Anti-climatic Season 3 of 'The Bear' lacked identity and focus, but still carried great moments

The acting and writing are stellar, but the entire season felt like a giant setup for Season 4.

Great shows can hit a speedbump, even Hulu’s celebrated award-winning series, The Bear.

***SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3 OF THE BEAR FOLLOW***

I mean this with all the love in the world for the Berzatto family and all that cling too close to it: Season 3 was a slight disappointment, as in not as wonderful as the first two seasons, which thrived on perfect casting, snappy writing, and a ton of heart and authenticity. A lot of that remained intact for round three, but the disjointed, lazy nature of the storytelling felt like a huge setup for future episodes-and that’s not cool. Anti-climatic endings to even a thriving show is a risky endeavor because you have to tie up enough storylines without leaving too many on hold.

After all, Season 2 ended anti-climatically, with Carmen stuck in a walk-in fridge and spouting off some hard truths about his relationship status with Claire and cooking. Chef work is no easy task, especially when your entire journey has included a few pit stops with genuine assholes and a debilitating cocktail of family drama and tragedy. Season 3 picks up with a weird timeline changeup that took a little bit to latch onto, taking us back in the past when Jeremy Allen White’s maddening chef left for New York.

The entire first episode is a Reznor-Finch therapeutic soul-searching mission that shows us the roughneck history of Carm’s culinary beginnings. Seeing him play a supporting part in Olivia Colman’s classic restaurant, Forever, and do the little things with Will Poulter’s chef, the same one who helped reinvent Marcus’ abilities. He also runs into Joel McHale’s ball-busting chef.

And then we’re thrown back into real time, and then back into the past. This goes on and on, throughout the entire season. The first few episodes splice the background and pasts of the characters with returns to the modern day times, with Carmen still being unable to properly apologize to Claire and to his kitchen pals. He’s a wreck pretty much for the entire season, shouting and always mad. Why make the guy quit smoking when it’ll only crank up his stress level even more?!

That’s the first problem. White is a gifted actor, but Carmen spent a good chunk of Season 3 stuck in a morbid isolation pity tank. He had an off night at the worst time, can’t talk to his mother, misses his brother, and doesn’t know how to connect with humans at all times. His girlfriend worships him, and he screwed that up. Carmy and his cousin (and close, combative friend) Richie (the great Ebon Moss-Bachrach) can’t share a room with conversation without a mediator. He’s shouting like a shorter Gordon Ramsay during service at his new, flashy restaurant.

In this depressing rapture, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) gets less screen time, and the time she gets is spent contemplating a huge career change. Edebiri can do so much with so little, but I wanted more time with her cynical yet still bubbly chef than the detached Carmen. While we’re on the subject of “characters who needed more screen time,” count me in for more Oliver Platt and less Faks. The brothers are adorable yet smothering, speaking faster than Mamet script.

Abby Elliott’s Natalie, aka Sugar, has a great episode all to herself and is still the best kept secret out of this show’s cast--but even she is a little underused this season. Sugar’s pregnancy episode (welcome back, ultra-neurotic Jamie Lee Curtis) is the most intense hour of television you’ll watch this year.

The Bear is as intense as ever in Season 3, but the focus isn’t there. The identity or pursuit of what’s happening and its purpose is undecided. It zigs, zags, zigs, stops, and zigs some more. Season 1 was about rediscovering who Carmen wanted to be and what his and Sydney’s restaurant could be. Season 2 was about opening a restaurant and tangling with your inner demons and out-of-work entanglements.

Season 3 seems to be about making condolences for the final scenes of Season 2, and that’s a process that doesn’t get going until after the halfway point. The best parts of the newest season are the trips back in time (Tina, Mikey, Napkins) or detached storylines (Sugar’s birth episode), and not the core story elements. Claire is rarely seen but talked about furiously, as if no one can plainly see that Carmen is bad boyfriend material. The tension runs past the cohesiveness of a television season.

Creator/writer Christopher Storer seems to be setting us up for the big punch in Season 4, which is already filmed and could come sooner than the standard year-long wait time. The seasons were filmed together-18 episodes in full, ten of which have aired-so the narrative and arc could be, most likely, are tied together. It’ll make more sense after those are released. I wish that would have been more loudly transferred to fans’ ears. Maybe I missed something.

What I didn’t miss was the genuinely well-written moments with characters. Those out of nowhere conversational hits like the one between Platt’s uncle and Carmen outside the restaurant about dreams and reality. Sugar and her mom uncorking their stress over the greatness of ice chips. Lisa Colon-Zayas and Jon Bernthal cutting a poignant rug in a scene from the past. Colon-Zayas and her ‘Bear’ and real life husband, David Zayas, creating magic in an otherwise mundane home life scene.

Tina’s impromptu “interview” with Mikey brings out all the gifts and gems in each actor’s arsenal of tricks. As my good friend Ben Smith noted in a Facebook exchange, the entire scene seemed real and happening in front of us, as if these people really existed. You saw in a scene how deeply Tina cared for Mikey, and where that started when he took a shot on her after many places didn’t even give her a second look.

The scene is so naturally performed that you go searching for that authenticity elsewhere in the show, but it’s harder to find. Lionel Boyce’s lovable Marcus isn’t given much different to do than Season 2. There’s a white lightning sequence when they open the sandwich window, but that sharpness never lasts past an episode.

It’s all just decent, but a good distance from the brilliance of the first two seasons. The good news is there’s more, but the bad news it won’t be tomorrow. Christopher Storer generated a series that defied normal show pratfalls and speed bumps for two seasons, dispensing emotionally charged episodes. Season 3 was a scatterbrained journey that has one of those abrupt endings that will catch you by surprise and piss you off a little.

The big, much talked about Chicago Tribune restaurant review comes in at the last minute for Carmen and friends, with viewers only getting fleeting looks at the contents. Remember what Platt’s money pit said: Bad review, no more money.

This isn’t a bad review. I simply wanted more based on what has come before. Storer has a simmering dish that hopefully opens up in Season 4.

All episodes of The Bear are streaming on Hulu. What did you think? Satisfied with the goods, or did you really want a regular beef sandwich? One more thing. I miss the old restaurant on the show. Shitholes build character after all.