Bear’s final run is a season of disappointment

I’ve always found it cruel to force people to finish their plates before leaving the table. In some cases, the amount of food may be too much. Also, the bite marks left on the plate may be substandard. Why not keep the memory of a delicious meal intact instead of choking on the leftovers to make it pretty?

My apologies for adding another food metaphor to the endless list of food metaphors (sorry!) littered throughout my review of The Bear. That’s how I felt watching the show’s fifth and final season. This is a show that should have been stopped before it got too bloated (sorry!). It’s not that the ending was bad – frankly, it would have been more satisfying – but rather that it was unsatisfying and, well, bland (sorry again!).

Review: The Bear Season 4 is a diluted version of what came before

Season 4 ended with Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) revealing to head chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) that she had decided to quit the restaurant and the restaurant industry, as The Bear and his crew were given an ultimatum to either fix their finances or close. Season 5 begins with a storm, with Chicago being hit by a Biblical downpour, wreaking havoc on The Bear’s physical structure and affecting its employees as well. Employees have been forced to contend with layoffs, budget cuts and limited ingredient lists as restaurants try to squeeze cash flow out of stone before dinner service.

Meanwhile, chef Evra (Edwin Lee Gibson) plans to franchise The Bear’s sandwich shop, The Beef. Meanwhile, investor Cicero (Oliver Platt) goes bankrupt to keep his restaurant open, and enlists the help of a computer (Ben Koppelman) and new character Cheese (Elsie Fisher) to find a way to keep it afloat.

This is a high-stakes setup that unfolds one scene at a time over the final season. It’s a great narrative choice because it brings the action of the show back to the kitchen, and that’s where it first found its very convincing footing. Unfortunately, despite all this, Season 5 never really hits its pace until the penultimate episode (the dinner service itself), opting instead to bounce back and forth wildly between workplace drama and character growth, with social media reel-friendly vignettes strung together so clumsily that they sometimes feel like they’ve been pulled from another episode.

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The show’s large ensemble cast is in great shape as ever, and while they do their best with storytelling, they often end up being ham-fisted because they’re too obviously trying to wrap things up in a tidy bow. The script, which frequently makes viewers ogle, such as when fans of the show take “Yes, Chef” as commonplace or cite the do-or-die theory about Carmy and Sid that has taken social media by storm, is so corny that it’s hard to believe that this is the same show that brought us Season 2’s breathtaking sixth episode, “Fishes.”

As for season 2, it was the best of the show and probably one of the best second TV shows of the 2000s. It was at this time that The Bear shifted slightly from its laser focus on Carmy to a more fleshed-out look at the supporting characters. And while this shift in focus ultimately resulted in a lack of focus, it added some much-needed depth to Richie (Ebon Moss Bachlack), a show failure turned FOH pro. And while all the other characters get a very sweet farewell in Season 5, with the final scene of the show literally being a group photo of all the main characters together at a birthday party, Richie still gets a suitably emotional farewell. In a season of disappointment, it’s nice to see at least one storyline get dessert (sorry!).