sublimepeachtriumph

[sublimepeachtriumph]

See this?

Carmy is about to pull this shit. He is really about to go in and likely blow up one of the only good relationships he has left from The Beef. After yelling at Tina from the pass. After stressing out everyone and their fucking dog cos he thinks this is acceptable behaviour if its all in service of a star?

This part of 3x03 Doors was such a jagged scene for me because of a few things (including what I've said above). What else got me:

Tina is someone Carmy knows, that Carmy loves (go back to their scene in 1x08 Braciole talking about Mikey. Go back to Carmy's soft "hey Tina you go ahead, you take the night off okay? I got you.");

Tina is an older woman of colour who has made the commitment to skill up so that she can work at The Bear after working at The Beef. Carmy has seen the work she has put in but in this moment, he pays none of it any mind. Imagine being T. Imagine how that would feel. Imagine how it would feel knowing all we know after watching Tina's journey in 3x06 Napkins. The thing is, Carmy doesn't need to know all of T's backstory to know his behaviour is unacceptable. The fact that he knows some of it and proceeds to act in this way is just more evidence of his white privilege showing its ass.

Carmy does not have the self reflexivity here to look at his young, white, male self yelling at this older WOC and see how fucked this is: how he's become another white guy in a litany of white men barking at workers of colour, not seeing Tina for the whole human she is but reducing her to a means of production. The racial dynamics on this show are so evident but don't get talked about nearly enough. I know the writers have crafted those dynamics on purpose because as beautiful a character as Carmy is, he's also a product of his environment as a white chef trained in a highly racially segregated field. This has repercussions for his relationships in season 3, particularly with the BIPOC characters in his life. @november-rising speaks about Carmy's behaviour in relation to Black women's experiences of love and professional recognition devastatingly here. Read their post and the reblogs.

While this shit made me so mad this season, it was also in character - as I've said here - for a white guy trained in fine dining to revert to established patterns of behaviour. Though, I'm gonna need the writers of the show to show US that they did this on purpose and have Carmy ATONE for this shit in season 4. Otherwise, what kind of redemption arc will this man have? This shit is hurtful to the BIPOC characters and BIPOC viewers of this show in no small part because white men the world over have a LONG history of using BIPOC people as a means of production and as a means of production alone. If you're unsure about this, please go look up the Transatlantic slave trade. Please go look up the history of colonial indentured labour. Please go look up The British East India Company. Please look up the forced labour regime in the modern prison industrial complex. Please go read a fucking book. And no I'm not saying Carmy is responsible for the slave trade (LMAO please hold fire if this is where your mind is going). I'm saying BIPOC folks carry with us a long ass history, an intergenerational history of this shit. But guess who else does too? White folks. So don't act like they dont.

This shit is also hurtful because we know how respectful Carmy can be. We’ve seen him in seasons 1 & 2. We know he knows what being a practical ally looks like (even if he may not have the language to name what he was doing) when he made sure to bring the staff of The Beef with him to The Bear and invested in them accordingly. We know he loves and respects them, none more so than Sydney. But there were so many times where he did not act like it in season 3. And when folks have got histories - not just personal but cultural too - as long and as loaded as we ALL do, actions account for a lot. What you do is the shorthand for who you are in the world, whether you like it or not.

Ok back to the scene.

Who comes in and simultaneously saves Carmy's ass and ANOTHER of his relationships? Who protects Tina and keeps the kitchen from exploding AGAIN?

Who supervises her sous chef like a fucking pro?

Sydney. Sydney. Sydney.

And who knows that he's in the presence of greatness but doesn't know how to articulate it cos he's not integrated, not by a fucking long shot. Who needs to attend some anti-racism training along with Al-Anon and therapy (so he can get the benefit of understanding his role in this system and get a better understanding of his own mind)?

Yeah you Carmen, you.

Better get on that shit before you lose the woman who is the beat to your whole heart another means of production to a chef who's going to pay her better, give Syd insurance from the jump and total creative control. Just saying.

[sublimepeachtriumph]

Claire is an Indictment of the American Medical System

She never heals anything but she certainly causes harm. Meanwhile the grief-blind lead the grief-blind over here and black women do the unpaid, under-appreciated, and un-reciprocated emotional heavy-lifting.

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Why are none of these people in therapy? Work is not therapy yet in the US where people pay more for health insurance than anywhere else in the world and where Americans work more hours without vacation or maternity leave than most comparable developed countries, the characters on the Bear usually seem to find help only amongst their coworkers or through self-help (reading or podcasts). Women, especially black women (the sole example we see in an Al-Anon session and of course our main second lead), are seen doing the bulk of this labor in the workplace--in particular, everyone's favorite emotional labor mule: Sydney Adamu. By season four, Syd is even performing this function on her day off--managing Carmy, Richie and Donna's emotions in the wake of her father's heart attack with only the most limited (by Richie) reciprocity shown back to her. Her carework is reflected in Marcus' elegy for his mother; like Syd, though, her bedside is not surrounded by a community despite the suggestion at her funeral that she loved taking care of people, too.

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Al-Anon is a free public service held in a church. Interestingly the church Carmy attends is AME, African Methodist Episcopal Church, a denomination established by black people in 1816. Although free and welcoming of all ethnicities, it's AA-like sessions are not designed for an individualized program of healing through talk or medication which is what Carmy desperately needs. Carmy's ability to attend the Al-Anon sessions in the middle of the day is only made possible by Syd's labor keeping everything running at the restaurant; it happens too often in the plot for it to be anything less than a pattern wherein white healing comes at the expense of a black woman's emotional and physical labour.

