The Bear Season 5: “The Chaos is Not Helpful”

65% of all restaurants in the U.S. close within ten years. Half fail within five years. In Chicago, 60% fail within five years. This is the fifth and final season of The Bear. There’s more than a little symmetry around the number five for both the show and the reality of restaurateurs. An eatery, whether high-class or a greasy spoon, has a difficult and often short shelf life. It doesn’t take long to overstay your welcome in that business.

For some, The Bear got long in the tooth quick. The first two seasons covering Carmen Berzatto’s (Jeremy Allen White) efforts to save his dead brother’s (Jon Bernthal) sandwich joint (and then making it into something new) were met with universal acclaim. Created by the gifted Christopher Storer, the show dominated the Emmys, landed at or near the top of many a critic’s top ten list, and was viewed widely. 

After the massive success of seasons one and two, Storer and team could have played it safe. They did anything but. Seasons three and four were bookended by three’s meditative, almost wordless opener, and four’s finale, which culminated in an argument between Carmen, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) that wouldn’t have been out of place in a John Cassavetes film. While The Bear continued to receive good reviews, Emmy nods, and viewership, the response by that triptych for seasons three and four was decidedly muted compared to seasons one and two. The Bear had become less shelf-stable. 

I did not respond that way. This unusually cinematic mislabeled “comedy” has remained thrilling throughout, thanks to Storer’s willingness to experiment and the extraordinary cast’s ability to be nimble in the face of change. Change. A word that applies to the series and its characters more than any other. While the show took big swings, the people who inhabited its story moved forward begrudgingly, in often desperate increments. Knowing you need to change and then being able to do it is incredibly difficult. Few shows have been as good as The Bear in showing just how painful those increments are to achieve. 

Season five picks up not long after four’s finale, in which Carmen announced he would be quitting the restaurant he created and turning the keys over to Sydney, Richie, and his sister Natalie (Abby Elliott). If season four was about concluding that the thing you thought you loved was more burden than gift, season five is about (for Carmen) transitioning out of that thing, and the consequences to others for doing so.

The first six episodes of season five take place almost entirely in the restaurant during a single service as a Job-like avalanche of misery descends upon it. The Bear’s benevolent/malevolent benefactor, Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), has found himself in dire financial straits. He needs to sell the building quickly to maintain personal solvency. Suppliers have cut off deliveries, the credit card machine and reservation app aren’t working, portions have to be shrunk because food is running out, Chicago is experiencing a torrential downpour, the water pipes have burst, leaving only one working sink, and key members of the staff are planning, or at least contemplating their exits, because The Bear is out of time.

Carmen is still on staff in a state of deference as he hands over what’s left of the restaurant to Sydney, Richie, and Natalie. Tensions are high due to Carmen’s pending departure (unknown to most) and the chaos both inside and outside the building. There is a sense of pending grief for all inside The Bear. The desire to hang on to what they know and/or love is strong, but the internal and external factors bear a crushing weight. Often in life, what happens next isn’t up to us. Control is an illusion. “Whatever time you get is luck.” We can know these facts to be true, and still hold tight to the belief that we can set our own course and manage our time, when the truth is, we can barely hold a single moment in our hand before it’s gone.

The pacing of the first six episodes is exhilarating, with each running between 20 and 30 minutes—tight as a drum. As malady upon malady unfold, the crew of The Bear attempts to have a successful night. Tomorrow will have to be another day. All they have is now. 

Set to a score by Christian Lundberg that evokes the work of Tangerine Dream, season five eschews needle drops in favor of the composer’s pensive electronic notes. There’s no Radiohead, R.E.M., or Eddie Vedder deep cuts. Storer pares down this final season to the bare essentials: the main cast, the restaurant, and the ever-present existential angst that has always defined the show. Even so, season five is remarkably cinematic. The editing is kinetic, an overhead view of a storm-soaked Chicago is almost apocalyptic, and there’s an extraordinary shot of Sydney holding an umbrella in the rain that wouldn’t be out of place in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece isn’t the only classic film to get a check. In the inner sanctum of The Bear, well out of customers’ eyes, movie posters hang on the wall. Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, Michael Mann’s HEAT, and Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything are all notable for a common theme they share with the series. All three of those movies are, in one way or another, about the tenuous nature of time. The Bear even borrows a line from HEAT (“It’s a free country, brother”), and the final scene is a direct homage to Say Anything’s last seconds. 

Episodes seven and eight break the 30-minute-or-less runtime of the preceding episodes, with both running nearly a full hour. Seven remains in the restaurant as service begins at 5:30. Customers arrive late due to the elements. Both tension and relief are exposed when patrons finally show. The Bear is surviving day to day, and foot traffic is necessary for survival. But the late arrivals throw off the reservations and the evening schedule. To make the service, the staff has to bend industriousness to its breaking point. They host a party just outside their door, bring up a card table to seat two local celebrities, and adjust the menu based on what food they have left. They serve. They are working. They are in their element, and the state of the restaurant, writ large, is backburnered. 

The finale is an exercise in elegiac grace notes. Some stay. Some move on. All are changed. Storer moves the action outside the restaurant, and what had been a true ensemble up until episode eight returns the focus to Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy. Few actors in recent history have connected so strongly to their character as White has on The Bear. There is a four-and-a-half-minute one-shot late in episode eight in which Carmen reminisces about his recent past to connect with an uncertain future. White is so locked into Carmy’s anxiety, self-doubt, and awkwardness that it’s easy to miss just how good he has been in this part. Carmen Berzatto may well end up being Jeremy Allen White’s defining role. If so, it’s one hell of a peak. 

Still, most of these final eight episodes belong to Sydney and Richie. Edebiri and Moss-Bachrach are more than up to the challenge. That incremental change I mentioned earlier is best shown through Syd and Cousin Richie. They have become better, more confident people without changing the core of their being. Most of us don’t make great leaps of modification in our lives. Even if we are really trying, we will stumble over our worst instincts to reach an almost invisible higher ground. Sydney and Richie remain eminently recognizable, but with just a little squinting, you can see the renewal of the self. 

Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas), Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson), and especially Marcus (Lionel Boyce) are making moves just under the skin as well. There is a scene where Marcus pours caramel over a very significant Bananas Foster sundae, which, however ridiculous it may sound, took my breath away. So much more is at stake than the delivery of an inspired dessert.

When season four came to a close, I wasn’t so sure that a fifth season was necessary. While open-ended, season four’s finale felt complete to me. When you truly love a show in that way that it feels like part of your DNA, the only thing you can ask for is a good ending. The final season of The Bear plays like a frantic run-up to a bittersweet coda. It is moving, melancholy, and hopeful. 

Most significantly, the show asks a very big question: When it’s hard, does it matter to try? Does it matter to clumsily walk through this temporary existence and try to, however haltingly, become better versions of ourselves? The final season of The Bear and the four seasons that preceded it have been answering that question all along. The answer is always yes. 

We only get this one life. Every second counts. 

All episodes of The Bear are streaming now on FX/HULU/Disney