I skipped over most of your review cuz I’m only 6 episodes in, so I just saw the Mikey/Tina exchange, which was incredible. But I tend to agree with the snippets of criticism I’ve heard about much of the season. And it’s kind of wild to me that they finally open the restaurant and instead of pushing full steam ahead with that, we’ve been getting a lot of flashbacks, which I don’t think are necessary even though the actors are still killing it.
The closing of Olivia Colman’s restaurant was a gut punch and I love that from a narrative perspective. The reaper is always hanging over restaurants. It’s a brutal business; which again makes it frustrating that The Bear is still choosing to focus efforts elsewhere in s3.
A side note: there would be no way to give adequate space to Jon Berenthal, Jeremy White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. The Bear would be a different show and it would suck w/o the star power of Ayo Edibiri if it was just white guys yelling at each other. But I enjoy Berenthal’s character every time he shows up. Just about every ruggedly handsome white male in Hollywood has been asked to play an annoying, sometimes toxic white male asshole at some point but Berenthal brings a kind of humanity to each of these roles. It bums me out that his excellent turn in We Own This City has been memoryholed. There’s a part of me that wonders how the show would’ve gone if Mikey had lived and been centered and not Carmy. But then again, Sidney and Carmy’s relationship is the absolute strength of the show; very much a McCartney/Lennon dynamic. So I dunno. I like White’s performance but I don’t find Carmy very interesting beyond that relationship and I just love seeing Berenthal on screen.
It's been almost 30 years (!!!) since Love’s Labor Lost aired and I still think about that one hour of broadcast television more than most any other single episode of a TV show I've ever seen. ER was a sensational TV show.
The Bear s3 is half a season. They chopped one season into two, which is why it feels so messy and unresolved. Because of that, it's hard to judge it beyond saying it doesn't work as a season of TV. Maybe it'll stick the landing when we know the whole story, but we don't right now. So aside from some nice scenes (Mikey and Tina, especially) and an episode or two, it's kind of shrugworthy.
That said, I think that article is wrong about what the review says. I don't think Carmy read it yet. He didn't have time to, nor did we see him click the link. Those snippets are shot like all the other imaginary reviews and articles from throughout the season, so I think that moment was him imagining all the different ways the review could go. But I suppose they gave themselves enough wiggle room to play it however they like.
Interesting take on the review for The Bear. My take was that he hasn't even opened it, and just like all throughout the season he was running through all the different possibilities in his mind, and the Motherfucker was just because it's a saying-motherfucker-kind-of-situation when so much is hanging in the balance and it really is just the moment before he reads it.
We didn't know how good we had it with ER (probably because of things like the helicopter v Romano) as far as hospital dramas go, and I agree that it had a great ending. The Bear this season made some real missteps- I don't know if it was by design (and that's kind of a problem with this season as opposed to 1&2), but it felt like almost every character has developed this season, except for Carmy. Most of the cameos this season did not really work for me (except Olivia Colman. Olivia Colman dancing? Always, yes). But my biggest bone to pick, which I'm probably on an island of one regarding, is Claire- ER doctors (set aside the show ER here) are adrenaline junkies! They are not known to be "peace," so either Carmy does not know her, or this show does not know ER doctors.
We've been travelling quite a bit this past month and I put off The Bear because airplanes and hotel rooms are not places I want to watch great TV (we don't have kids so I make of point of not turning on the TV when we're someplace new, better to go out and see then sit in and watch). I watched the first ep of S3 the other night and was absolutely blown away by it, so much so that i decided to stop watching S3 and rewatch S2 first. Haven't watched that second season since last summer and boy, it really is an incredible season of television.
As for your 15 Best List, for everything I liked about The Sympathizer I have quite a few reservations, chief amongst them was that it was simply an exhausting show to watch. A real stark contrast to his remake of Little Drummer Girl, which was nowhere near as Park Chan-wooked out.
Having made the first 6 (I think) seasons of ER of absolute "must watch TV," the final "Dr. Green, you coming?" in the finale makes me tear up every time. I LOVED those characters so very, very much.
I'm only half way through the Bear, but I'm with you, Alan. A great show that took some mis-steps this year, for sure, but I don't get the near-hate coming from so many. It's griping TV.
My thoughts on the Bear was that this season was a bit of a let-down. It left so many threads hanging with minimal or no resolution. Part me bought into the theory that the Joel McHale character didn't actually exist; it was just Carmy's inner critic. So I was already slightly disappointed in the finale when Luca clearly could see David, and then the actual confrontation was a bit on the nose.
