The Bear - Yes Chef! - The Something Awful Forums

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LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

I was just gonna' watch the pilot yesterday as I made a ham, gravy, and donuts to get me in the mood before returning to the show I was already binge-watching with the plan to return to The Bear if I liked the first episode.

I am now out of The Bear and am quite sad. That is all.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 06:23

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 01:33

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Timby posted:

I don't think we're getting a happy ending. 80 percent of new restaurants fail within their first five years, Richie is still a hotheaded whackjob, and Carmy is up to his eyeballs in debt with organized crime.

I feel like the show is about people doing the absolute best with what little they've been given, so even if the restaurant fails, I feel like they'll find a way to make that be the cornerstone of an actual happy ending.

This is decidedly unlike one of those shows about horrible people. It's a show about flawed people getting over their past and becoming better, epitomized in the metaphor of the restaurant itself.

Richie's transformation rang super true to me because occasionally horrible people will have their circumstances change and will, in fact, have an honest moment of self-reflection that sets them on a path to something better.

It's literally a show about second chances. Every second counts. Every single character flashes back to failure. If they all leave the narrative as failures, what the hell was this all even for?

Things are going to be messy, horrible, and downright grimy on the way there, but if it's not going there, it'll be a far worse show than it currently is. Even the hosed up mother who drunk drove her car into the family house had a "she's growing into a better person" moment.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2023 01:33

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Yeah, I don't really understand why that discussion is happening when they're still selling the same poo poo to the same working-class Chicagoans, just out of a window instead of over a counter.

It's not like those sandwiches are gonna' be eight hundred bucks now.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2023 23:53

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Timby posted:

Minor derail, but as someone who's been in recovery since March 23, 2009, AA isn't religious (bear in mind that the original literature was written in 1939, when it was anathema to not be a white Christian).

It's spiritual. All the "God stuff" means is accepting that you're not king poo poo of your mountain and that there are forces more powerful than yourself in this life. For me, I feel that every time I walk to the banks of the Mississippi River.

Depending on where you live, that's true, but I stalled out on AA because they both required you to have a higher power, and sadly at far too many meetings, the sentiment is "you can have any higher power you want _{so long as your higher power is our lord and savior Jesus Christ."}

It's a decentralized organization, as it should be, but that means Christians who already think of themselves as the only real people, and their morality the only right and true morality, can, in fact, wind up running meetings, chapters, and by extension, whole cities. And if you're a Christian with substance abuse issues, there should absolutely be a place for you, but you shouldn't demand everybody else's recovery conform to yours.

The first half of the Blue Book was awash with religion. The back half was far more useful and helps me with keeping the money off my back to this very day, because it was like the platonic ideal of a meeting itself: hearing other people tell their stories.

You gotta' find the right meeting.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2023 05:14

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Borsche69 posted:

i think they all probably shouldve been a little more sympathetic to a dude that was trapped in a walk-in for an entire service, and that they probably shouldve done a single thing to get him out of that walk-in during that same service.

For better or worse, this would happen IRL at a lot of places. You shelve every problem that can be put off until the rush is over.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2023 00:50

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Lotta' people who've never spent 30 seconds in a walk-in ITT.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2023 01:59

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

I'd be sad about Claire being a mere plot device serving only to throw a monkey wrench in Carmy's life if there weren't so many fully-developed women on the show, but as it stands, it feels like a very deliberate choice and not a blind spot.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 22:58

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

He was putting a gently caress-ton of pressure on himself and had been trapped in a walk-in for hours when literally two minutes is far too long so he exploded at somebody he really liked in an act of self-sabotage.

I'm really excited to see him grow past things like that. It's gonna' be great.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2023 20:56

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

biceps crimes posted:

Also, I would go to The Beef, but I wouldn't go to The Bear.

The Beef is still there. So many people missed this that I don't think they did a good enough job explaining it. The sit-down section is the new stuff. The old stuff is the window.