It's almost as if in the world of the show trained mental health professionals don't exist and are not a part of the benefits package anyone working in an essential industry 12-14 hour days 6 days a week during a pandemic in a major metropolitan center can call upon. It's only mutual aid that they can turn to--and that too, cash-strapped religious organizations run by strangers that never coalesce into a community the agnostic members of the Bear can fully join. Historically this was a mutual aid organization for abolitionists in a society that practiced plantation slavery; in contemporary times, this mutual aid organization contains some vestigial trace of what a resistance to a life brutalized by capitalism might mean for workers whose punishing schedules allow no room for community building, leisure, therapy or play.

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By taking Carmy to an immature party, Claire presents him with a travesty of community life--one that Carmy is not part of, actually would not want to join since he has little in common with these partygoers, and yet she knowingly mocks him for not fully participating in a simulation of adult extracurricular activities. Claire's joke that she enjoys taking care of drunk people functions as a nice metaphor here for a medical system that manages the deleterious after-effects of Americans self-medicating through substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, overwork) rather than serving them in a capacity that would heal them holistically from the ground up.

Not only does she joke about it, she brings someone whose life she knows has been destroyed by his mother's alcoholism to a party where everyone is drinking. Again, the onus is on every individual to manage their illness without seeking the ubiquitous painkillers because addiction is a personal failure. American healthcare barely manages the symptoms and never seeks to cure the disease that is produced by working people struggling under late stage capitalism. It's logical that Claire's party makes Carmy feel harmed and that drives him further towards his addiction (overwork) which is why he takes her to the restaurant and its actually more nurturing community. The doctor in training harms and it is left to him to manage his symptoms--with help from, you guessed it, Syd again.

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Even though the plot of the show demonstrates its writers' awareness of psychoanalytic terms (e.g., sublimation, transference, perhaps even the categories children of alcoholics fit within), there is no trained therapist in sight. The Bearzattos, despite their middle class status, never seem to seek out or discuss therapy sessions with a trained psychologist.

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Donna, who likely has Bipolar Disorder, seems to be on no medications. It's astounding that she drove her car through a living room filled with people and, by virtue of her race and class status, faces no criminal liability or court-mandated mental health check-ups in order to continue existing in public spaces among strangers. Even that would be a criminalizing of her mental illness and reduction of it to individual moral failing rather than systemic problem. Her alcoholism was an outcome of self-medicating her untreated mental condition; however, substance addiction is reduced to a moral failing rather than recognized as a direct consequence of how the American medical system systematically fails people.

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2. We see Richie popping Xanax in Season 1 Dogs to manage his anxiety yet the only therapeutic discussions he has are with his coworkers and his ex-wife. He uses the term "sublimation" to describe Carmy's behavior in Season 3 but that seems to be based on his own reading of literature in his limited spare time. He is dealing with the end of his marriage, guilt and grief over the suicide of his best friend, and job anxieties but can only turn to the women in his life (his phone message for Tiff or his aborted attempts to find a girlfriend) for counseling. His stilted conversations with Carmy reveal that neither of them is a therapist for the other but, desperate times lead to their taking refuge in the other. By Season 4, Richie is texting Syd and turning to her in person for emotional regulation and counsel within and outside the workplace

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3. Our hero Carmy likely has C-PTSD from a childhood of neglect and abuse from his mother, abandonment issues stemming from his dad and Mikey, surviving the toxic workplace Chef Fields created at Empire and his unprocessed grief about Mikey's suicide. Being locked in the walk-in on the opening day of his restaurant is both a life-threatening and emotionally traumatic episode yet his medical professional girlfriend shows no concern for his wellbeing. Neither does the rest of his family who turn it into a joke. The only person who offers him aftercare is Syd who brings him tea and talks to him gently.

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Carmy's suicidal ideation (fire and, in Season 3-4, trains) are managed internally by Richie or by Sugar's nagging him to join Al-Anon where he rarely participates among strangers. It takes Syd's comment to him in Goodbye for him to realize both Richie and Sugar are also in the midst of processing their grief over Mikey's death. In short, it is the grief-blind leading the grief-blind over here.

Carmy's relationship to food (see the excellent meta "Carmen Bearzatto + Eating Disorders" https://www.tumblr.com/773carmy) and his learning disability go unremarked. At most, Sugar and Mikey press money on him and force him to reveal his innermost thoughts in between their own workdays.

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4. Sugar, despite attending Al-Anon and having a prior bank job as well as remaining in Chicago, seems to have no reliable network of girlpals to call upon when she is in labor. Her anger at Francie Fak suggests that she felt abandoned by her after they were intimate which destroyed their friendship (hopefully, for the sake of Sugar's wellbeing, for good). That means that aside from the Bearzatto clan and her restaurant coworkers and husband, she has no one to call for help--no friends, no neighbors, no other expecting mother she met at a birth program event, basically no network. And Sugar is comparatively well-off and emotionally regulated when we see the rest of the family.

