WHAT “THE BEAR”

THE BEARS of the “THE BEAR” series-

• Jeremy Allen White as Carmen Berzatto
• Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richie Jerimovich
• Lionel Boyce as Marcus Brooks
• Liza Colón-Zayas as Tina Marrero
• Abby Elliott as Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto
• Matty Matheson as Neil Fak
• Edwin Lee Gibson as Ebraheim

First things first, I always think what differentiates a good story from a great story is to look at who is given more importance: the lead or the story itself. “The Bear” is an apt representation of a great story where the story is put forward and we forget that the lead, Carmen, played by Jeremy Allen White, is supposed to be the lead. The wonderful point of this story is that no other character is overlooked just because we want the lead to be shown to be great. All characters have their unique punch, which makes the series even more interesting. I must say, the creator of the story, “Christopher Storer,” did a fucking great job, and to say anything less than the word ‘brilliant’ would be undermining.

Personally, I became a fan of Jeremy as it looked like there was no line between him and the character. No one could have played it better. His eyes did most of the job. But to say others have done any less would be an insult. Everyone was so involved; it felt so real, and the direction is one of the best works I have seen in my life.

Fun Fact: Jeremy Allen White spent weeks shadowing award-winning chefs to master Carmen’s manic energy. His eyes, haunted, determined, tired, they do more heavy lifting than a dozen monologues ever could. No wonder I fell for him instantly; I forgot I was watching an actor.

But I should also tell you why I am calling it great. “The Bear” is a story of Carmen, one of the world’s greatest chefs, trying to make a restaurant good to great, which was left to him by his dead brother. The whole story is basically him trying to make it work while he also quickly realizes, as he should, that it’s not just the restaurant that needs to be worked upon. This looks like a parallel story between the journey of the restaurant from good to great and Carmen, from the perfect chef to Carmen, the great chef.

Personally, for me, “The Bear” was an eye-opener to understand a lot of things in my personal life. It felt like someone wrote a lot of my story but for different characters. Now, I am not saying I am perfectly skilled or great at my work like Carmen or totally amazing like the other wonderful characters of the story. But, I felt the pain of the characters through the screen. For most of the time, I could see my reflection in Sydney and Carmen. As wonderful as these characters were in the story, they have very shitty emotional processing. But that’s also shaped by their experiences.

Carmen grows up in an extremely loud, dysfunctional, and chaotic household, which splits his emotions into two different plays, super cold and super sensitive, leading to a hard time maintaining any relationship, anxiety, sensitivity to others’ reactions, perfectionism, blurriness to anyone but his POV, detachment, self-sabotaging behaviour, being extremely resilient on the outside, and just feeling low, bad, and broken on the inside.

Sydney, who, without a mother and as a single child under the hood of her father, is a wonderful chef, opens up a catering service, fails at it, yet meets Carmen and works for him. Seeing her skill, strength, and clarity, Carmen asks her to be a partner and presents an idea of opening his long-lived dream, The Bear restaurant.

While the restaurant starts off with an interesting beginning, it unfolds into a chaotic workspace due to a lot of issues, but mostly Carmen’s ideology. However, that’s not the point I want to focus on.

Carmen’s life is a testament to how each and everything in our personal lives and how much a family can shape our behavioural patterns, what we like, what we don’t like, how we react, how we perceive, and how much it can unfold into our life as adults before we even realize it. And also, how important it is to learn emotional processing without using it as an excuse or a weapon against oneself but to truly unlearn bad patterns and become truly yourself without the baggage of bad emotional language we have learnt. But also, how important and tough it is to imagine others’ lives.

But that’s not what was the eye-opening moment for me; that’s something I already knew. For me, the eye-opening moment was to realize that I was able to relate to Carmen way too much. And how much I hated his behaviour a lot of times in the whole series. Not in a disgusting way but in a sad way. Then I realized I actually hate all that in myself too. I realized how and why I developed anxiety, anger, ickiness, sound sensitivity, and every other pattern I have. And also how sometimes I exhibit the same behaviour that I hate towards the people I love. Then also, how beautiful I have grown up to be, to learn to be curious over judgmental, empathetic over angry, intelligent over foolish, self-loving over self-sabotaging, understanding my importance over low self-esteem, healing over being harmful, forgiving over vengeful, communicative over silent, taking space over detachment, content over jealous, and most importantly, kind over proud.

Carmen and Sydney opened my eyes to looking at myself as I would look at others.