Content Warnings: suicide, grief

Bear with me…I’ve been on an emotional and intellectual roller coaster with the end of season 1 of The Bear, the FX show that I realize all of you watched a long time ago. This is my reader response analysis of the show, and I am going to spoil it completely.

I really liked the show unequivocally up until the final episode. I like cooking shows, the acting is great, and the themes really resonated with me.

The theme resonated with me a lot actually. Carmy, the chef protagonist of the show, is trying to run the family restaurant, a classic Chicago sandwich joint that made me hungry for an Italian beef every time I watched an episode, left to him by his brother Michael, who has committed suicide. There is a scene where Carmy and his sister Sugar try to go through Mikey’s records. “Why did he do it like this?” they bemoan. 

And Carmy, I get it. My dad died in 2021 and left a disaster. I don’t think a day has passed since August 18, 2023 when I haven’t asked, “Why did he do it like this?” Sifting through your loved one’s life and trying to make sense of it, while still trying to manage the rest of your life… it’s too much. On the show, Carmy talks about causing a fire accidentally in a restaurant he was working I’m and thinking that if he just let the fire go, his anxiety would go with it. Later, he causes an accidental fire at his restaurant and is paralyzed. We know what he’s thinking because he told us; if he just lets the fire go, his anxiety will go with it. The Bear is a show that understands grief.

At the beginning of the season, Carmy’s cousin Ritchie (Cousin!) finds a note from Michael to Carmy, but he, lost in his own grief and maybe envy, doesn’t give it to Carmy right away. That revelation is for the finale! In the final episode of season 1, Carmy finally gets to read the note and, despite having the entire season to prepare for it, I found myself, like Cousin, wracked with envy. I’d give a lot for a note, however banal.

Carmy laugh cries his “Fuck you” here, and I cried for the first time at the show. Because that’s right. Michael was an asshole, and Carmy loved him. Heard, chef.

But it’s not just a note. It’s a recipe for family-style spaghetti, a dish that Carmy took off the menu at the restaurant right away. “It doesn’t fit,” he correctly and foreshadowingly noted. Of course, he makes the recipe. In doing so, he finds that his brother has (somehow) stowed away cash in the cans of tomato sauce that he left all around the restaurant. Now, Carmy can open the restaurant he wants.

So my initial reaction to the end of this story was: cool, these guys deserve a happy ending. Though that reaction was tempered with puzzlement. How did the money get into the cans? Why did the money get into the cans? Big thanks to Remap Radio for getting in there with the analysis and research. Michael, as a chef, could have sealed the cans himself. And maybe he did.

This line of thought led to my next reaction cycle: I fucking hated it. To rehabilitate Mikey so thoroughly with this deux ex tomato sauce conclusion… it felt dishonest to me. The real emotional denouement was Carmy’s complicated fuck you to Mikey. You can love a terrible man. But to find that he was thinking of you? That he wasn’t terrible, really? It’s what we all want. 

It’s what I want anyway. I’m desperate to find the clue, the tiny piece of evidence that reveals that my dad loved me or really anyone. My dad didn’t commit suicide, but he would have. He asked the doctor to kill him, and he had told me twenty years ago that he would shoot himself if he were sick. 

And that’s how I got to my current place of understanding this show. Because what happens, right down to that final shot of Michael laughing, it’s what I’m desperate for. And I think Carmy is, too.

But wait. This show has not been real. This isn’t a reality tv cooking show, it’s not a biopic, it’s not even realistic fiction. The opening shot of the series is Carmy facing a literal bear on a bridge in Chicago. This scene is laden metaphorical meaning, but it isn’t literal. The show very gently toys with our sense of reality throughout it, between sleep cooking scenes and flashbacks. So I propose that what happens in the final episode isn’t real at all. Finding a whole bunch of money in tomato cans is only silly if we’re meant to think it’s true. Improbably finding that everything makes sense actually… that’s a fantasy. And it’s not a fantasy I begrudge Carmy. 

For me, The Bear works best if the conclusion is fantasy. So all I want from season 2 is no further explanation of the tomato sauce money. None at all.

See you in Season 2! Maybe!