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5. Mikey's addiction to painkillers implicates the medical establishment which benefited directly from pushing opioids on working Americans in return for the doctors' receiving kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies (see Alex Gibney's documentary on this). You might suppose that in a family where Donna's alcoholism is blatant, there may be some grace towards her son's form of substance abuse but you'd be mistaken. "Uncle" Lee castigates and humiliates Mikey for his drug addiction around the Xmas table and, through their silence, the rest of the family endorses the view that it is a sign of Mikey's personal failure that he has become a drug addict.

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6. Marcus' mother has round-the-clock care from nurses and yet dies alone because he is working without cellphone access as mandated by his employer. I despised the line scriptwriters forced Marcus to say after, "Take us there, Bear" which was redolent of benevolent slavery and white savior complex nonsense. That privileging of commitment to work above life is supposedly overturned by the white male hero now seeking to "retire." However, even that seems like a scary prospect--how can Carmy ever expect to afford mental healthcare now and why is retiring accompanied with death-adjacent imagery? Marcus is dealing with his grief largely alone, with only help from Syd and Chester. He seems not to have a community to call upon outside the workplace and nor do we see any medical professional suggest grief counseling.

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7. Although every child we are introduced to on the show is struggling (we are told this), none of the children seem to be in counseling either. The problems carry over into the next generation.

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8. Claire, a medical professional in training (which should ideally suggest she is not jaded at this point), comes across as sadistic. She voyeuristically enjoys scenes of Bearzatto family turmoil both at Xmas and Tiff's wedding. She engages in bullying, taunting, mocking, minimizing and gaslighting whenever confronted with Carmy's trauma. Her bedside manner is atrocious as we see the ineffectual palliative she offers Sydney ("having people worry about us is all we have" and "people were telling me I looked great and I've been crying"). Her proximity to Mikey (we have yet to confirm how proximate she was) as he descended into addiction further illustrates how the American medical system and its representatives are not a resource for even middle-class, urban-dwelling white Americans. How much more remote must access be for minorities like working class African immigrants Emmanuel and Ebra or at-one-time homeless Sweeps or muted-by-the-script Hispanic dishwashers Manny and Angel.

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If restaurants (and bars) are places where Americans go to be taken care (hello, obesity epidemic and drunk driving accidents), that suggests therapist offices and hospitals are not. The workers of the Bear are desperately trying to take care of their paying guests and, intermittently, each other but it sure does not seem like any trained medical professional is taking care of them.

[sublimepeachtriumph]

The Evolution of Carmy's Personal Bubble

Behold, how it shrinks over time!

What we see over four seasons is that the shared personal bubble is where there is physical proximity, tuning into an emotional wavelength, eye contact, blocking of third parties, and--perhaps most significantly for Carmy--a shared auditory range. He needs to be able to hear her and, as her comments to him about how Richie and Nat are also dealing with Mikey's death in the finale demonstrate, her words penetrate the fog within his mind because he can hear her clearly. If the inside of his mind is a staticky radio, we can say that Radio Station Sydney Adamu always transmits the clearest signal.

Season 1: He wards her off with his Emotional Support Spoon when she touches his arm.

All gifs: livelovecaliforniadreams

Season 4: If "what grows together, goes together" is our guiding principle, Carmy has grown very close to Syd contrary to her telling Donna she only "thinks" they are close. Now, his personal bubble overlaps so closely with Syd's that there are feet of space between either of them and everybody else working on either side as the camera pans by.

Is this platonic? Is it professional? If so, why is this layered proximity not evident when we compare Carmy's personal bubble vis-a-vis others, including the scenes from Fishes with his beloved brother Mikey ("don't touch me," he told Mikey repeatedly).

The shrinking of his personal bubble with Syd and not any other character is further emphasized to us as viewers by their private communication (often wordless), synchronized gestures, and overlapping comments (including in the finale when they both ask Richie what he means).

Whenever we see Carmy in distress (panic attack or locked in the freezer) he either conjures up memories of Syd, is recalled out of the panic attack by Syd's voice which grounds him back into his body or (as fairestbeard's scrubbing of the sound layers in Season 2's finale revealed) he is crying out for her like a child for its mother and spiraled even harder when she did not verbally acknowledge his cries.

In Season 2, Carmy begins to quite deliberately move into Syd's space and invite her into a shared personal bubble that is distinct from everyone else. In this scene, Sugar's hands are not on the table and the way Carmy has his hand next to Syd's arm is voluntary on his part rather than necessary. They also have a private conversation amidst a public pitch to Uncle that prompts Sugar to nervously recall them back by saying "Okay, kids." We've seen how they navigate the workspace under construction carrying on a private and highly personal conversation amidst others about their families (her father, his sister).

Inviting her to "the" apartment and angling his body towards her, getting closer. Introducing her to a special private form of communication (the sorry sign) that will further enhance the wordless communication of what is increasingly "their" personal bubble, i.e, one shared personal bubble.

By the time of the Bear's opening, Carmy is inviting her into an intimate space under the table, again angling his body towards her soon after we know he has invited her into his mind's eye when he was suffering from a panic attack and memories of her calmed him down. This is an intimacy that Carmy's publicly acknowledged girlfriend is not enfolded into as we see signs of his distress (looking down, breathing unevenly, rapid heartbeat) in the moments when she is literally sitting in his lap or he is holding her in his arms.

