Reflecting on the Series Finale

Look, I know your inbox is full of spam, receipts, replyials, all that generic marketing stuff that gets tossed out into the world and doesn't speak directly to you. Well here's how you can put something actually interesting in there. Subscribe to our newsletter for a handpicked guide to the stories and podcasts that matter. It's essays and recommendations delivered straight to you, no paywalls, no digging required Sign up at np dot org slash pop culture newewsletter The fifth and final season of The Bear is here and it is a scaled back, scaled down dish focused on the fundamentals that highlight the quality of its basic ingredients. Most of the season takes place over the course of a single day as the crew prepares for a make or break evening of service amid an escalating series of catastrophes. I'm Linda Holmes I'm Glen Weldon, joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Vulture TV C critic, Ruxanna Haot. Hey Raxsana. Hey, thank you for having me. Of course. So the final season of FX and Hulu's prodigious Emy magnet, The Bear, twenty one Statuettes and counting, Thank you very much takes place during a day longong thunderstorm as the restaurant gets hit with wave after wave of crises during preps busted roof, a broken reservation system, dwindling supplies and the usual interpersonal draang to go with all that stirerm The dynamic between Sid and Carmi, for example, is more strange than ever because Carmi is quitting the restaurant game P played of course by Iya Debri and Jeremy Allen White. I'm just trying to be sore what are you trying? I'm trying to be helpful and do a good job I miss. read that. Sorry, I No, I'm sorry. I didn't u Thank you much? I'm overcompensating. Yeah. I have even mentioned that there is one guest who seemed an awful lot like the Michelin critic they've been watching out for. How could they have picked this night of all nights Bear is streaming on Hulu and we're going to be talking about it all the whole of season five, including the finale. so you know, Know that. Linda, you reviewed this last season for NPR. What dod you think? You know, I really liked this season for the most part. I will get to my two notes. I think the first note is that it is a little slow in the beginning. I think the first three episodes or so, all of which are short. I think they all read a little bit like one long scene And this is sort of the earlier in the day part where it's raining, it's dark, it's gray, everything is dimly lit. There's this score that they have that's sort of this to me melancholy tension kind of thing, it made it feel slow and heavy to me. That's my one beef. But then once they get into the service itself, I think those episodes are reallyally good. I very much enjoyed it. I loved seeing all the restaurant people working together again. They've done a lot of these one off episodes and I've enjoyed a lot of those for what they are. They've been great. You know, the episode where they go off and Sid is with her cousin and her cousin's daughter, great episode. Some of the flashback episodes, they're great I was really happy that they focused back in the restaurant, had a great time. But then and this is where we get to the point where we're discussing the whole season. So I should that one more time. At the very end in the finale, Carmi decides to become an intern at an architecture firm. Now listen, I know that they did and I didn't remember this until someone reminded me, but I know that they did show Carmi walking around the Frank Lloyd Whitehouse a season ago Nevertheless, this kind of comes out of nowhere for me. And I felt this way last season too, that I didn't think they really persuaded me that Carmi leaving restaurants was a good idea. And I think they want you to feel like it's a healthy idea I don't know if I think this is going to help him at all I think if you don't deal with your stuff, he's as far as I know, not done any one on one therapy, I think if you don't deal with your stuff, you can easily become just the same. messy person in a different job I did not find that a satisfying ending for him personally. It feels to me a little bit like Carmie will just go get some job. and that's all they really did. And then he has this long scene where he speaks at great length about that last service and how it went and his whole life and it's very philosophical. And I assumed he was pitching a book to this woman who was played by Bonnie Hunt And then at the end of this long speech, she's like, you're here to talk about an architecture firm internship. And then that's the end of it. And they don't ever really say like, did he get that job for some reason, even though he's totally unqualified and gave that speech? I didn't feel like that was satisfying at all. but Listen, the Richie stuff, I think is fantastic. I have loved the character of Richie who is Carmie's not literally cousin, but you know spiritual cousin who became such a really great hospitality guy. The Richie wins for me were fantastic. It felt inevitable they were gonna to get their Michelin star. They ended up getting two. I thought that was very satisfying. although I wanted to see Richie find out they got the star. We didn't get to see that But overall, I enjoyed this season a lot with the slow first episodes and the WTF architecture kind of caveats. Okay Roxana, you also wrote about this for Vulture onene specific aspect of it, which we'll get to, but what was your overall impression? I also am generally pro. I mean, I think the thing about the first season which worked so well for me is that it is just a restaurant. It is a claustrophobic restaurant with a lot