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Was The Bear Season 3's Ending Foreshadowed In Opening Episode? Explored
Season 3 of The Bear has received a mixed reception. Individual parts are still excellent but not as strong as in previous seasons.
Season 3 of The Bear has finally been released on FX and Hulu, but the overall quality is not as good as the previous season. The ensemble cast remains excellent, but there is a lack of clear conflict. The finale ends on a cliffhanger, setting up lingering plot points for next year.
Despite the mixed journey, Season 3 promises an exciting path for Season 4. The season almost felt designed to be a crossroads, as Carmy's personal trauma and professional success reach a make-or-break moment. The season premiere foreshadowed this, juxtaposing the beginning of Carmy's career with his possible end.
Was Carmy's professional success worth it?
The Bear's Season 3 premiere, Tomorrow, explores Carmy's early experiences in the fine dining industry, particularly under abusive David Fields (Joel McHale). Fields is more prominent this year, serving as The Bear's equivalent to Terrence Fletcher from Whiplash, pushing his workers to their emotional limits to achieve greatness. The show's experimental approach highlights Carmy's journey in the industry.
For a character as deeply troubled as Carmy, who goes out of his way to reject personal happiness to become a great chef, it’s clear that his self-destructive tendencies are rooted in the trauma he faced working for Fields. Tomorrow's flashback structure illustrates the total blur that Carmy’s life became working in fine dining, how he obsessed over perfecting the craft to the point where he lost sight of everything else, only snapping back to reality when his brother committed suicide.
Season 3 of The Bear follows Carmy, who is more focused on his craft and focusing on getting a good review for his restaurant. However, this obsession alienates his loved ones, leading to exhaustion among the staff and Sydney contemplating quitting. The Bear highlights the consequences of Carmy's ambition to constantly change the menu and his feelings of guilt over driving Claire away.
Carmy, aware of his self-destructive behavior, confronts David Fields in the season finale, Forever, over emotional abuse. Fields claims to have pushed Carmy to greatness, despite the show's evidence suggesting otherwise. Carmy's trauma reaches a breaking point, and he confronts Fields, who remains unrepentant about his leadership.
Should Carmy walk away from The Bear?
The other plot point that Season 3’s premiere foreshadows heavily is Carmy’s relationship with Andrea Terry (Olivia Colman). Flashbacks show Carmy working at Terry’s restaurant, where she proves a significantly kinder mentor than Fields, as evidenced by Season 2’s best episode, one who’s better-equipped to balance personal happiness and professional success.
Terry’s restaurant leadership is illustrated as a perfect balance that could bring Carmy a relatively emotionally stable life. Yet, the season finale suggests this ideal may not be sustainable in the long run.
Forever revolves around the closure of Terry's restaurant, Ever, which hosts a final dinner for professional chefs. The episode's best scene, involving a conversation between Carmy and Terry, suggests that the restaurant's closure is not due to its overall success. Terry admits to her protege that she grew tired of the constant pressure and wanted to end her career on a satisfying note.
The season premiere marked the beginning of Carmy's professional career with Terry, but the finale suggests he might be better off following his mentor's fate. Carmy invested time and energy in promoting The Bear, sacrificing his staff's happiness and his own. The final scene shows him reading a mixed-to-negative Chicago Tribune review.
If this didn’t make the stakes for Season 4 clear enough, consider that Carmy’s uncle, Cicero, warned him throughout the year that he would be forced to pull funding if The Bear didn’t get a good review. As Carmy reads the Chicago Tribune’s review, we see that he’s missed several calls from Cicero, and the foreshadowing immediately becomes evident. Unlike Terry, it’s clear that Carmy’s obsession with his work has not paid off, and it’s easy to believe that he’d be better off moving on and working on fixing himself the way she decided to.
The Bear's third season serves as a crossroads season, with the bookends of Season 3 highlighting Carmy's professional career beginning and the end of it, and the source of his emotional trauma. The bookends of Season 3 suggest a breaking point, and Carmy is expected to make peace with himself and the relationships he's sacrificed for success while weighing the decision to quit for his own sake. The upcoming fourth season promises to be a beautiful continuation of the story.
The Bear Season 3 is now streaming on Hulu.
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