The incompleteness of this season and even the "To Be Continued" banner made me think of the kind of release that splits a season in two to straddle Emmys eligibility, like the last seasons of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (or Bridgerton's recent season). But there's no way "season 4" is going to be released until next June or later. So it was an odd choice.
This season just never felt that interested in coherent narrative arcs. Like the review that was mentioned in episode 5, disappeared for episodes 6-8 until it was mentioned as make-or-break for the restaurant in episode 9, released in the last moment of episode 10, but then we don't definitively know what it said! So I guess I shouldn't be surprised the ending fell flat.
Alan, as strongly as I disagreed with your opinion on the latest True Detective season, I can’t agree strongly enough with you on your take on the third season of The Bear. You’ve literally wrote down sentences I said out loud to my friends and family when they asked what I thought. You are so incredibly spot on, especially with how Selt Important it all felt. I’m not going to go on because I’d just be doing a poor rewrite of your review. Awesome stuff.
Lastly, I feel a bit of second hand embarrassment for Linda Holmes given how much time she seemed to have spent on…absolutely nothing.
What we saw was not clippings from the review. We saw headlines and words that Carmy was imagining, much like he did earlier in the episode (or previous episode, I forget exactly when that started). It was another peek into his extremely broken and self conscious brain. I thought that was very obvious.
Great stuff on The Bear. Fingers crossed season 4 is a return to its roots and get in the drama category. That’s the real comedy of all this.
Ooh, I just thought of another "treadmill show". Did you ever do "MI-5" (previously known as "Spooks"?). I don't remember the percentage of "pulse-pounding scenes", but I seem to remember them in each episode.
I fell off MI-5 after S3 (after Oyelowo, McFadden, and Hawes left) but it was very good when I watched it. Definitely had thriller aspects to the plots and some action, but on a BBC budget so not as wild as 24 or Alias (both on at that time too).
I agree! I enjoyed the first season of 24 just for being a weird, unique new storytelling device but I wasn't into cheap soap opera tropes like temporary amnesia and anyone can be a mole, so didn't stick with it. Mandy the naked assassin should have been a tell.
Watching the final scene of the ER finale again with that iconic theme playing us out still gives me the chills - pulsing, urgent, and yet underscored by those beautiful piano notes is a brilliant encapsulation of the way they portrayed life (and death) at County General. The final seasons were an absolute chore but I’ll never forget the brilliance of the early years.
Btw for a binge show, I’ve been sick in bed with Covid and I turned on MASH yesterday. It’s still so funny! Alda’s performance is really all-time great.
So I haven’t finished the season yet but I personally really disliked ep 5 with all the Faks stuff. It’s not funny at all. Feels like a way for them to insert some “comedy” but the schtick really doesn’t work for me. Ep 6 was fantastic, esp the Tina-Mikey scene.
1. Speaking of IP, how relived are you John Wells decided not to revisit ER & instead do an original hospital drama (as revealed recently by Noah Wyle)?
2. What was your favorite returnee appearance in the final season? (I do wish they had brought back Gloria Reuben although her S14 return started the trend.)
1. Honestly, I'd be fine with an ER lega-sequel where it was just Carter and, like, Archie Morris as our returnees, and everyone else was new. But I'll check out the new thing Wells is doing.
2. Benton saving Carter's life one more time. 100%.
I have a suggestion for a "treadmill show" for you. How about "The Rookie"? I've been using it as such for myself and it works pretty well. Sure it is mostly standard "cop show" fare, but it is done with some humor and charm. It is also interesting from the perspective of looking back on pre- and post- George Floyd cop shows.
Yes, it fell into the "but we're the good ones" trap that B99 made fun of, but I don't think it had much of a choice given the characters it had established already. But it did find a way of having discussions of modernizing policing, while, sure, having gun fights with drug dealers in the next scene.
I skipped over most of your review cuz I’m only 6 episodes in, so I just saw the Mikey/Tina exchange, which was incredible. But I tend to agree with the snippets of criticism I’ve heard about much of the season. And it’s kind of wild to me that they finally open the restaurant and instead of pushing full steam ahead with that, we’ve been getting a lot of flashbacks, which I don’t think are necessary even though the actors are still killing it.
