The Bear final season review: Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri’s kitchen comedy approaches the end with emotion, laughter and a touch of caution

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Although the fourth season of the FX/Hulu culinary comedy-drama Bear Wrapping up on a cliffhanger — Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) announcing his intention to quit and leave The Bear to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Natalie (Abby Elliott), all while Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) plans to close the place down — never felt like the fifth and final season would require many answers to big questions or resolutions to narrative mysteries.

It’s surprising, then, that the seventh episode of season five, directed by creator Christopher Storer and written by Storer and Nicole Kohut, feels like a satisfying and conclusive conclusion to the Emmy-winning series. It’s a 52-minute episode that remains breathlessly taut, mixing ticking clock tension with moments of grace for most of the group. bear band, and the pornography was beautifully shot. And yes, several parts that made me laugh out loud, which I know aren’t the kind I’m supposed to admit about a show whose awards classification as a “comedy” is one of the most controversial issues in our horribly fractured culture.

It’s no surprise that Episode 7 was so good. I’ve always appreciated Storer’s unsettling glimpse into the kitchen at a cutting-edge Chicago restaurant — a hair less enthusiastic than the consensus for the critically acclaimed first two seasons, and then a hair more enthusiastic than the consensus for the backlash-driving seasons three and four.

The surprising, or perhaps just confusing, part is that even though episode seven, titled “Caramel,” delivered everything I hoped and expected from a series finale, BearThis is an eight-episode season. FX hasn’t sent critics the series finale yet, perhaps out of fear of spoilers, but its absence now fills me with fear rather than excitement. It’s a feeling I haven’t felt since, well, this spring, when the penultimate episode of Hacks I offered everything I asked for Hacks An epilogue, before the actual series finale which I liked some but not as much as I liked the previous part.

Then again, that wasn’t the only thing that confused me about the majority of Season 5 that I saw.

As expected, Season 5 picks up the day after the Season 4 finale — which also happens to be the day the final scene of “Gary,” the standalone episode that dropped as a surprise back in May and ended with a cliffhanger that was ultimately unrelated to the story. I didn’t like Gary devoting too much time to Richie and Mickey (Jon Bernthal), two characters who work better when integrated into the group than when they work for an entire hour. I like less knowing that his connection to the final season is at most limited.

Anyway, things are still shaky at The Bear, as Sidney, Richie, Natalie, and Carmi are forced to adapt to a new status quo, with a new power structure that’s not entirely defined. No one is privy to their conversation from the end of Season 4, a secret she knows won’t last long. Even if the rest of the staff knew that Karmi intended to leave, they had other concerns, namely that the giant digital clock in the kitchen had reached zero.

This means that The Bear is about to close, which is inconvenient given Marcus’s (Lionel Boyce) new status as one of the… Food and wineBest new chefs. As Jimmy looks for options to cut costs and give up the entire estate at the same time, Sydney is trying to figure out how to do dinner service with a nearly empty pantry and a former teacher/partner/colleague, in Carmi, who is so bad at actually giving up control. From Marcus to Tina (Lisa Colon-Zayas) to Neal (Matty Matteson) to Ibra (Edwin Lee Gibson) to Gary (Corey Hendricks), everyone who has learned new skills over four seasons is looking forward to a job market that may require them to take steps back, professionally.

Oh, and it’s raining.

It rains a lot.

It’s raining on a near-biblical scale, wreaking havoc with Chicago traffic, possibly screwing up their reservation technology, and soon running the risk of the ill-equipped restaurant collapsing in ways that are literal rather than figurative.

Dinner time is approaching and it will be the most important service of everyone’s life, but will it also be the last?

This plot summary sounds like a description of the premiere — perhaps just the opening minutes of the premiere — but that’s what the final season delivered Bear He is. It’s an entirely sequential film of day and night in the diner, told not entirely in real time but without interruptions to long flashbacks or extraneous episodes.

For convinced viewers Bear Having, after the first season, fallen prey to arty pasta, the promise of a dearth of gimmicks may be a blessing. But it is difficult for me to imagine a list of the best episodes of the series that does not include one or two episodes of “Fish,” “Forks,” “Tissues,” “Worms,” and “Bears.”

While having a clear, driving main story for the final season is good — and would probably be better and more motivated without the need for Jimmy, PC (Brian Koppelman) and new addition Chase (Elsie Fisher) to be on a separate mission that’s best described as “exhausting other options” — the episodes outside of the format were very good. Bear. It’s a show that thrives on risk, and the first six episodes here, which lead up to the series finale and are not a series finale, are pretty safe.

But is “safe” the same as “playing to strengths”? I’m less confident.

This is a show known for its intimacy and authenticity, and this season is dominated by digitally enhanced rain and highly stylized interiors where the restaurant feels more like an evocative sound stage than a working restaurant. It’s very artificial, but there’s no doubt that Storer, who directed six of the seven episodes I saw, embraces the artificiality. From the amoeboid kaleidoscope of scattered light in the rain to the diffuse lens flares to the carefully expressive silhouettes in doorways, every aesthetic choice is exaggerated, including the score from new addition Hans Zimmer. With the pressures increasing all the time, this season has become less natural and more like a Tony Scott-directed version Kitchen secret.

I think the tone is uplifting, character driven and matching the stakes. So Karmi has very dreamy and gloomy eyes. Sydney is very disturbed and disturbed. Natalie makes sure that Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) takes care of her baby just for the utmost energy that Emmy Award winner Curtis brings. Marcus chooses this of all nights to invite his father and by extension his father to the restaurant.

And fax? It’s hard to imagine anyone, after last season, thinking that what the show needed was “more faxes,” but Neil and Ted (Ricky Savery) have to deal with issues with the restaurant’s plumbing. If you suspect that the show still considers itself a bit of a comedy, I suppose there’s no straight-up drama that could withstand a multi-episode arc involving fax and plumbing. The season also features the return of the infamous “Original Berf” T-shirts that have long served as evidence of the show’s comedic status.

drama? comedy? Whatever the case, the first six episodes are broad and the seventh is extensive.

Aside from the breadth and craftiness, the episodes leading up to the series’ exceptional, non-series finale are packed with highlights, including relatable leads Allen and Edebiri, whose chemistry (and the odd pocket of online viewers) is acknowledged in a concise and entertaining way. I mostly enjoyed the meta touches as Storer clearly parallels the end of a restaurant and the end of a TV show, along with the implications that he and Karmi may have learned (or partially learned) similar lessons about the necessity of chaos in the creative process, or lack thereof. And while I missed the brilliance that came from him in many cases Yan Bear Standard TV linearity aside, I can’t say I didn’t appreciate the pacing of the episodes, which are mostly under 30 minutes.

But, again, it is an act out of expediency and a desire to simplify a crucial ending as much as provide a final season that represents the best of… Bear? Are the artificiality and structural limitations of the majority of the season a temptation for a show that’s about to go completely insane by its end? Does Storer have another maker in store, going from Tony Scott to DogvilleSimilar to Lars von Trier? Or will the final minutes of the show be devoted to the few unanswered questions that frankly I don’t need answered, given that Episode 7 feels so right? We’ll have things to discuss then.

I think we’ll find out in a few hours.