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Christopher Storer’s The Bear has built a singular fan-base, since it arrived in 2022. The kitchen of a sandwich shop in Chicago becomes a place of reckoning for its dozen primary characters, battling one form of existential dread or another. It’s been nice to witness the show’s stylistic swings crystallise over the years.

For instance: the loud pandemonium of the largely one-take marvel, Review (S01E07), is contrasted with the precise ASMR of Honeydew (S02E04) – when Marcus goes to Copenhagen to train as a pastry chef. The vortex of a deeply dysfunctional family in Fishes (S02E06), is followed by the winsome redemption arc of Richie in Forks (S02E07). My favourite episode in the show, Tomorrow (S03E01), relaying Carmen’s culinary journey till the end of S02 in non-linear fashion, working like a recap episode, is among the 10 most aesthetically ambitious episodes I’ve seen in my life.

Storer’s show is sincere and diligent, but the earnestness tends to also overextend itself. In its fifth and final season, The Bear plays its greatest hits. Having run out of money at the end of S04, seven out of the eight episodes in S05 are set in one day of Chicago’s biblical rains, as the crew tries to make it through one more restaurant service with limited resources. It’s a bold choice, and in-sync with the show’s creative DNA........

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