FuriousGeorge posted:

This show has taught me that the pre-requisites for fine dining apparently are:

1. A meal can only take up 1/12th the area of the plate at most.
2. Drizzle drizzled on everything.

You're pretty much right on the money for real life with this.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 02:37

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

I don't know it's convenient that they're in debt to a mobster.

That seems decidedly inconvenient.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 02:53

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

He gets the building that's worth far more than their restaurant if they don't pay him back in full in a super unreasonable time frame, so the most important things you said don't apply even slightly.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 03:06

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Shabadu posted:

Well, from the country/city club world, we lose money on every event and meal we serve. We're entirely kept afloat on our exlucisvity and dues and initiation fee. It's also why we can afford to be relatively stable and keep 40 hour weeks.

Only tangentially related, but food is a loss leader in the vast majority of bars. It only exists because most state liquor boards require you to serve a certain number of hot meals in order to sell anything stronger than beer and wine and to keep you from leaving to go get actual good food elsewhere.

The restaurant business has poo poo margins, but they make it all up selling booze, for which the margins are loving bananas.

You buy two drinks and you already paid for the whole-rear end bottle.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 21:29

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

The margins on alcohol are always good.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2023 22:09

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

You also need to put a shitload of cash away for rainy days, 'cause all it takes is something like construction on your block or a diet fad and you're hosed for six months.

A lot of just-hanging-on bars go out of business in the period between New Years Day and St. Paddy's Day because everybody's still reeling from spending so much at the end of the year on Christmas and such and have made New Years resolutions besides and if you haven't squirreled away enough cash to operate at a huge loss for two-and-a-half months, you're hosed.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2023 01:02

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Terror Sweat posted:

The old restaurant is still open, it's the walk in window. So presumably all of their old customers are at the walk-in getting sandwiches. Many of those tickets are sandwiches, they just didn't bother to explain this

They absolutely explained it. More than once. But clearly not well enough considering how many people have this criticism.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2023 02:41

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

mobby_6kl posted:

I really remember nothing about the takout window other than it exists. It was probably explained but I don't see how they're supposed to run that on top of the fine dining restaurant when they previously barely managed to make the beef sandwiches.

A huge remodel and lots of retraining happened in Season 2.

Phenotype posted:

This is part of why it makes so little sense. The restaurant is underwater and owes a lot of money to Oliver Platt... but also Mikey's got rolls of extra $20s lying around that he's been secretly hiding in the spaghetti sauce cans, and somehow no one's ever opened one of them to cook with (even though everyone's shocked when Carmy doesn't continue making spaghetti). Then Carmy finally finds the money and says great, let's close the place and remodel the whole thing, even though we're still deep in debt to Oliver Platt and don't actually have enough money in the cans to do the remodel.

You've answered your own question. They stopped making the dish that required the canned tomatoes.

As for the remodel, they chose to bet on themselves, putting the building up as the collateral, instead of just paying off a loan and continuing to run a failing restaurant in a hosed up building with electrical problems and no hope of passing an inspection.

Colonel Whitey posted:

I really think that for the story to go anywhere that makes sense they have to pivot away from the traditional fine dining approach from season 2.

There's a lot of show left to go. The resolution of an arc, or even *the* arc, might be "yeah, this was a loving terrible idea and we need to go back to The Beef," or it could be finding a way to make fine dining work. Personally, I'd be fine with either so long as the characters continue to grow and do their best.

Xealot posted:

I don't think I need that, personally. The first season already felt a little close to an Uncut Gems energy IMO, so adding literal life-and-death "pay back the mob" stakes feels like an unnecessary left turn.

Agreed. Losing their family's building and restaurant are plenty high stakes. Nobody needs to have their legs broken.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 21:23

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Terror Sweat posted:

It's really funny that they have like 10 people in the kitchen and can't handle a room of like 25.

