The second season of The Bear, which debuted on Hulu a little over two weeks ago, has received widespread praise from critics and fans alike – namely, for its ability to create dynamic, three-dimensional female characters.
In season two of The Bear, Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto – an award-winning chef who returns home to Chicago to run his family’s sandwich shop after the death of his brother, Michael. His sous chef and business partner, Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edeberi) juggles re-opening the restaurant with her own struggles for perfection and pleasing her father. Longtime employee Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) adapts to the restaurant’s changing environment by willingly attending culinary school, while Carmy’s sister “Sugar” (Abby Elliott) is simply holding the entire Berzatto family together.
Then, there’s Claire.
Claire, whose last name is unclear much like the rest of her background, is introduced in the second season as Carmy’s unrequited childhood crush. The two reconnect in the ice cream section of a grocery store, a classic location for a meet-cute, where the soft-spoken Claire (played by Molly Gordon) reveals that she’s now working as an ER doctor.
Upon first meeting Claire in episode two, fans quickly assume that this ghost of Carmy’s past has been established as his love interest for the rest of season two. And why shouldn’t he have one? Carmy has unrelentingly worked to transform his late brother’s Original Beef of Chicagoland into a five-star establishment called, fittingly, The Bear. There’s just one problem: Claire is a manic pixie dream girl. At least, that’s what viewers of The Bear think.
While Molly Gordon has previously stolen scenes in the 2019 teen comedy Booksmart, and Emma Seligman’s anxiety-inducing film Shiva Baby, her character of Claire in The Bear has forced viewers to call out the controversial manic pixie dream girl trope that’s often sadly used in cinema.
The “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” – as coined by The AV Club writer Nathan Rabin in a 2007 essay on Elizabethtown – is a female character that “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures”.
The manic pixie dream girl is a dangerous stereotype. Her main purpose is to inspire a greater appreciation in life for the male protagonist, who could be suffering from some identity crisis, artistic rut, or in Carmy’s case, total family trauma.
The first instance in which Claire exhibits traits of the manic pixie dream girl is when she recalls a former classmate named Katie, who broke her arm in elementary school. The majority of students were freaked out by Katie’s broken limb, but not Claire. As she tells Carmy in the frozen aisle, she sat and stared at Katie’s broken arm because she wanted to understand it.
Three episodes later, Carmy enlists Claire’s help to drop off a letter. As Carmy sits in the passenger seat, Claire tells him: “I’m a horrible driver, but I enjoy the risk of it.”
It soon became clear to viewers that Claire is “not like other girls”, which led them to air out their hot takes on social media.
“Claire in the bear s2 is so painfully a manic pixie dream girl it physically hurts,” said one Twitter user.
“I love the bear with all my heart, but wtf is claire for?? why is she there?? we dont need a manic pixie dream girl arghhhhhhfjfjjdkskskf,” said another frustrated viewer.
“Extremely cold take and i know everyone’s said this already but i’m just so frustrated by claire bc literally all of the other main female characters are so layered and compelling and she feels like a lazily written parody of a manic pixie dream girl gf,” someone else pointed out.
For others, Claire’s character seemed like something out of a movie montage in which the male protagonist watches an old recording of his dead/missing/sick wife before she died/went missing/got sick. You know the kind, which have been perfectly mimicked by comedian Delaney Rowe in her cringeworthy viral TikToks. One is titled, “Absolutely insufferable female lead of an indie movie tells a childhood story,” while another is, “Girl who’s convinced you’re absolutely obsessed with her makes pancakes”.
As discourse surrounding Claire’s manic pixie tendencies grew online, many people wondered whether Gordon’s character was purposefully written to serve no purpose. As pointed out by TikTok user Leila Hussain, The Bear showrunner Christopher Storer has no problem writing dynamic female characters – such as Carmy’s erratic mother, Donna Berzatto, played by none other than Jamie Lee Curtis.
“I wonder if they wrote her through Carmy’s POV because we very rarely see her around anyone else,” commented one TikTok user.
“I don’t think the writers wanted us to be invested in Claire,” another suggested.
“She’s not a character she’s a plot device,” a third said.
Throughout season two, we see Carmy become increasingly distracted by his budding romance, while everyone else is forced to pick up his slack to open the restaurant on time. In the finale episode, (spoiler alert) White’s character gets stuck in the kitchen walk-in refrigerator because he forgot to get the handle fixed, despite being reminded by Sydney multiple times to do so. During his self-loathing diatribe inside the walk-in, Carmy swears off love forever and, of course, Claire overhears him.
It was unclear whether their relationship actually came to an end as she walked away from Carmy, who was locked in the freezing fridge, but viewers couldn’t care less anyway. Now, they can focus their energy on shipping Carmy and Sydney together.
The Bear season two is available to stream on Hulu in the US.