of people who have decided that they don't care about anything because that's the only way to get by in this world coming together to like make sandwiches. It's fine. It's very small scale. I think it is as ideologically satisfying about the nature of work as like any of our other great workplace shows. So I love season one. I think it could have been a standalone one season limited series that never became anything else And five is very much a companion piece to one, right? It is a season that is again just about like, okay, if we're all trapped in the same restaurant and now we have a different perspective on work what changes. And so I've always had like a little bit of a tension with how much this show is like You should work at a place that treats you like family because I don't agree with that. I have to that. But in terms of like hitting the beats that I wanted it Hit. It was all sort of there, right? Like Richie realizes that he doesn't need to give a life changing speech before every service. He just needs to be reliable and there for his employees. FC, who is this character played by Matty Mathon, who has mostly just been sort of like the wacky sidekick gets a moment where he connects with guests as well. Everybody sort of has this like You grew moment. and I think a lot of that really works. There is again a reference to Michael Mann, which is something that personally for me is very fulfilling. But yeah, the cararmi architecture thing. I think we have to talk about a little bit because in a season that I appreciated for sort of decentering Carmi and spending more time with the ensemble and like the collective. I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know if he talks himself out of the architecture internship by the end of that scene with Bonnie and we're supposed to understand that he goes back to restaurants. I don't know. I think he needed to do like a year of woodworking or something. I think that he needed to just leave restaurants but also not become an architect. So that ending I am gonna be sort of quibbling over. but for the most part, I think good. Yeah. Okay. I think there's a reason we're all gonna hit this Carmian architect thing so much. It's because of where it comes. It comes at the very very end whichich means it colors absolutely everything that came before. And it has this extra weight that it really shouldn't have. I mean, I agree that the dialed in approach really serves the show. It puts the focus where it needs to be now. We are getting to the end of the book. We turn the page. We seeite space at the bottom of the next page. we're like, Ohh crap. And so everything that happens takes on extra weight, extra meaning So the writers are stacking the deck in a what I found was a kind of a ludicrously over the top way. This thunderstorm that goes on for a day. I mean, it had me headed to the National Weather Service to be like, how long can thunderstorms actually last? Under very specific circumstances, they can last as hours and hours. but you stack the deck for a very important reason to give them these tiny victories that you mentioned in your review, Linda When they come, they feel so joyous and so earned and legit because they rest. And here I push back a little bit Ruxanna on all this time we spent with these characters evenven those seasons that miss the mark, you know For human relationships of any kind Time spent with someone matters. E if they're not always at their best, it still invests you. It makes you feel for them And that investment is so powerful here and it's used powerfully here because I was hopeful But I was legit worried at the same time When Carmi drops that plate, I didn't know where the show was going to take it. Now intellectually knew, they're not going to end abject failure. That would not be fun. But I didn't think there were any guarantees. And I felt like we were on a knife edge. sameame thing when Fax steps out to that table where the person they think is the Michelin critic is sitting at and we're like, is he going to screw this up? What's going to happen? There's real tension there because it could go either way. And you watch them, as you mentioned, Roxen each takeake a breath and de escalate. And so we get a sense of exactly what you said, how differently this place is going to run under SID than it would under Carme. I didn't feel that as strongly. Linda, I pick up some of your same Is it really that bad? Was he really so terrible or was it this place? Right? Some of those questions remain All right, well, we've got a lot more to talk about, including this last season's use of music, so we'll be back after this So we're back, Rxan in your vulture piece, you talked about how this paired back quality of this last season intersects with how the show used music and I wanted to give you a chance to unpack that a bit. Yeah, I am unimpressed with this season's score. I mean, I understand that They want to make this less sprawling than previous seasons. In season one, this was a show about a restaurant. My issue with seasons three and four is it becomes a show about fine dining in general industry in general. and I think it loses the focus that one and two had. And so I think to go back to that feeling, We get this score, which is not from the same composers as the previous seasons This is from Christian Lundberg who is doing this score for Bleeding Fingers music. It was produced by Han Zimmer. It sounds video game like a lot of the time. It is sort of doing like to Linda's point, at first, this like very melancholy foreboding thing, and then it's almost like video game pump up music. Yes And there was something about that that