Diksha Sundriyal
The fourth season of FX’s ‘The Bear’ adds another chapter to the story of the eponymous restaurant. Following the mixed review from the previous season, the restaurant now literally has the clock ticking, and when it turns out, so will the place’s parachute, and it will be forced to cease operations. That is, until something significantly great happens to turn things around. By the end of the season, a glimmer of hope appears in the form of an article about Marcus in Food and Wine magazine, where he is named as one of the most promising chefs around. But while the restaurant and its crew revel in this good news and prepare for the last service before the clock runs out, it is revealed that Carmy has made a decision that will change the course of the Bear and its people forever. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Carmy Decides to Step Away from the Bear
One of the major plot points of the fourth season of ‘The Bear’ focuses on Sidney’s dilemma. She is offered a great position at Adam Shapiro’s new restaurant, which would give her the opportunity to start anew and be much more orderly than what she has at the Bear. At the same time, she seems to be too familiar with the Bear’s chaos now. After much back and forth, she eventually sticks with the Bear, and by that time, it seems that a major decision has been made without her knowledge. When asked to sign a revised partnership agreement, she discovers that Carmy has asked Pete to put only Sidney and Nat under the Bear, with the other half going to Jimmy.
This is shocking because originally, the Bear was supposed to be a partnership between Carmy, Sidney, and Nat. Carmy removing herself means that he is pulling himself out of the restaurant altogether. At first, Sidney is confused about this because it seems impossible for him to do such a thing. But when she confronts him about it, he confesses that he has plans to retire, not just from the Bear but from the culinary world itself. This doesn’t mean that he is going to jump ship as soon as Sidney signs the agreement. He will stay on, at least until the restaurant has paid its debt to Jimmy and there is no sword hanging over their heads, forcing them to keep pushing or lose the restaurant altogether. He assures her that he will stay on for as long as it takes to make the restaurant profitable, but once that is done, he will step away for good.
Carmy Takes a Page Out of Chef Terry’s Book
Before Carmy returned to Chicago to start his restaurant, he worked for Chef Andrea Terry, who has her own highly successful restaurant, Ever. We meet her and the restaurant’s crew when Carmy sends Richie there to learn from them, and the latter sees a massive growth as he learns all the nitty-gritty of how to run a restaurant. Ever’s success and Terry’s iconic image in the culinary world are something that Carmy wants to replicate with the Bear. But then, in the Season 3 finale, Terry decides to close the restaurant, even though it has been doing extremely well.
Carmy can’t understand why she would do such a thing, especially when he knows how difficult it is to get what she has. When he asks her why, she explains that she has found all the success she could in her profession, and even with that, she does not have happiness in her personal life. In fact, it was chasing after this professional success that led her to make sacrifices that made her feel lacking, particularly in her relationships. But she is done with the business now, and having already given it so much of herself, she now wants to step back from it and focus on other important stuff. At the time, the idea of leaving behind a stellar career like hers seems impossible to Carmy, but over the course of the fourth season, he realizes that he needs the same thing.
Carmy Prioritising Himself Over His Career is a Significant Milestone in His Arc
Most of Carmy’s adult life has been solely focused on his culinary world, so much so that it alienated him from his own family to such an extent that he didn’t feel worthy of attending his own brother’s funeral. The obsession with making the Bear a success impacted the one good romantic relationship he had, and the rest of his relationships weren’t any better either. The Tribune review made him realise that he might be the weakest link in the restaurant, which was the reason behind the inconsistency and the dissonance that seemed to put off the reviewer. So, he slowly gives over control, and the more he does it, the more he realises how easy it would be for the restaurant to function without him.
With Sydney’s leadership in the kitchen, Richie’s expertise on the floor, and Nat’s handle on the management, all corners are covered, leaving the space wide open for Carmy to do his own thing, which he really needs to, because he doesn’t really know who he is outside of his life as a chef. Moreover, he realises that he has spent so much time in the kitchen that he has inhabited its chaos so much that when some peace and calm crosses his path, he doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s not that he hadn’t been thinking about his patterns before, but it is after he finally shows up at Claire’s door to apologise to her that he realises how much of his life is defined by chaos.
He has become so used to it that any idea of not being around it leaves him clueless, and that is one of the reasons why he got scared when things started to get good with Claire. Over time, he has realised that he needs to step away from this mayhem altogether and finally focus on himself, get to know himself outside of the constraints that he put on himself. Most importantly, he needs to step away from the culinary world because he doesn’t love it as he used to. It doesn’t burn the same spark in him that it did when he left for New York all those years ago, the spark that made him eager to hustle while sleeping on his cousin’s couch for months. All it does is burn him, and it is too much to bear now. So, it’s wise to step away before it completely consumes him and there is nothing left to salvage.
Read More: Where is The Bear Season 4 Filmed?