The closing of Olivia Colman’s restaurant was a gut punch and I love that from a narrative perspective. The reaper is always hanging over restaurants. It’s a brutal business; which again makes it frustrating that The Bear is still choosing to focus efforts elsewhere in s3.
A side note: there would be no way to give adequate space to Jon Berenthal, Jeremy White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. The Bear would be a different show and it would suck w/o the star power of Ayo Edibiri if it was just white guys yelling at each other. But I enjoy Berenthal’s character every time he shows up. Just about every ruggedly handsome white male in Hollywood has been asked to play an annoying, sometimes toxic white male asshole at some point but Berenthal brings a kind of humanity to each of these roles. It bums me out that his excellent turn in We Own This City has been memoryholed. There’s a part of me that wonders how the show would’ve gone if Mikey had lived and been centered and not Carmy. But then again, Sidney and Carmy’s relationship is the absolute strength of the show; very much a McCartney/Lennon dynamic. So I dunno. I like White’s performance but I don’t find Carmy very interesting beyond that relationship and I just love seeing Berenthal on screen.
The stabbing episode of ER has always stuck in my mind. I was gutted. I feel like that show set the bar pretty high on the list of medical dramas.
It's been almost 30 years (!!!) since Love’s Labor Lost aired and I still think about that one hour of broadcast television more than most any other single episode of a TV show I've ever seen. ER was a sensational TV show.
So true! A seminal moment for me in my burgeoning TV fandom.
I'm glad I'm not the only one!
The Bear s3 is half a season. They chopped one season into two, which is why it feels so messy and unresolved. Because of that, it's hard to judge it beyond saying it doesn't work as a season of TV. Maybe it'll stick the landing when we know the whole story, but we don't right now. So aside from some nice scenes (Mikey and Tina, especially) and an episode or two, it's kind of shrugworthy.
That said, I think that article is wrong about what the review says. I don't think Carmy read it yet. He didn't have time to, nor did we see him click the link. Those snippets are shot like all the other imaginary reviews and articles from throughout the season, so I think that moment was him imagining all the different ways the review could go. But I suppose they gave themselves enough wiggle room to play it however they like.
Interesting take on the review for The Bear. My take was that he hasn't even opened it, and just like all throughout the season he was running through all the different possibilities in his mind, and the Motherfucker was just because it's a saying-motherfucker-kind-of-situation when so much is hanging in the balance and it really is just the moment before he reads it.
We didn't know how good we had it with ER (probably because of things like the helicopter v Romano) as far as hospital dramas go, and I agree that it had a great ending. The Bear this season made some real missteps- I don't know if it was by design (and that's kind of a problem with this season as opposed to 1&2), but it felt like almost every character has developed this season, except for Carmy. Most of the cameos this season did not really work for me (except Olivia Colman. Olivia Colman dancing? Always, yes). But my biggest bone to pick, which I'm probably on an island of one regarding, is Claire- ER doctors (set aside the show ER here) are adrenaline junkies! They are not known to be "peace," so either Carmy does not know her, or this show does not know ER doctors.
We've been travelling quite a bit this past month and I put off The Bear because airplanes and hotel rooms are not places I want to watch great TV (we don't have kids so I make of point of not turning on the TV when we're someplace new, better to go out and see then sit in and watch). I watched the first ep of S3 the other night and was absolutely blown away by it, so much so that i decided to stop watching S3 and rewatch S2 first. Haven't watched that second season since last summer and boy, it really is an incredible season of television.
As for your 15 Best List, for everything I liked about The Sympathizer I have quite a few reservations, chief amongst them was that it was simply an exhausting show to watch. A real stark contrast to his remake of Little Drummer Girl, which was nowhere near as Park Chan-wooked out.
Having made the first 6 (I think) seasons of ER of absolute "must watch TV," the final "Dr. Green, you coming?" in the finale makes me tear up every time. I LOVED those characters so very, very much.
I'm only half way through the Bear, but I'm with you, Alan. A great show that took some mis-steps this year, for sure, but I don't get the near-hate coming from so many. It's griping TV.
LOL! And here is Me, saying much the same thing about er on your original blog post on the finale, Alan:
https://sepinwall.blogspot.com/2009/04/er-and-in-end-booze-you-take-is-equal.html?showComment=1238739120000#c6594569883306320881
Well, at least I'm consistent. And old.
