Moving Pictures

Chef's Kiss

SCALDING KITCHEN COMEDY, 'THE BEAR' IS THE SURPRISE STREAMING STAR OF THE SUMMER

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC

Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly scandalized the restaurant industry and kicked-open a swinging door on fear and loathing behind the lines in America’s professional kitchens. Bourdain’s book took readers inside an intimate world where chefs and cooks and dishwashers share nightly “family” meals and grab a smoke in the alley five minutes before the beginning of another pressure cooker dinner rush. Their kitchens are paradox caldrons where strict discipline and hierarchy is marinated in chaos, acid and fire. Bourdain’s book came out in 2000 and it was translated into a not-unwatchable television series starring Bradley Cooper that ran for one season on Fox in 2005. The show was a sitcom that went-in for outrageous humor, missing all heart and true grit of Bourdain’s ceaselessly readable memoir.

But now FX and Hulu have teamed-up on the surprise streaming star of the summer, and The Bear is a show that Bourdain would have given a chef ’s kiss.

Carmine Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is a James Beard Award-winning chef who’s honed his skills in the world’s best restaurants. He’s a recognized culinary wunderkind, but the first episode of The Bear finds “Carmy” back home in Chi-town where he’s inherited his late brother’s Italian eatery The Original Beef of Chicagoland. He’s also inherited a mountain of mob debt, a bad stomach from the stress and toxicity at the top of the culinary food chain, a family broken by trauma, and the sideeyed suspicions of the collection of misfits that make-up “The Beef’s” barely functional kitchen staff.

The Bear’s depictions of the grind of a restaurant kitchen are piping hot and delivered in a hail of profanity over frantic, chest-tightening edits. The Bear is categorized as a comedy, but it’s a pain-filled and sincerely stressed-out comedy. It’s also surreal in a way that reminds me of FX and Hulu’s Atlanta’s more extra-realistic sequences. Carmine doesn’t really sleep. He has troubled dreams and he’s prone to spacing out into ambitiously visionary fugue states that bring an unexpected dimension to a show that’s otherwise committed to gas burner realism.

The Bear is well-written — Bourdain would’ve liked that — and it’s also well-acted with Jeremy Allen White fresh off his run on Shameless and probably headed for an Emmy nomination for his fearless embodiment of the talented and troubled Carmine. Ebon Moss- Bachrach is unlikable in the best way as a loudmouth know it all kitchen manager, and Ayo Edebiri is great as an ambitious young sous chef helping Carmine get the restaurant back on track. It’s a treat to see former SNL cast member Abby Elliot as Carmine’s loving meddling sister, and The Bear also features cameos from Molly Ringwald as an Al-Anon facilitator, the great Jon Bernthal as Carmine’s late brother Mike, and an unrecognizable Joel McHale as a sadistic executive chef.

You can’t watch The Bear and not think about Bourdain and the book that launched his television career. But it’s odd that television has taken so long to get restaurant shows right while non-fiction food programming has become its own planet on the small screen. Chef and Ratatouille both managed to capture the truth of food-making in their own ways at the movies, but The Bear is the only show I can recall that treats the restaurant like a character and not just a naturally dramatic setting to paste a story over. The Bear doesn’t air on television like other FX and Hulu collaborations, but you can watch all eight episodes by signing up for a free trial with Hulu.