The Bear’s third season begins not with a bang but simmering, slow-cooked silence. The culinary comedy-drama’s return had been feverishly awaited, even more so since it scooped six Emmys earlier this year. Anticipation was higher than ever but, like a stubborn Chicago chef, creator Christopher Storer changed the menu and refused to serve up something predictable.
The new series subverts expectations by opening with an almost dialogue-free, 37-minute collage of its hero’s foodie CV. Flashbacks to the previous jobs of Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) show what made him the perfectionist chef he is today. We watch him shell peas, juice blood oranges, truss free-range chickens and fillet Japanese fish. He labels things with green tape, picks micro-herbs with tweezers and painstakingly scrubs surfaces. Well, he’s got to maintain those muscly arms somehow.
