistakes and then taking the broken pieces and gluing them back together into something new. In fact, that seems to be at the heart of this season with the haggard and decrepit beef sandwich restaurant “The Beef” from season one being torn down on the inside and “The Bear” taking its place as a fancier and more elevated fine dining establishment. The series cleverly uses the physical spaces of the food being made as a literal analog to the internal lives of its main characters being transformed as well, especially for the main character Carmen (Jeremy Allen-White). Whether it’s through Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) reconciling her self-doubt, cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) finding his confidence and purpose, Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) coming to fruition with her talent for cooking or Carmen getting in the way of his own success and happiness through self-sabotage, the show is a satisfying mode of telling stories by focusing on its characters and their humanity. 

Electrifying Highs and Fulfilling Character Arcs

What is perhaps the most impressive episode in the series is its first hour-long episode six, “Fishes,” showing an increasingly stressful family Christmas dinner with the Berzattos. It features a surprisingly star-studded cast, including Jamie Lee Curtis as dysfunctional family matriarch Donna Berzatto, Sarah Paulson as Cousin Michelle, John Mulaney as Michelle’s boyfriend and Bob Odenkirk as Uncle Lee. The episode is a meticulous piece of family chaos. It functions as a sprawling set piece of dysfunction and provides the audience with a searing and sad backdrop to why Carmen is so dysfunctional, as the episode slowly boils over at the end. 

Similarly, the last episode mirrors the penultimate episode in season one by placing a head-spinning and stress-inducing sequence of things gone wrong on The Bear’s first night open. Despite that, the rest of the series assures the viewer of how far the characters have come. The moment of stress serves as a much-needed breath of relief for everyone involved in the kitchen, minus the main character who gets trapped in the walk-in fridge. It serves as an adrenaline-pumping gauntlet to victory for almost everyone, but especially for the character of Sydney who finally gets her moment of success and the following relief. 

“The Bear” is a constant tearing down and rebuilding of the lives of the characters you come to love and want nothing but the best for. It’s a show about the blood, sweat and tears that come with artistic passion. Nevertheless, most of the show is about growth, learning and failing. The beating heart at the center of it all: the complexity of human emotion and passion.

[email protected]

@arlo_marler