Season 3 is a season where Syd and Carmy are at odds, usually pictured with a table between them. Season 4 begins with a brief flash of Syd asleep in Carmy's dream as if in bed next to him. Upon returning to the restaurant, the way Carmy moves from his end of the kitchen counter (where the expo station is) to where Syd is standing in Season 4 Episode 1 signals to us that he is reconstituting his personal bubble to include Syd once more (auditory cue "And I'm gonna tune right in on you" from The Who's Getting in Tune). Except now she is even closer within it and we notice him being hyperaware of where she is in a space, particularly if she is not right next to him.

When everyone sits under the table at the wedding in Season 4, Carmy and Syd's exchange (his calling for her, again inviting her there as well as their private math joke) cordon off their shared personal bubble amidst everyone else--that accounts for whatsherface's sour expression. This follows their private conversation in which their shared personal bubble in a public space was so tight that Cousin Stevie actually apologized for intruding.

Claire, despite their having slept together and being called his "girlfriend," is not within Carmy's personal bubble. They speak side-by-side both on the steps when he apologizes and at the wedding where he does not maintain eye contact with her (a contrast to his unblinking stare at Syd when they discuss Donna). Although they dance with their foreheads touching, Carmy's expression is strained and you suspect that if he was in the kitchen, he'd be reaching for his Emotional Support Spoon. We also see that when dancing with Claire, although Carmy's face is not where the camera can capture his expression, he is nonetheless watching Syd dancing (as we see Claire crane her head in Syd's direction) and also dancing quite close to Syd, almost within range of the conversation she is having with Uncle that we, the audience, are not able to hear. Tuning in to Syd radio again.

Contrast his professional distance in Season 1 Episode 1 when he needed to come closer to taste her dish with barely a glance to her face to Season 4 we see how he voluntarily moves close to Syd, angles his body towards her, blocks her from Richie (on the other side of the room) and stares soulfully into her face--all while the professional pretext does not really require it in that moment.

Outward expressions of anger have also evolved. Before, Carmy raged at Syd (leading to her quitting). Since then, we see Syd express her anger towards him and by Season 4, he is comfortable disagreeing with her with an irritated expression--neither time does he physically move away. This is all the more significant after watching how he physically recoils from Donna as an adult when she is walking behind his chair with her apology letter.

Notice above how he moves close to Syd even when she is visibly angry, lowers his voice, makes full eye contact and uses a private communication (the sorry sign) unknown to the rest of the group to further delineate their personal bubble is not open to anyone else. When she moves away, he follows her.

By Season 4, they can have a healthy disagreement on his personal issue (seeing Donna) in a lowered tone, he can healthily express his irritation at her and yet neither moves away from the other. Nor do they need to resort to the sorry sign.

Over four seasons we have learned how Carmy is a survivor of abuse from Donna, bullying from peers, verbal abuse from Chef Fields and, now, an increasingly toxic relationship with Claire where her mocking of his traumas has rapidly escalated. This throws the shrinking of his personal bubble with Syd into sharper relief, especially since he is usually surrounded by people who have known him his whole life. Yet it is Syd who can pinpoint where he is in his head ("I can feel you shutting down"). He seems tuned in to her as well, recognizing that Syd resents her erasure (all the scenes we see of her googling the restaurant with no mention of her contribution) and has delayed signing the partnership agreement.

Will Syd's loss of trust in Carmy and his rekindling of his relationship with Claire disrupt the overlap of their personal bubbles? By the end of Season 4, it almost seems like Carmy needs to be as physically close to Syd as possible but I don't see how that will be feasible in Season 5 as Syd, logically, will withdraw physically and emotionally from him. From an audience perspective, the scenes of the overlapping personal bubble are electric whereas a regression of Carmy to Claire would swing from unwatchably bland to unwatchably abusive. She stokes his discomfort and it is visually repulsive to witness a character that has been abused suffer further abuses. Their scenes of intimacy are a pale imitation of what we see between Syd and Carmy, even when they are fighting.

Comments from cast members notwithstanding, none of this (known as "blocking a scene" in film lingo) reads as professional or platonic between Carmy and Sydney. Nor does this layered proximity just evolve by accident over four seasons without the camera crew, director and actors working in tandem to establish that Carmy's personal bubble is now a Carmy-Syd personal bubble.

[sublimepeachtriumph]

Ok so in Season 5, we should expect that

1) Syd will stop communicating with Carmy,

2) he will go absolutely crazy and

3) the restaurant will "blow up in 3 seconds"/fire suppression test will fail since it was always a representation of the electricity between Syd and Carmy being repressed.

Ayo's comment about Syd and Carmy's relationship being professional makes no sense after the confrontation we witnessed ["You're my partner" vs "I'm your friend!" vs "You're not f*cking acting like it!" vs. "I'm your f*cking friend!"]. They are neither partners nor friends by Season 5.

Ayo's claim that "If anything were to happen, it would not be the show we are making" doesn't hold water either since Storer reinvents the show every season according to his own actors [JAW saying on Colbert that Storer is breaking the rules of a television show].

She sells it even more when she says a romance between them would be "so crazy" because yes, like, have you watched the show you are making called the Bear--it is a crazy show and as she wrote herself and had Syd say to T.J. in Worms, "It's a crazy place and the people there are crazy."

So seated for Season 5. Simply too seated, ma'am.

"That man is crazy and that girl is a bad communicator! The restaurant would blow up in like three seconds if anything ever happened."

and i say let it burn. put that fire suppression system to the real test.

