Pasta
Episode 2 of ‘The Bear’ kicks off with the team getting ready for a hellish time. They have roughly 12 weeks to open The Bear. Everyone has taken their own station to expedite the process.
Carmy and Sydney are deciding the menu and overall management. Sugar, who has decided to join as Project Manager, is currently dealing with a toilet problem. Ebra and Sweeps are trying to salvage anything they can in the wooden furniture. Richard has an argument with Fak and Marcus over how to paint and deep clean the walls. Fak calls Natalie who ends the discussion and they go about it in Fak’s way. Meanwhile, something is up with Natalie which she isn’t telling any of the others.
As expected, episode 2 throws up yet another loud problem at our faces. This time, it is the lockers that Richie, Fak, and Marcus have to remove before they can start scraping the walls. Sydney tells Tina and Ebra that they will be sent to culinary school on the restaurant’s budget to get training. Both of them accept. Carmy comes out to deal with the issue. They see that Michael’s locker is still locked. Camry cuts it open and finds a baseball hat. He hands it over to Richie as The Bear has one of its quieter moments.
Carmen and Sydney go back to his place to finalize the menu. it is the most important task at hand. Without a good menu, The Bear will never be able to take off. Fak discovers mould behind the lockers and that is not good news. Richie dares him not to tell Sugar as this will threaten the deadline for opening night. Carmen and Sydney discuss personal stuff like the latter’s obsession with getting her stars during the preparation of the menu.
Sydney had a catering business before this. She tells Carmen a story about how she couldn’t make fresh pasta as it was dried out on her last catering job. That sealed her fate and she moved in with her father afterwards. Sugar thinks to herself about why she is at the restaurant. Is it to keep things as they are or create a new order? While she is contemplating this, Fak calls her about the mould problem. Richie keeps denying it but when the roof falls on his head, he is convinced: they do have a mould problem!!
At culinary school, Ebra has problems adjusting to new ways. But he is not a quitter.
Sydney meets Emanuelle, her father, for dinner. He regales her with the story about him and Sydney’s mother when he learned first-hand that her father was a mechanic. Emmanuelle represents his concerns about Sydney’s job. He carefully tells her she must have a backup career idea since the restaurant business is hard.
Carmen runs into his old girlfriend, Claire, at the supermarket. They sit there and discuss the problems in their lives. He is shocked when Claire remembers the name of his restaurant – the one that he would like to have – that he once told her. It seems to spark something between them. Will it sustain and give Carmy some emotional support?
The Episode Review
The problems just keep on piling up for The Bear. Not just money problems and the structural integrity of the building, but also intangible problems. There is no bigger downer than losing your self-confidence. One cannot simply conquer anything in life if they lack the belief and conviction in their ability.
The idea of the new restaurant seems to be weakening with every new episode. Camrmy, Sydney, and Sugar are key to making this work. But their input as of now has been minimal.
Season 2 has thrown different kinds of tensions and conceits at us until now. The change of substance hasn’t affected its impact though, and that’s quite an achievement on the part of the show’s creators.
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| You can read our full season review of The Bear here | |
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Episode Rating
(4)