The Bear (Season 2)

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⭐ 8.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

I was a bit up and down with this season. I mostly thought it was slightly better than season 1 because the characters are established, and so now we get to go a bit deeper into each one. Everyone kinda gets their own personal arc and I liked that. As far as personal episodes go, I loved Sidney's (so much good food, but aren't you poor?!) and I thought Marcus's has a cool atmosphere.

However, one thing I think this show really struggles with is finding that medium volume. They do a good job at having these very stressful scenes, where everything is chaotic and everyone is talking over each other -- I think it's kinda their signature thing now -- then they do a great job of slowing things down and talking quiet. But I felt the former to be exhausting, and the latter to be incredibly cheesy by the end. So many incredibly corny lines in the late episodes that I just felt were what bad shows do. You are allowed like 4 per season, not per episode! So many "Let it Rips" and "Every Second Counts" and just a bunch of general, "I'm proud of your, bros." I just feel like they never found a balance between chaos and perfect serenity.

While we're on the topic of negatives, I pretty much loathed the romance. I found the love interest to be very annoying, and also Jess made me unable to unsee her unibrow once she pointed it out. But in general I just didn't buy it, which is bad because it's kinda the central thrust for our main character this season.

Anyways, I'm making it sound like I hated this show but I absolutely did not. I thought it was great. I thought the Christmas episode was one of the best episodes of tv I've ever seen. I thought the Richie episode was fantastic, especially after it seemed like Richie might be forgotten this season. I love stuff about cooking, and I love shots of gorgeous food. I thought Carmy was fantastic again. I just felt like this season was a bit melodramatic (I failed you all!), which is the worst thing you can say about art, and yet somehow I really enjoyed it despite that. So I still totally recommend this show to pretty much anyone, and I think I'm disappointed because it approached being perfect but just fell a little short to me, similar to season 1.

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