[sublimepeachtriumph]

Music Video starring Weird Al, directed by Ayo to Clairo's music. The inside of Ayo's brain is such a fun, whimsical and funny place. Hope some of that sneaks into Season 5.

[sublimepeachtriumph]

Please conclude the Molly Gordon storyline in Season 5 and send the MPDG off the show for good, it's so unbearable to watch that we aren't even hate-watching her scenes--we just skip them entirely, time to subtract that red herring storyline and get on with we're begging you to show us about the main characters: Sydney, Carmy and Richie as well as the OG Beef crew.

I blocked out this writer's name (because the poor woman was only doing what was asked of her) but it's disheartening to hear that Storer/Calo intentionally asked for something as banal, beta-misogynistic, and unbearably white as Garden State for ep5.

At least this will put the MPDG deniers in their graves.

[sublimepeachtriumph]

Moments on Film: Carmy’s Vital Signs

One of the most fascinating things about The Bear is the full body acting from Jeremy Allen White. As with any performance, as an actor he makes many intentional choices, but there are several that I have noticed that are so in the moment and realistic, his body experiences them as his character. His actual vital signs—body temperature, pulse rate, breathing rate, blood pressure—are all a part of his character and are often visible onscreen, making it very hard to differentiate between the performer and the performance. He is so immersed in the character, you can’t help but worry about him and his health, both as a character and as an actor, to the point where his acting often feels dangerous. He surrenders himself and his body so fully, it is absolutely mesmerizing to watch. Below are several examples from season 1 and season 2.

Season 1:

Carmy and Sydney Meet

The scene where Carmy meets Sydney for the first time immediately struck me. Because of their undeniable chemistry, you very quickly get the sense that they just “get” each other. Sydney glides in and literally gives Carmy the breath of life he’s been missing. She wakes him up and reminds him who he is as much as who he could be. Carmy’s eyes show us everything in this scene and all that he’s been through leading up to this moment. It’s all there. The deep, deep sadness, grief, the exhaustion, how traumatized he is, beaten down, burnt out, sleep deprived, and desperately in need of help. He looks sick. When Sydney says, “I know who you are”, his face cocks to the side and his eyes lock into hers. He looks hypnotised by her. He says “oh yeah?”, but his eyes say, “No, I’ve forgotten. I’m exhausted and beaten down. Please help me remember. Let me be what you see.” And she does. Watch the scene again and listen to his breathy exhalation when she says “you’re the most excellent CDC…”It’s as if by being seen and understood by Sydney, the spell is broken and he can finally, actually breathe again. The relief of this moment, due to her belief in him and how she’s sees him is the first time we ever see him smile.

The Phone Call

This scene really made an impression the first time I saw it and it continues to. Carmy picks up the ringing phone and it’s a call from someone he doesn’t know named Nico. This person asks if Michael is around and in this moment Carmy goes through so many emotions. He is so caught off guard to be asked about Michael that he literally says, “Uh, uh, no. No, no. He’s not here this second.” If you watch closely, when he hears Michael’s name his pulse instantly elevates to the point where you can see the vein on the left side of his neck throbbing. As the scene goes on he starts to tense up and becomes weak and eventually has a panic attack that leaves him with a pounding heartbeat, so severe he has to sit down and then get out of there, as fast as possible. It’s an incredible moment of physical acting where the actors’s body is truly serving as a vessel for the character.

Fights with Richie

In this scene, Carmy is fighting with Richie over the C health code rating The Beef just received. Carmy believes it’s Richie’s fault since he left cigarettes by the burners, when in reality, it was Carmy’s fault. Carmy and Richie scream at each other and it gets physical. He’s so angry in this moment, his face slowly becomes completely flushed red, and his forehead stays pale. His pulse slams against his neck veins. I don’t know how many takes this scene took, but to achieve this level of body acting, even once, is incredible. The actor’s body doesn’t know that they are acting, it responds as if it’s a real moment they are experiencing.

In the scene above, Carmy and Richie are again fighting. This time, because Richie admits to selling drugs out of the back alley of The Beef and Carmy finds out. Is this what Carmy’s dad used to do at The Beef? Uncle Jimmy mentioned they last fought about drugs, among other things. The idea of selling drugs is so triggering for Carmy, it made me think there is a backstory here that has to do with his family. Carmy also finds out it was Michael’s idea to sell the drugs. This revelation both devastates and infuriates Carmy with such equal measure that he simultaneously looks like his going to burst into tears and completely explode. Look at the tears in his eyes. Look at the gripping tension he’s holding in his neck. You can just feel his heart rate rising as the scene progresses. It’s another incredible moment where this actor is literally giving his full body to service the story.

Sydney Quits

One of the worst moments in the series for Carmy is when Sydney quits. She’s calm, but she gets in his face with her final words. Given Carmy’s severe abandonment issues, and how much he needs Sydney and wants her there with him, this moment clearly devastated him. He practically doubles over. When Sydney walks out, so does his ability to breathe. He is struggling for air. His face, which normally becomes flushed and red in moments of extreme duress does something different here. He’s in such agony, his face completely drains of all color. He turns white as a sheet. This response, to me, signaled a different type of deep, deep emotional pain. How the actor was able to control his body to exhibit these internal emotions externally is remarkable.

