The Bear Season 3 doesn’t get straight back into the swing of things. We left Carmy trapped in a freezer after inadvertently breaking up with Claire, and ruining his rꦺelationship with Richie thanks to failing to contain his emotions. He believes that to succeed in the culinary world he has to cut off any re𒁏al human connection, turning himself into a cooking machine whose only real purpose in life is to achieve success that his late brother, oppressive teachers, and unusual family have constantly claimed he isn’t capable of. The season opener is a reminder of that journey, a brutally sad yet necessary exploration of how trauma and loss can change you.

But fans weren’t especially thrilled with this unusual change of pace, many of whom seemed eager for some form of immediꦯate resolution or return to the status quo, wanting to see Carmy become more and more self-destructive while refusing to fix himself. The Bear is no stranger to unorthodox storytelling, however, and opening its most anticipated season with a heartwarmingly melancholic retrospective of Carmy’s life before and after Mikey’s suicide sets up many of the pieces set to be moved🍷 in future episodes.

Let It Rip... But Also Please Go To Therapy

Maybe it's because I lost my brother to cancer a few years ago and my experience feels like an oddly similar one to Carmy’s.

My brother was an English teacher, a stubborn yet creative person who encouraged me to pursue writing as a career even if he’d never give the fields I found passion in the time of day. It wasn’t Shakꦡespeare, so what value did it truly carry in the real world? But despite these comments, and despite a habit of pushing me away, you could tell he still cared and wanted me to be happy. Unfortunately, he passed away long before we could sit down and touch on the things we’d both accomplished and why they mattered.

When Mikey refuses to let Carmy work at The Beef, he sets off on a self-destructive path of trying to prove his brother wrong. He trains under some of the best chefs and restaurants out there, determined to surpass his brother’s skills to earn a spot at the table, for Mikey to smile and accept him with open arms. But it never happens, and Mikey is gone from the world just as Carmy is pushing himself in search of accepཧtance.

Now he knows that moment will never come, so he keeps on moving, bottling up grief in the vain hope that succeeding where his brother couldn’t will eventually provide him with a purpose in life. The third season premiere is about recalling precisely how far we have come wi♍t🍨h these characters, and how allowing trauma and resentment to bubble for years is only ever going to hurt those around you.

Before we can surrender to the anxious chaos of the restaurant environment, The Bear must take stock and remind us what our main character is doing all of this for. In the name of a dead man who always believedꦗ in him, but the need to protect loved ones from his own demons overpow⭕ered the desire to let people in and allow himself to grow. It’s a vicious, tragic cycle, and one for some there is no escape from. By taking its time in the opening episode, The Bear explores this beautifully.

When You Reach Rock Bottom, The Only Way Is Up

The entire episode is accompanied by a melodic piano that controls the pace of how every character moves, speaks, and transitions from scene to scene, with much of what we see non-linear snapshots of Carmy’s time as an apprentice in🌼 New York or Copenhagen, but not The Beef, a place he wants so desperately to call home but isn’t welcome. There isn’t much dialogue, and what initially feels like a discordant collection of scenes adopts an ebb and flow I couldn’t look away from.

I knew where Carmy’s character ended up at the end of Season 2, and I felt ꧂powerless to stop his potential from being scuppered by trauma that he isn’t even aware of. He starts th꧒e episode as a reluctant student, someone who does all in his power to prove himself, and he ends it on the other side of the table, offering his advice and knowledge to those who are now standing in the shoes he long left behind. His journey has shown real progress, and he’s grown as a person and a chef without concern for what his brother might think. But then he kills himself and brings Carmy back down to reality.

Carmy picks up the phone during a busy shift and tries to keep going, and he does, since it’s the only thing in the world keeping him grounded. A determination to live up to the nebuloꦰus standards of a sibling who isn’t even here anymore. But now, it isn’t about proving him wrong - it’s about achieving the invisible dreams neither of them ever thought possible.

There is one moment towards the end of the premiere that hits the hardest, even if you wouldn’t expect it to. Carmy takes a picture of a dish he’s created and sends it to Mikey with little to no context. Cut to The Beef and Mikey reacts to it with a laugh and a smile, where he has no idea what he’s looking at, but you just know he’s happy to see his brother thriving. I did the same with mine, sending him links to reviews, interviews, and press trips I knew he didn’t care about, but giving him even a semblance of an idea that I was doing the thing was more than enough.

The Bear’s third season knows how powerful its characters and narrative are, and wants to continue its journey even if it means putting viewers through emotional hardship or turning us against beloved faces before they can be truly redeemed.ജ When it comes to the opening episode, I admire how it’s willing to take its time looking back in order to ensure a strong and prosperous future. Moving on from loss is never a linear path, and it’s clear Carmy and those around him are still striving for success and purpose in the wake of an empty void which is impossible to fill.