MIDNIGHT REVIEWS The Bear Episode 3 & 4 Review
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
The Bear Season 3 Episodes 3&4: ‘Doors’/‘Violet’
Series created by: Christopher Storer
Featuring: Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri
Synopsis: In Doors, the staff of The Bear get through a month of service, with gritted teeth and bumps a-plenty. In Violet, we see them in their personal time. Richie (Moss-Bachrach) spends time with his daughter (Annabelle Toomey), Sydney (Edebiri) looks for a new apartment and Carmen (White) looks back on what he lost.
Review: It’s clear in episode three of The Bear, simply titled Doors, that things will not go perfectly. Is this the show trying to admit that it cannot recreate the phenomenal success of season two? If this is the case, the show so far has got it totally wrong, as the trials and tribulations of the staff, unfortunately for them, make for great television. If episode two was a little intro to The Bear returning to usual form, then Doors is diving headfirst into what fans of the show will know and love.
Ultimately, like previous seasons, the episode is about communication. At first it seems to be communication specifically with Marcus (Lionel Boyce, so far underused) but as the episode plays out it’s clear that it’s more focused on using communication in order to bring everyone’s true self to the fore. The question of whether Carmen can manage this has, so far, yielded negative results.
Perfection is hard to maintain and both the restaurant and the show have a lot of items on the menu they need to focus on. For anyone who hasn’t seen The Bear, descriptions of the show as a comedy are a little off-target, but the tension the show consistently builds results in these explosions of laughter, whether from relief, shock or surprise. Fak (Matty Matheson) serving broth might be the funniest thing I’ve seen in recent times.
Boyce is underutilised and the only hope is that we get more of him in later episodes.
Deepening the tension is the episode’s clever use of classical music, at times soft, at other times verbose. Even when things were calm, there was a knot in the stomach.
While Carmen refuses to grow as a character since the finale of season two, it’s been a joy seeing both how Richie has evolved as a character and how Moss-Bachrach’s performance has done the same. It isn’t just dressing Moss-Bachrach in black and sitting back. In previous seasons, he was consistently an acerbic asshole but now he’s an asshole who might actually have a point; an asshole who in between taking pot shots at Carmen earnestly tries to bring up his head chef’s patterns of behaviour, yet still struggles with the idea of forgiveness and low self-esteem. His journey from where he started in season one might be the most interesting in the show.
Violet comes along to show us a different side of almost all the characters. After a sweet, tender opening, showing two characters who seem to share different views of the world but the same levels of anxiety, we follow the main cast during their personal days. Again, Boyce is underutilised and the only hope is that we get more of him in later episodes.
The camera mostly sits back and lets them go.
Edebiri and Robert Townsend as Sydney’s father play out a perfect recreation of an adult having a conversation with their parent regarding living arrangements. He seems a touch protective and says she’s moving too fast; she reveals she’s already signed a lease on the place. Each performance is understated. Anything too big would’ve ruined such a natural scene and its testament to the performances, and the trust series creator/episode director Christopher Storer has, that the camera mostly sits back and lets them go.
Moss-Bachrach’s multi-faceted performance is given several more degrees to be viewed from as he shares a sweet scene with his daughter before having an awkward conversation with his ex-wife’s new fiancée. Again, the right decision is made in not doing too much with the editing or camerawork and simply allowing these characters to breathe. So much of The Bear’s success, here and in previous episodes, is the confidence Storer has in both his actors and characters, and he is paid back in spades.
In the same way that Richie is allowed new angles, this is the show once again going through a tiny re-iteration. Episode one provided us with an almost-experimental premiere, whilst Violet gifts us with something on the whole incredibly natural, something fitting considering its characters are mostly out of the kitchen and in the ‘real world.’
The Bear is available to stream on Disney+.
Matthew D. Smith likes to overshare his views on movies and TV shows whenever and wherever he can. Indulge him, and follow him on Twitter or listen to the podcast he co-hosts with Leslie Wai.
