The Bear season four review: Compassion, grace and forgiveness

The future of The Bear is unknown. There’s no word yet of a fifth season, its fate left in the hands of creator Christopher Storer and whether he thinks there’s more story left to tell.

If this fourth season (all the episodes drop tonight) is indeed the last, then it’s an ending that works, while leaving the door open for the next book that is yet to be written.

The series, which made superstars out of Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, always attracted a lot of attention for its heightened tone and the mastery of its craft in executing a series that was the best kind of stressful.

It was a smart exploration of ambition and greatness, and the personal cost of that pursuit, framed by a story about a young chef carrying a lot of pain and guilt over his brother’s suicide, attempting to conquer the world of fine dining in Chicago.

What was secondary to why it instantly entered the zeitgeist in June 2022 when it premiered was that this was a series about growth.

By the end of the fourth season, none of the characters are where they started. They’ve all changed, and have been changed by each other.

There is a lot of compassion this season, as Carmy (White), Sydney (Edebiri), Richie (Moss-Bachrach) and the rest of the gang find the capacity to be honest and vulnerable, to forgive each other and, most significantly, forgive themselves.

In some ways, it’s almost an over-correction, as if the filmmakers paid too close attention to some of the criticisms that have been lobbed at it over the years. No one is going to accuse The Bear’s fourth season of being too stressful. And it’s certainly no longer a “comedy”.

Does this renewed shift to kindness and something at least resembling calm feel too abrupt, or is it earnt? It’s mostly the latter, although you may find yourself at times wondering if this isn’t a little, god forbid, sentimental at times.

Case in point, the seventh episode of the season is a 70-minute chapter that takes place almost entirely at a family wedding, and it is the opposite of the acclaimed season two episode, Fishes, which was the frenzied flashback family Christmas where all the yelling culminated in Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), Carmy’s mother, crashing her car into the house.

This wedding episode features a lot of those same characters, the extended Berzatto clan, related or not, including characters played by Curtis, Oliver Platt, Gillian Jacobs, Sarah Jacobs, Bob Odenkirk, John Mulaney, Molly Gordon, Josh Hartnett and now with Brie Larson as Francie, the oft-mentioned but unseen Fak sister with whom Sugar (Abby Elliot) has long had a feud (“she knows what she did”).

There’s a textured history there, and this show has always excelled in creating a sense that this is lived-in, with energies and relationships that existed before we started watching.

The vibe at this wedding is hugely different, as characters find moments of catharsis and acceptance. There’s not a literal bear hug, but there may as well be, especially when it’s reminded that Carmy is not the only bear. It’s bears plural, as in Be(a)rzattos.

Are you tearing up yet? Don’t be surprised if you do.

There may be one too many emotional resolutions to be realistic, but each of those moments is affecting, and it’s easy enough to forgive.

You get a very different Carmy this year. Season three ended on a cliffhanger just as he opened the long-awaited, make-or-break restaurant review of his restaurant.

We should’ve known that it wasn’t going to be a rave, it’s mixed at best, as the critic points out the chaos and dissonance of eating at an establishment where so much turmoil exists. A positive review that turns everything around would’ve been a different show because there’s always going to be pressure on The Bear.

This comes in the form of a literal clock with 1440 hours on the display, counting down until the business no longer has the cash flow to operate. It ticks down in close-up and in the background, a still anxious reminder that failure is a probability.

There are still plot stakes, as well as emotional ones, although the two are, of course, linked.

All season, Carmy seems quieter and introspective, far less likely to tempestuously fly off the handle, get into a slanging match with Richie or whoever else.

For Allen, that means a lot of reacting, his hooded bedroom eyes constantly the focus of a man who’s more introspective. It’s a different performance, and that Allen still maintains that level of intensity is testament to his ability to hold you without bombast, without words.

Carmy used to be ruled by his hang-ups, but now he’s conscious of his mistakes, rather than his f—k-ups. It becomes obvious very quickly that this is the season about falling out of love with something that has wholly consumed you – what does that look like, can you move on?

Richie and Syd have to go through their journey too, pointing to how The Bear really expanded its lens to take in everyone else’s story. Although Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) and Marcus (Lionel Boyce) are relatively shortchanged in terms of meaty screentime.

At one point, Sugar asks Carmy, “How are you doing, generally?” to which he responds, “Getting there”.

Life is a series of “getting there”, through peaks and troughs, through drama and mundanity. What changes you through that process, what helps you to grow, are the people you do it with, and the grace you allow each other.

The Bear may have had viral moments and even more viral omelettes, but it was always about the people.

The Bear is streaming on Disney+