"The Bear," which premiered Thursday on Hulu, is an extraordinary show, not so much for the story it tells as how it tells it; you will have to go far to find another show so invested in and adept at portraying ordinary human speech and behavior, and even then you might not find one.
The story is this. Jeremy Allen White plays Carmen Berzatto, called Carmy, and sometimes Bear, a talented chef who returns from the world of very fine dining to run a family sandwich shop, the Original Beef of Chicagoland, after the suicide of his brother. He plans to clean up the joint — on his hands and knees where needed — improve the food and professionalize the kitchen, to create "an efficient, respectable place of business, run by adults."
"I'm going to fix this place," he tells his sister, Sugar (Abby Elliott), as much out of a sense of mission as a sense of business. (As a business, it makes little sense.) Of course, he is also out to fix himself, whether he knows it or not.