My thoughts on the Bear was that this season was a bit of a let-down. It left so many threads hanging with minimal or no resolution. Part me bought into the theory that the Joel McHale character didn't actually exist; it was just Carmy's inner critic. So I was already slightly disappointed in the finale when Luca clearly could see David, and then the actual confrontation was a bit on the nose.
The incompleteness of this season and even the "To Be Continued" banner made me think of the kind of release that splits a season in two to straddle Emmys eligibility, like the last seasons of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (or Bridgerton's recent season). But there's no way "season 4" is going to be released until next June or later. So it was an odd choice.
This season just never felt that interested in coherent narrative arcs. Like the review that was mentioned in episode 5, disappeared for episodes 6-8 until it was mentioned as make-or-break for the restaurant in episode 9, released in the last moment of episode 10, but then we don't definitively know what it said! So I guess I shouldn't be surprised the ending fell flat.
Alan, as strongly as I disagreed with your opinion on the latest True Detective season, I can’t agree strongly enough with you on your take on the third season of The Bear. You’ve literally wrote down sentences I said out loud to my friends and family when they asked what I thought. You are so incredibly spot on, especially with how Selt Important it all felt. I’m not going to go on because I’d just be doing a poor rewrite of your review. Awesome stuff.
Lastly, I feel a bit of second hand embarrassment for Linda Holmes given how much time she seemed to have spent on…absolutely nothing.
What we saw was not clippings from the review. We saw headlines and words that Carmy was imagining, much like he did earlier in the episode (or previous episode, I forget exactly when that started). It was another peek into his extremely broken and self conscious brain. I thought that was very obvious.
Great stuff on The Bear. Fingers crossed season 4 is a return to its roots and get in the drama category. That’s the real comedy of all this.
Ooh, I just thought of another "treadmill show". Did you ever do "MI-5" (previously known as "Spooks"?). I don't remember the percentage of "pulse-pounding scenes", but I seem to remember them in each episode.
I fell off MI-5 after S3 (after Oyelowo, McFadden, and Hawes left) but it was very good when I watched it. Definitely had thriller aspects to the plots and some action, but on a BBC budget so not as wild as 24 or Alias (both on at that time too).
Yeah, I dropped off, too, though a little later. I keep telling myself I'll go back.
I hated hated hated "24" (yeah, you get to shoot your boss if you think he's lying to you) and sometimes it does falls in to similar traps.
I agree! I enjoyed the first season of 24 just for being a weird, unique new storytelling device but I wasn't into cheap soap opera tropes like temporary amnesia and anyone can be a mole, so didn't stick with it. Mandy the naked assassin should have been a tell.
Watching the final scene of the ER finale again with that iconic theme playing us out still gives me the chills - pulsing, urgent, and yet underscored by those beautiful piano notes is a brilliant encapsulation of the way they portrayed life (and death) at County General. The final seasons were an absolute chore but I’ll never forget the brilliance of the early years.
Btw for a binge show, I’ve been sick in bed with Covid and I turned on MASH yesterday. It’s still so funny! Alda’s performance is really all-time great.
So I haven’t finished the season yet but I personally really disliked ep 5 with all the Faks stuff. It’s not funny at all. Feels like a way for them to insert some “comedy” but the schtick really doesn’t work for me. Ep 6 was fantastic, esp the Tina-Mikey scene.
It feels like it’s bad form to have us wait another year to learn the consequences of the climactic finale a year ago.
1. Speaking of IP, how relived are you John Wells decided not to revisit ER & instead do an original hospital drama (as revealed recently by Noah Wyle)?
2. What was your favorite returnee appearance in the final season? (I do wish they had brought back Gloria Reuben although her S14 return started the trend.)
1. Honestly, I'd be fine with an ER lega-sequel where it was just Carter and, like, Archie Morris as our returnees, and everyone else was new. But I'll check out the new thing Wells is doing.
2. Benton saving Carter's life one more time. 100%.
I have a suggestion for a "treadmill show" for you. How about "The Rookie"? I've been using it as such for myself and it works pretty well. Sure it is mostly standard "cop show" fare, but it is done with some humor and charm. It is also interesting from the perspective of looking back on pre- and post- George Floyd cop shows.
Yes, it fell into the "but we're the good ones" trap that B99 made fun of, but I don't think it had much of a choice given the characters it had established already. But it did find a way of having discussions of modernizing policing, while, sure, having gun fights with drug dealers in the next scene.