Al-Anon Share

In acting, a performer always has to be thinking about their moment before—what were they just doing, what moment did they just come from, and how is that impacting them in this particular moment? When Carmen attends Al-Anon in the season 1 finale, he is coming from all the events that took place previously, including a traumatizing nightmare, which he awakens from violently and painfully. He’s regretting everything he did the day before, he’s hearing his brother’s voice, and he hasn’t slept well or rested, maybe in months, or years for that matter. Physically in this scene, it makes sense for him to look dishsheveled. He goes a step further though. In this scene, and often in the series, he literally looks like he’s running a fever. Once Carmy starts opening up, we see sides of him we have never seen before. One striking moment is when he’s sharing that Michael used to tell him “let it rip.” When he shares this, he almost seems a little embarrassed. In this moment of raw and open vulnerability, he blushes, and his face flushes, slowly. He then smiles, so sweetly. The fact that his character feels embarrassment and his actual face will flush, on command, as a performer, will never fail to astonish me. You can’t plan for your body to have that reaction. You can’t fake it either. He is living in all of Carmy’s moments with his own flesh and blood.

Sydney Comes Back

In the season finale, Carmy discovers the money his brother has left for him to pursue their shared dream of opening a restaurant together, The Bear. While Carmy and the team are opening the cans where Michael left the hidden money, Sydney appears. She again glides in and reminds him who he is and who he can be. But this time it’s different, this time she reminds him who she is too. Carmy then envisions what they could do—what they could be—together. Carmy has missed her so much, he regrets their last minutes together, but in this moment, all that fades away. He breathes, easily and deeply at the sight of her. Every cell in his body bends towards her. Carmy’s eyes invite her in to build the restaurant with him as much as his words do. His pupils actually dilate when he first sees her and looks into her eyes. Again, these are not physical acting choices that you can just plan or manipulate. Your body has to be going through these emotions for them to present themselves in the way that they do.

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Season 2

Season 2 of The Bear is different. To me, they have messed with the actor’s face in a way that has taken away a huge part of what makes him uniquely compelling. He lives in the moment, he acts with his whole being. He lets his eyes, body, and skin all tell the story. What they’ve done to his face this season is very noticeable to me. Carmy, as a character is stressed, exhausted and haggard. He doesn’t take care of himself and he’s not vain. It’s a huge disconnect to see him looking flawless in certain scenes, with no color showing through anywhere on his face, like he just had a facial. It doesn’t make sense for the character and it limits him and what he brings as an actor. His skin often looks like glass this season, and whatever fancy stuff they did to him took away his ability to have his emotions show through his skin at the level they did last season, which is a huge reason why the performance felt so visceral and real. They saw his emotive skin flushing and imperfections as a liability, when in fact, they are an incredible asset. He doesn’t look like anyone else, and it’s real and refreshing to see onscreen. I wish they didn’t take that away from him.

Despite what they did, he is such a good actor, he pushes through and can still physically convey the heart of what Carmy is feeling in each moment. Below are several moments that made a huge impression.

Scene with Claire

The first time I watched this scene I had to pause and watch again. Why does it feel so awkward? Among other things, it’s because Carmy is not breathing properly. Watch it again but this time only listen to his breathing. He is so distressed, talking about the fire suppression he can barely get enough air. You would think Claire’s presence would calm him down but she doesn’t. He can’t accept the moment. At times, he is subtly gulping air and his voice is shaky in a way that the scene doesn’t necessarily warrant. This was a huge indicator to me that something is wrong. It feels very off. He is so ill at ease and tense. Speaking of moments before, Carmy later reveals in this episode that the previous night he had a “gnarly panic attack.” So in this scene, he presumably had a very rough night and did not sleep well. He’s very worried about the test, waiting for the other shoe, and is self conscious about if what he’s saying is boring to Claire. All of these anxieties impact him and he’s having a lot of trouble stilling himself and calming down. We now know that Claire is not Carmy’s calm, or his peace, or his safe place—that’s Sydney. We don’t fully know that until the next episode. It’s as if the actor internalized that truth and is giving us a clue to it now. This is subtle, expert character work and an extremely difficult physical action to fake as an actor. He would have to be so keyed into the subconscious emotions of the character to let these nervous ticks run through his body. I’m telling you, watch the scene again and only listen to how much trouble he has breathing in certain moments. It’s not normal how tense he is here and an incredible foreshadowing into what we later learn he needs that actually soothes him and calms him down—Sydney.

Panic Attack in the Alley

In episode 9, cracks come to the surface, what’s done (literally) in the dark comes to the light, and Carmy is forced to physically deal with what he’s been suppressing emotionally. He experiences the worst panic attack we have ever seen him go through. He’s gotten so much worse and because of the incredible full body acting in this moment, it’s painful to watch. The conversation about this scene, rightly so, focuses on how Carmy thinks of Sydney to bring down his panic and breathe, but let’s talk about the physical acting for a minute. He’s shaking uncontrollably, every muscle is tightly wound and coiled. He can’t feel his hands. He can’t breathe. His skin is red and burning up with tension. He looks like a freight train is running through his body. His face contorts like he’s swallowing bile and is about to vomit. His acting is so real it is distressing to watch. Because he puts his body through so much, we are right there with him in every moment. We can truly feel what he’s feeling. He looks like he’s in real pain.

