The Bear Recap: Sleight of Hand
Things haven’t fallen apart yet at the Bear, but they’re teetering ever closer. In “Legacy,” it’s beginning to seem like the future of the restaurant is starting to be called into question. Not the fiscal viability, but who’s going to remain to fulfill the vision. Richie seems down in the dumps, listless and unsure of himself. Syd’s been handed an offer from Ever’s Shapiro, who’s taking Chef Terry’s departure and using it as momentum to start his own place. He wants her to be his Chef de Cuisine, helming the whole vision, staff, and menu of the restaurant. It’s a huge offer for someone who didn’t have much of a name before she started working with Carmy, and it comes with partner status, benefits, bonuses, the whole nine.
But what if she has all of that already? We wouldn’t know because she hasn’t opened the goddamn Docusign. She’s got one foot out the door, too sure things will fail, and frankly, Carmy’s not helping. He’s an open book to Marcus, but he shuts down her menu ideas without even saying, “Sorry.” He wants to be partners, but he still wants to run the show, and, unfortunately, Sydney’s also not calling him on it. She’s alluded to it in the past, saying she’s not his babysitter when he was about to melt down, but if she’s pissed, she needs to say it, period.
Just like how Carmy needs to fucking apologize to Claire. He’s back in group finally, and the leader is talking about how the longer you wait to apologize, the deeper the apology buries itself into your throat, guts, brain. That apology, the leader says, gets “stuck in your ribs and heart and lungs and every mistake you ever made, everything you’ve ever done wrong grabs onto them and holds onto those words so tight, they ain’t never letting go.” While we know Carmy is thinking about this about Claire, I wonder if he’s exploring it on a broader level. I think he still owes Richie and Natalie an apology for being unable to go to Mikey’s funeral and maybe even other things, like how he is around Donna. I don’t want to see him go through the “making amends” stage of recovery since that’s not what he’s doing, but if he’s going to move forward as a person, he really has to start getting his house in order.
He knows that, too. When he’s talking to Marcus about legacy, Carmy says that he thinks if he were to leave something behind when he moves on, he hopes that it would be panic-free and anxiety-free, but that to do that, he’d have to be “square with everybody and everything.” Carmy explains that he’d have to filter out all the bad to make it good.
That’s especially interesting, considering that Marcus and Carmy had just been discussing how legacy in a restaurant is like a family tree. Carmy takes the best of what he’s accrued elsewhere (and maybe the worst, in the case of Joel McHale’s nightmare dome) and brings it to his spot. His staff, in turn, takes the best of what they learned at The Bear and will bring it to the spots they will eventually open. So, will Syd take what she learned at The Bear to Shapiro’s new joint? Or does Carmy need to get things in order and step back to take care of himself, leaving Syd to make her mark, too? I would put a buck or two on it being the former, but where does that leave the show? Certainly easier to shoot, production-wise, with burgeoning stars and all that, but also perhaps weirdly divided? Maybe that’s the point, and what we’re learning from Chef Terry’s departure, too: No restaurant is forever. Your legacy isn’t the spot. It’s the people you inspired along the way.
It’s also, it would seem, your family. Not just your cousins, but your kids. Natalie’s little one is on the way now, and Richie and Tina, The Bear’s resident parents, lent a little moral support during the hours running up to the start. Richie started to cry when he was telling Nat about how chill the experience was, with Tiffany going into labor on the way out of a Thai restaurant. Tina said at first you wait and wait, but then when the baby comes, everything goes by in an instant. It’s not unlike The Bear, really, which you wait and wait and wait for and then it breezes by in a flash, binged over a couple of nights. With only three episodes left now, it’s time to push.
Small Bites
• I’m still unclear how Shapiro and Syd became acquainted. They could be hanging out at industry nights, but have we seen them interact?
• Chi-Chi is played by Christopher J. Zucchero, who I believe is the owner of Mr. Beef, the restaurant where they film The Bear. The other guy helping Ebra is Paulie James, who owns L.A.’s Uncle Paulie’s deli. So both dudes clearly know a lot about sandwiches. I truly have no idea who plays “Uncle Gary” Fak, despite my best Googling. He definitely does share that Fak shape.
• Things we learned from this episode: “Legerdemain” is French for sleight of hand or magic, Sweeps played AAA baseball, Ted used to be into gambling, and Richie needs a new notebook.
• Also, if you don’t know, anyone off the street can shop at Restaurant Depot. You just have to stop at the front desk to get a day pass. It’s a great place to get not just C-Folds, but also stuff for huge BBQs, very cheap basics, kitchen supplies like cutting boards and stainless pots, and fish or meat. It’s also the perfect place to kill time in the summer because it’s positively freezing in parts, like where they keep the produce.