Yes, chef! No, cousin! Season two of the Chicago kitchen drama The Bear is another pan-rattling triumph in tight, white T-shirts. The Copenhagen pilgrimage and the fork-cleaning episode are standout moments, but the star-studded flashback story, Fishes, is the show’s awards-baiting centrepiece. Spoilers, and cannolis, ahead [do not read on unless you have watched season two, episode six of The Bear]…
Set five years before The Original Beef is due to reopen, the extended episode brings together the Berzatto family for Christmas dinner. Brooding Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) has returned home – begrudgingly – from Copenhagen; his highly strung, chain-smoking, wine-sodden mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), is frantically and frenetically preparing a meal based on the feast of the seven fishes, with kitchen timers going off left, right and centre, the culinary chaos building to an almost unbearable level. The result is a frazzled 66 minutes of fork-throwing and recriminations that is almost unbearably tense.