did not work for me. And I understand repetitive for one Very repetitive. Can we get some counting crows in here is all I'm trying to say? So that was one of the things that I thought was just like a little bit too much of a step back from what the show has previously been. But I think this show often just like gilds the liily, right? Not one Michelin star, but two Michelin star Yeah. You know, I think it sometimes operates too much in these extremes one way or another Yeah could be a way for us to talk about this architecture speech But yeah, there is this thing that I was missing, listening to the show I was missing the sense that these characters are in a larger world. Yeah. And I think, you know, you talk about how they sometimes are doing these really extreme things And I think you see that with the show trying to do, to me, that Carmi speech is very much like here's your Emmy moment, of course, which is kind of an unfair thing to say because people also write big monologues for lots of reasons, right? People love a big emotional monologue. It may be that the fact that Carmi has had a couple of big emotional monologues in the past, you, set up a certain need for a big emotional monologue in this one But for me, some of the moments that were so powerful in this are things that are much smaller. There is a scene where Deeee, who is Carmi and Sugar's mother, played by Jamimie Lee Curtis. and that has been a complicated character narratively in that sometimes it has felt just like big, big, big. but also there are some moments with her that have been, I think, very effective season there is a moment when she comes to the restaurant with Sugar's baby and hangs out in the office and then Sugar's husband comes in and talks to her And it reminded me, which I had not thought about in a long time, of the moment several seasons ago, when she was going to come to the restaurant. But she wouldn't come in And Pete ran into her and really wanted her to come in and she wouldn't And I thought that Pete coming back there to the office and seeing her and being so glad for her, for Sugar, for everybody. And then know Deeee kind of going over all of Carmie's notebooks from his work and really coming to kind of get a better understanding of what he has done with his life in the time that they've been like not estranged, but like know tense. I thought that was so satisfying There's a sequence where Richie and Sid are kind of negotiating how to get through conflict between them, which also was a big thing in season one And I think it is so satisfying. You can see both of them being like, I really want to make this work And earnestly trying to solve conflict together. And I thought that was so effective. And if you compare that to like listen, there were big things too. The Carmi Sydney hug, Yes, I'm not made of stone over here, right? Very effective, very lovely, very earned, I think. But it's a lot of the smaller things. it's a lot of the things where it just felt like, you know And listen, the Michelin guy turns out not to be the Michelin guy, right? The Michelin guy was the guy they suggested was the Michelin guy previously who had shown up on a different night entirely, and then he just kind of disappeared and it was like, who was that guy? And then when this guy came in and they thought he was the Michelin guy, I was not surprised by the fakeout, but I thought it was fun that it turned out it really was the guy. They said it was quite a while ago Yeah Anyway, I'm positive. I'm pro. Justice for Pete, right? Pete was always a mench. I mean, I. P always a mench. mention great husband before playayed by Chris Watoski. Great. I'm glad he got he got a moment to just bask in it. I do want to talk about how this season was bookkeed. bothoth the final episode whichich feels like an epilogue with that speech. And the episode that dropped before the final season, Gary, which was a flashback episode featuring Richie and Mikey, Eban Moss Backrack and John Bernhal That felt like the acting exercise it was I mean, I get why what it's there, it's there to show how lost Richie was back then and how he was in a bad place because he loves someone who clearly hated himself and how that curdles absolutely everything. But it highlighted for me something that that speech at the end kind of highlights too, which is that every so often in this show, I pick up a faint whiff condescension toward the people the show is about. And I think of that as a kind of very young actorly, very young writerly thing of like to show our understanding of the working man. and Gary which is the name of that episode, felt like the acting exercise it was. It was written by Bernthal and Muss Bachreck. and yeah, let's give voice to the common man, let's be Cifford Detz. And yet at some point in your life, bro, you probably took a movement class where you probably studied wind dance and you probably personified a ruffling breeze. So can we just pump the brakes a little bit? You know what I'm saying in the epilogue where Carmi goes to this job interview. Both the writer and the actor are taking Carmi's baseline, You know, he's manad a few words He's lconic, he's introverted. He doesn't always express himself completely clearly But he's not this completely inarticulate Stanley Kwalsski who shows us up for that interview. I like art. I like colors. you like orsy toddler? what's going on there? Well, I think what they were trying for in that monologue is that he starts off like that And then as he talks, he becomes more and more confident and he sort of works through it as he says it and he becomes more articulate as he goes through that speech. I have occasionally