Eventually in this moment, Carmy focuses on Sydney—the first time he saw her face and when she came back to him, affirming words she’s told him about who he is and how she sees him. He’s kneeling at this point and is finally able to suspend his suffering, lower his panic, calm himself down and breathe. The flush on his face starts to lessen. The fever breaks and starts to come down as he focuses on Sydney and only Sydney. This is all conveyed without a single word from the actor. A montage shows us what he’s thinking, but the emotional stakes of this scene rely entirely on the actor’s ability to use his body to let us in so we can feel what he’s experiencing, and he delivers.

Carmy and Sydney Under the Table

The scene under the table is so tender and beautiful it brought me to tears. It’s a moment of truth, reckoning, concern, care, and yes, love, between the two of them. Carmy creates an environment that is gentle and safe, and Sydney softens and blossoms in a way that we have not seen before. There are moments that are so intimate, still and low it’s as if they are speaking to each other softly while laid out across each other’s chests. Sydney shares her fears and Carmy essentially tells her, “it’s ok. I’m here. We’re in this together. You’re safe with me and I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Physically, in this moment, Carmy is so attentive, and so at peace with Sydney that time literally stands still. They are in their own dimension. We are so used to seeing Carmy in motion, thrashing around and stressed, that this scene and the way that it’s acted feels like a deliverance. He creates a sanctuary for Sydney to feel safe. The physicality and voice of the actor creates this moment. They are 25 minutes to open, and his eyes are gentle, his voice is as soft as it’s ever been, he’s breathing steady and easy. He’s gently moving his hand but not out of frantic energy. He can’t soothe her with touch so he soothes her with words. This scene is a revelation in how the actor shows us Sydney’s impact on Carmy. In her presence, his entire nervous system is completely and finally relaxed and at ease.

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All of what this actor gives and does as a performer engenders so much empathy for the character that his feelings become ours. We exhale when he does, and it actually hurts to watch him suffer. We worry about him, and his health, and care about his feelings. I think that’s why people have connected with this show so much. The rest of the cast is fantastic, but if we do not feel for Carmy and care about him as a character, the show does not work. He knows this, puts his body on the line, and gives it his all. He deserves the awards he had received for this role and I hope we get to see him continue this character in a season 3 and beyond.

Pay. The. Actors.

©️moments-on-film 2023

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JAW compared the freezer to a confessional box. That implies Carmy was confessing who mattered to him most in the freezer and it was Syd he wanted and Syd he needed at his worst moment. Same as at the wedding when Double Dragon shows up. It also explains why he is indifferent to Richie's accusation about what he said to whatsherface at the end of the night; that is not who Carmy is thinking about and why would he when she had no business being there--in the kitchen or in his life.

Adds another dimension to his sense of jealous rage and need to assert himself with the menu-will-change everyday and "Syd, we will" (I will get you) "the [Michelin] star." Richie stepping up like an adult partner at the exact moment he was crying like a child for Syd sends Carmy into a tailspin of self-doubt, need for one-upmanship and jealous resentment of Richie. We are led to think Season 3 is Carmy coping with his guilt over Claire. Actually it is Carmy's guilt about abandoning Syd and her relying on another man (Richie). Oh, Season 5 will be so messy!

Carmy calling for Syd in the walk-in

The Bear season 2, EP 10 "The Bear"

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Gordon Parks, Outside Looking in, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, from Segregation Story

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Here’s a link to the epubs for the 10 part oyster knife series as well as “A Matter of Taste”, “Take Care”, “Avenues All Lined With Trees” and “Over the Bridge”

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oysterknife/purposechef deleted everything off ao3 and tumblr. Do you happen to know if anyone saved their fics? No offense to that man (storer) but they were my canon.

this is the best i can give you....

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The Fist by Derek Walcott The fist clenched round my heart loosens a little, and I gasp brightness; but it tightens again. When have I ever not loved the pain of love? But this has moved past love to mania. This has the strong clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of unreason, before plunging howling into the abyss. Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

[sublimepeachtriumph]

Gif: bernathalized

Mikey's Ghost protects Carmy inside the Restaurant but only inside the Restaurant

Image Credit: https://www.tumblr.com/inamorati10

The restaurant is warded and be-spelled against Carmy's abuser, Donna. That's why she can only peer in through the windows even if Sugar invites her in and Pete insists she come inside. Arguably that was the real cause of Carmy's freakout on Friends and Family after he served Claire, ignored Mr. Adamu and saw a Chef Fields lookalike; what really terrified Carmy was the prospect of his psycho abuser mother showing up as she did at Tiff's wedding just for him. Sugar should not have invited her and presented Carmy with that prospect the morning of the opening night. No worries, though, because Mikey's ghost ensured that even arch-narcissist Donna felt too much guilt to step inside.

Gif: https://www.tumblr.com/glindauplland

2. The people who Mikey has hand selected to work there like Richie, Tina, Marcus, Ebra, Manny, Angel and Sweeps are all truly wonderful and don't abandon Carmy no matter how crazy he gets. In fact, they look out for him and protect him within the confines of the restaurant. Outside it, we see him regularly get beat up or humiliated or almost set things on fire without supervision. They are so excellent that they don't quit when Carmy drags them out of the routines they knew into the grueling routines of the fine dining world.

credit: https://www.tumblr.com/boardchairman-blog

3. This also suggests that the people Mikey did not choose--like the Faks (Neil who we know also did not attend his funeral) are questionable, disloyal and perhaps even dangerous. Faks = fakes.