Has it always been all-hands-on-deck, though? Granted, I binge-watched the whole show, but it felt like there were reasonable crews, usually, just exaggerated slightly because TV, except for the big days where they were doing something new like online ordering or the friends and family that closed season 2.

AFewBricksShy posted:

I made the omelette that Syd made for sugar in episode 9 this morning for breakfast. The only thing I did different was that I didn�t have sour cream and onion chips, just regular.
Holy poo poo. The Boursin cheese does most of the heavy lifting, if I do it again I�ll probably cut back on the amount because it was really rich. (I roughly matched what they showed on screen).
I�d recommend it if you like omelettes though.

This rules.

My favorite runner on this show is that no matter how stressed out they are, or even if they're at each other's throats, every kitchen worker in the place will drop everything the moment somebody says they cooked something to ask them what they made and how it was.

That's the most true-to-life poo poo I've seen. One of my best friends has been a cook for various Tom Douglas restaurants here in Seattle for as long as I've known him and he and I loving text each other our experiments and geek out about them.

I was never taught to cook when I was young and had to figure it out myself, and since about 2007, he's watched me go from the beginning stages where you basically take pre-packaged foods like frozen pizza and mac 'n cheese and gussy them up with real ingredients to being somebody who can confidently host a Thanksgiving that has everybody asking for my recipes. All the while, he'd encourage and guide me, never once being a snob about poo poo, because even Anthony Bourdain would loudly and often talk about how great Spam is.

Now I bake my own bread from a sourdough starter I grew. I save all my vegetable scraps and bones for stock. I make pizza from scratch. I haven't bought a tortilla in over a year.

First it was a way of showing my wife how much I cared about her, then when we divorced, it had to grow into an act of self-love. Cooking is one of my favorite things on the planet. My favorite memory of this past summer was the day I started this show. I just so happened to be making a ham with ham gravy that day and I loving nailed it. Cooking fucks, and geeking out about it with other people who cook feels amazing.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2023 23:43

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Atlas Hugged posted:

Also, the Christmas episode. gently caress me it was like watching my family.

Yeah, I was raised Irish Catholic and that poo poo was way too real for me.

Terror Sweat posted:

A sandwich shop that's only open for dinner is probably why the brothers restaurant failed miserably

I don't think they were ever only open for dinner. They did lunch, then closed for a few hours, then came back for dinner. I may be misremembering, though.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2023 01:57

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Atlas Hugged posted:

She made me turn it off halfway through because, "I lived through this once in real life at your family's house. I do not want to watch it on TV on my weekend."

Oof. I'm sorry, friend-o.

Every time my ex-wife had to spend time with my family, she'd get a looooooooot more patient with me for the next month or so.

It's a hard watch, but it's one of my favorite episodes. It really captures where the damage comes from and the cycles of it. Hurt people hurt people, etc. It's this never-ending perpetual motion machine of trauma that gets passed on to each generation. It really made sense of the why of things. Why Michael was a drug addict and why Carmy is so driven to greatness in the one thing in his life over which he has a modicum of agency that has measurable benchmarks that give you high-octane dopamine hits.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2023 20:54

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

vuk83 posted:

It was friends and family. Not the real opening

Yep. It still stretches believably a bit, but doesn't break it, for my money. He got locked in late enough in the process that I didn't even blink at the conceit.

It passed the Spielberg Drive Home Test.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2023 19:32

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 01:33

LividLiquid: Apr 13, 2002

Atlas Hugged posted:

Right, but the other point is that it couldn't have failed the way it failed. There would always be a failsafe to open it from the inside regardless of what was going on with the latch.

But it's also a nerd-poo poo opinion and the scenario worked great as a built up moment in a TV show.

Exactly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ugebzq3juE&t=5s

The important thing from a media literacy standpoint is that they built it up as a thing he was meant to do, but kept getting too distracted. He forgot a thing about his restaurant because he was infatuated and it bit him in the rear end, so he blames her. It really doesn't matter if walk-ins don't work that way.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2023 21:45

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