sensed a little bit of what you're talking about, Glenn. but I think I chalked it up more to the show's general tendency to get puffed up than to the condescension you're talking about specifically, because I think it has always been a little bit vulnerable to you know, vanishing up its own nose, as I said in the review. And I think there's always been that risk and I'm not sure exactly how to feel about that The other thing I thought about when I watched this episode was that it reminded me of how I felt about the end of hacks which was I would have just ended it or at least could have just ended it on the second to last episode, which is the professional triumph, right? The conclusion to kind of the professional story, right? And both of those shows went ahead and did an epilogue, as you say, with a lot of big feelings and a lot of sort of character stuff that I felt like I didn't necessarily need becausecause a lot of those really small and lovely moments that I was talking about don't happen in that epilogue. That's more the home of the bigger stuff. They happen in the particularly in the second to last episode, where they are kind of working through all their stuff. There's stuff in the epilogue that I really like. I really like how they handled this kind of buddy shhip that popped up between Marcus, played by Lionel Boyce and Luca, played by Will Poulter. I liked that friendship. I thought it was very funny that Marcus turned out to be the one who was hoarding spoons I thought that was cute. I don't know that it had a big point, but I thought it was a funny detail. I did enjoy the fact that the big pitch to Carmi for the franchising turned out to be unnecessary. So there's a lot in the epilogue that I like But I wonder if they should have left it at the end of service, you know? I could see that. I am glad that you brought that up, Glenn, because I do think Gary is maybe the worst episode of the series for me. I think that it is all of the shows worst impulses rolled together? Yeah, I know. And it felt like that too. I think A lot of the stuff that's doged though, especially seasons three and four is all the meteda stuff. you know, all the cameos from actual chefs, all the celebrity cameos I think this season channeled the meta stuff in a really effective very funny way with the personification of the Mitchells. The Mitchells are a couple who get taken from the restaurant into the kitchen and they are just like, well, I mean the dude is like, Yes, chehef Now that is making fun of the fans of the show in a kind of a pointed way. that's not blistering. It's just like, yeah, that's annoying when you' somebody who's not a chef say, yees, chef but I'm not gonna to get mad at it. It's like, yeah, it didn't make any sense to me that Sid would pull Luca to talk to them when this is after Marcus has just won a food and wine award. Marcus, you pull Marcus from the line to talk to these people because that's what they want to see. That didn't make any sense to me. but I think that's a challenging. And the other good thing about this is that you know with this show ending, the people in our lives or loved ones are only gonna have to endure us complaining that this show is not a comedy just a couple more times for the Emmys because the Emmy nominations voting cut off. you know, season four is eligible this year in twenty twenty six, season five will be eligible next year in twenty twenty seven. But you know what This season was significantly funnier than the last couple of seasons. There was more comedy in it. And there was a lot more comedy in it that did not rely around the facts. For a couple of seasons, I felt like it was all super heavy and then the facts would come in and be goofy and bless Matdty Matheson. I get it, like there was a lot of funny stuff that he did and his buddies did But this season had more stuff that I thought was really funny that went on between the core cast of the show. I think Eben Moss Backrack is very funny and does some really good comedic work. Io Debri is the best reactor in television. I love to just watch her face when these people are doing things that make her, you know, baffled or whatever. So I am closer to being okay with this show calling itself a comedy this season than I was particularly for the last couple of seasons I do think it's hard when you put it up against something like Hcks or against something like Widows Bay, although I'm not really sure that Widows Bay is a comedy either. I think it's just a further sign of We have begun to lose genre strictness with the streaming show. Let's get rid of the binary. Yeah, we're destroying the boundaries. I do think the moment that I laughed most is when Carmie tells Richie that they're stuck in the walk in again because that felt like, you know, I don't love to be like that felt unscripted because it probably was not But they sold it with a level of authentic shock, which I really enjoyed. And then they wrestled each other, which I also really enjoyed So yeah. Well, you can hear the affection in our voices. I mean, the bear is over. It's not the last time we're gonna be talking about it. There's another Emy season coming and we're gonna be talking about this show yet again That brings us to the end of our show. Rxana Hadati, Linda Holes, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. S said, yes, chehef, but I understand why he didn't. This episode was produced by Lennon Sherburn, Huffs the Puffama and My cats have been edited by our showwrunner Jessica Redy and Hellokm and provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to pop culture HiR from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time