The ending of The Bear 2, streaming on Disney+, seems more optimistic but resumes the culinary exhaustion at the end of the first season: a goal but new obstacles open up for Carmen Berzatto and the other protagonists.
“We are our own worst enemy” the series could be summed up like this The Bearin streaming su Disney+ even with the second season, which is making itself heard for how it managed to come back even better than the first, as we explained to you in our review. This certainly applies to the protagonist Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) but also to the other characters of the brigade who populate her crazy kitchen. The last episode, symbolically titled The Bear as the name of the new restaurant opening in place of The Beef, is very full and takes up some stylistic features of the inaugural cycle, however, making them something else. Let’s try to (re) go through it together.
Make it or brake it
After the penultimate episode’s rehearsal dinner, the season finale di The Bear 2 it is all dedicated to the opening night prepared and devised at an impossible pace by the leading team, which this season has had ample space to tell the viewers about itself through monographic episodes and therefore an in-depth study of everyone’s background, not just Carmy’s. The entire episode is shot in a (fake) long shot that passes continuously from the kitchen to the dining room and the space in front of the restaurant – reminiscent of the film Boiling Pointeven more than what was done in the first season with the seventh episode.
This non-stop gait of the camera from one space to another makes us feel the claustrophobia and pressure of the employees, for whom this evening must be 100% successful otherwise they will immediately lose money and “Uncle” Jimmy will have to take over the restaurant fees. It is therefore an instinctive and spontaneous “cheering” on the part of the public for all the protagonists who have come to know better in these ten new episodes, until they reach boiling point. This is also thanks to the tight and syncopated editing on the details of the dishes, both behind the scenes when they are prepared, as well as on the stage of the table when they are served, as well as the finely carved and artfully plated food. Or hands that work hard and eyes that try to keep everything under control, or even the order machine that continues to arrive without respite from the hall.
Boiling Point and The Bear: When the sequence shot runs into the kitchen
Your place in the kitchen… and in life
If everyone – from Sydney who learns to leave room for Richie, up to Tina as new sous-chef and Marcus with his metaphorically and literally sweet creations – seem to find their place in that team that Carmy has worked to create with so much effort , sweat and wrong dishes, the same cannot be said for the young Berzatto. The season finale is the occasion for a (much longed for) clarification between him and Sydney in one of the most beautiful scenes not only of the second season but perhaps of the entire series, or when they find themselves lying on the ground (in a relaxed position) to fix the screw of a table that Carmy has noticed is loose. They finally talk and confront each other with an open heart, returning to being partners in all respects (even if, actually, they had never stopped). “I couldn’t do this without you, I hope you know that. In fact, I don’t want to do this without you. You make me better”. One of the few moments of calm before the storm that hits the restaurant during the opening night, and which for this reason acquires even more meaning.
This professional relationship that has always winked at something more without ever ending up being so for real has found a deeply sentimental counterpart in the new character of Claire (Molly Gordon, one of the many guest stars of this second season), Carmy’s childhood sweetheart found by pure chance on their way. Symbolically, after having postponed work on the handle of the cold room for too long, it breaks, causing a stalemate during the evening with Carmy stuck inside: yet it will be Richie, who has had one of the most interesting and satisfying evolutions of the season, who will take surprisingly in hand the situation. At the end of the evening, however, through the cell door that they are unable to open, the two “cousins” have a clarifying conversation with roles reversed, with Richie coming towards them and Carmy confessing that she has let herself go to the emotions of a relationship that in a profession such as cooking, which is so competitive, they inevitably distract. Once again the calm after the storm which in this case, specularly, causes a break: in fact, Claire will hear the boy who will take the words she heard with great regret.
There’s also a double “family resolution” going on in the finale. On the one hand Sydney and her father, who finally reconcile on the job of her choice and they do it just when she went out to get some fresh air once all the courses miraculously closed. The girl instinctively vomits, then expels all the stress accumulated in the previous months and in that same evening: what Carmy had told her she did every morning before going to work to her former Head Chef in New York, with Joel McHale’s face back as “presence” in this epilogue to torment the mind of the youngest of the Berzattos. Carmy has the innate ability to self-sabotage – such as the question of the handle, postponed for too long in the previous episodes – and, as we discovered in the sixth impressive episode, this is the result of the mental illness that has pervaded the Berzatto family since the mother Donna, and then touch all three of his children differently. It is no longer just a question of cooking. Even if deep down, it was never just that.
Donna returns in this ending, remaining outside the restaurant – which, as we have seen, represents the space of the air we breathe: she makes a choice, explaining it to her son-in-law who will try to convey her words to his wife Natalie in disguise. She had been invited by Sugar but she doesn’t feel like going in and attending, because “she doesn’t deserve the success her children have achieved, which she is proud of”. “Don’t Be a Woman” Richie will yell at Carmy through the cell door, touching a raw nerve that recalls that “Silence Bruno” Of Luca, meaning we don’t listen to that little voice in our head that tells us we’re not good enough or that we’re doomed to fail. We learn to believe more in ourselves and perhaps The Bear’s dream will be everyone’s dream. Ultimately, the season finale is truly a message of hope.