re: The Bear season 3 - spoilers ok

quote:

---

That god-awful 15 minute conversation between chefs sitting around the table waxing poetic about their spiritual connection to food was hard to

---

it was like they took the worst parts of No Reservations and distilled it down to that conversation.

I get the sense that this should end sort of like Good will hunting.

Claire will finish her residency and move somewhere full time. Carmy will decide to follow her and walk away from the restaurant in dramatic fashion, leaving it to Sydney in a note..."love, carm. P.S. Let it rip, chef"

quote:

---

Just watched the first two episodes of Season 1 and the first five minutes of the third episode before turning it off.

---

Season 1 is fantastic. Season 2 falls off some but still quality TV with some all time top TV episodes in Forks and Fishes.

You ever think it might take slightly more time than 2 episodes to understand a show that everyone else loves?

The episodes are 30 minutes long.

I will admit I stopped watching the first season at that same point for the same reason. I kept seeing on this board, however, how much better it got. So glad I got back on the horse. I ended up loving it. Richie’s initial terrible, pathetic demeanor just makes his character development that much more gratifying.

That being said…I was not as enamored of this season. I like food porn, so that was great. I think Jamie Lee Curtis should win awards for her performance. Beyond that…it did not seem to progress much.

Well this show went downhill. Maybe mob guy burns the restaurant down for the insurance. Only way to save this show.

I started Season 3 this weekend and finished last night.

I think a lot of people complaining are being sort of whiny with one major exception (described more in detail below). There is more to a show/movie than plot. Plot isn't fully necessary if the writing/acting/production is top shelf with round characters developing. Season 3 had all of that (again, with one exception).

Framing the season with Carmy becoming an elite chef/mentor around his former elite chef mentors was very great. The first episode was legitimately elite TV, and it worked well as a bookend with the finale (and his conversation with chef Andrea, capped with her request to call her Andrea "next time").

I don't get people complaining about focusing on character-centric episodes after congratulating season 2 so much (with the 3 most referenced episodes being purely character-driven episodes that did not further the plot at all).

Now, here is the bad. Sydney. And it's not because she's annoying, because that role as foil to Carmy (and representing a form of young Carmy) is important and done pretty well. The problem, as others have mentioned in this thread, is that she's a bit of a Marie Sue. This is very bad on a few levels.

First, it is just unrealistic, as people have said, that she's this legit nobody who is treated as this rising star and offered these huge options. There is suspension of disbelief and there is stupidity, and this is much closer to stupidity.

Second, this entirely removes the comparison to Carmy that they're trying so hard to create. We saw multiple versions of the mentor chefs and 2 big ones in stark contrast praising him at Ever's funeral dinner. We saw the effects of both, the friendships, devleopment, career ups, career downs, etc. Sydney has none of this, because she went from failed caterer to Michelin-worthy chef du cuisine...after working a few months in a Chicago beef shop. She has no development under Carmy's fractured psyche, because she's already apparently his near equal and gets to tell him to frick of to his face in the kitchen, and not years later after proving herself like Carmy did with Joel McHale.

Some of the other journeys (Richie, Marcus) did seem to go a bit quicker than would be realistic, but at least they started from an area of ineptness (for a Michelin-star restaurant) for a full season+. But at least it showed them starting low, having professional conflict (and how it compared to their personal drama), getting an opportunity to improve, and improving. That's why Honeydew and Forks are 2 of the 3 most referenced episodes form season 2.

Last, and a transition from point 2, since they Mary Sue'd her character, they can't go back into her past in any meaningful way AND have her actually develop in any meaningful way. All they can do is make her anxious over like, signing a partnership agreement or taking a new job. I mean one of the themes they were developing in season 2 was how she was going to do all this work without a cut...Resolved with no conflict by like episode 2 of season 3. Oh man, she ran a catering company into the ground...so interesting. The whole focus on the show from season 2 on is the journey of the characters, but it's effectively impossible to do this with Sydney how they've constructed her character.

This makes her a complete outlier in how they're presenting the show, and she sticks out like a sore thumb. Having her as the #2 or 3 character with all of this baggage, and trying to force conflict/drama into her Mary Sue status, really does take away from how the rest of the show flows, especially when they're focusing on characters. Since season 3 was all about this focus, it created real issues the entire season.

You must not have been here for much of the discussion of the final Star Wars trilogy

quote:

---

wife and I just watched S3 and it was a chore to get through.

---

Wife and I couldn’t finish it. And she’s the CDC at a fine dining restaurant so she’s interested in a show like this.

Too boring and corny. Tries too hard to be artsy and important when it’s paper thin. Carmy is portrayed as some genius but he can’t even control his own temper. He’s a bitch and his behavior would never be tolerated in a real kitchen.

You forgot to add that there's too many Faks. Faks aren't really all that funny and they're so dumb, it's off-putting. I guess they're there to keep the show as a comedy so it can continue to rake in Emmys.