Gif credit: https://www.tumblr.com/minidodds

4. When Carmy and Richie fight, the lights flicker. It happens in Season 1 when the electricity goes out and again in 3 when the bulb above the expo station keeps strobing, both times Carmy and Richie are fighting. Mikey disapproves of baby brother and best friend beefing.

Gif: thebeartv

5. Budding narcissistic abusers like Claire cannot linger at the Bear. Even had Carmy not locked himself in the freezer and had she not conveniently overheard his confession, she can't physically stay too long at the restaurant since she does not work there. It's a safe home away from home for Carmy who grew up in a home where he was never safe without Mikey. Even Mikey, as an adult, felt himself under threat living with Donna and had to insist to Lee at the Xmas dinner that this was "our father's house." Donna never gave him that sense of security in their childhood house but Mikey's ghost is providing it for Carmy and their found family at their Bear home.

Gif credit: https://www.tumblr.com/darlingshane

6. Carmy and his family keep harping on how Clairebear was someone Mikey approved of but Mikey's willing of the Beef to Carmy is what made Carmy and Syd's meeting possible. Had Carmy remained at Empire under Chef Fields, she would never have had the chance to work with him. You can say Mikey is a benevolent ghost watching over the restaurant as it is renovated, blessing Syd's efforts to improve it and providing a home for them to learn to live together (at least 12-14 hours a day, 6 days a week).

Gif credit: https://www.tumblr.com/riickgrimes

7. Mikey shows up in Carmy's dreams and was the co-author of Carmy's dream of the Bear. Mikey himself knew he would never get to live out that dream but it was his saving the Beef that made it possible for Carmy to realize his Bear dream (of both the restaurant and Syd). Mikey's bequest of the hidden money saved Carmy from losing Syd the first time and Syd is the one who brought in Sugar, to repair the fissures within Carmy and Mikey's family. As Sugar tells the plumber, she hated the restaurant and now her other brother runs it, she loves it. The Bear would not have been possible, though, without the original Beef of Chicagoland.

Gif credit: https://www.tumblr.com/darlingshane

8. The tripping of the crawlspace alarm which required a password that only Richie would know was a way for Mikey to insert Richie into the partnership meeting between Cicero, Carmy, Syd and Sugar. Richie's bungling of the Home Alone character as Kevin McCalliper reminds us that like a calliper used as a compass, Richie is a cardinal direction in the four-fold partnership. He knows where all the secrets and obscure passcodes are buried. He played a role in bringing Tina into the Beef, he was Mikey's best friend, he protects Carmy and saved Friends and Family night partnering Syd.

Credit: https://www.tumblr.com/boardchairman-blog

9. Mikey developed the Beef into an institution after his father abandoned it (as did Donna). That institution is allowing the Bear to stay afloat, as Ebra (Bear in anagram) keeps pulling in the profits from a loyal clientele. If Mikey was the hero and the mascot (among "the children of alcoholics" categories podcast Sugar plays in her car on the way to get C-folds), he is, through Ebra, still shielding the Bear and keeping all the employees' heads above water. The franchising idea was his originally.

Credit: https://www.tumblr.com/gingergofastboatsmojito

10. "The one true thing about restaurants," Carmy tells Marcus, "is that you are never alone." Yet Carmy has been incredibly lonely all these years working at other restaurants. You don't see him share a meal with any colleague (his smiling face in Noma is on a bench eating alone) and he treats even the kindest people (like Luca) as potential rivals or formal authority figures (like Chef Terry). When Richie in Goodbye mentions a good memory of the hours driving with Mikey playing music and that he imagined it to be like Carmy's life abroad, Carmy's expression reveals that he never had days like that. At the Beef and now the Bear, Mikey has surrounded Carmy with people who keep that terrible loneliness at bay, have deep conversations with him, check up on him and show him love and affection. That's why Food and Wine praises the ambience, the food and the warmth of the atmosphere. Carmy and Syd, with the incredible team Mikey built, have begun to make the dream of the Bear the brothers discussed into a reality.

Gif credit: thesoldiersminute

But Mikey's ghost can only protect Carmy if he remains inside the restaurant. Outside it, Carmy is vulnerable to abusers like Donna and "Uncle" Lee, and various bullies like Claire who mock him or strangers who beat him up, or tell him he's a loser or force him to pretend to be someone else. Beyond Mikey's ghost's sphere of influence, Carmy is once again vulnerable to the terrible, crippling loneliness that Carmy has faced his whole life as the lost child.

"All our best memories are at restaurants," Carmy told Mikey. "We can take care of people, we can make them happy." Once he leaves the Bear, Carmy is going to realize how much that was about himself being taken care of by Syd and protected by Mikey's ghost as it was care done by him for guests eating his food.

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also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

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The Bear (2022) // You Were You Are Elegy by Mary Jo Bang

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CARMEN BERZATTO + EATING DISORDERS

to preface this — You do not have to agree with this headcanon / take on his character, I am in active ed recovery so a lot of this is projection and based on my life + what i've seen from my peers. Please be respectful despite that, thank you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. REJECTION OF MEALS

2. DANGEROUS FOOD MOTIFS

3. HIS ASSOCIATION WITH CULINARY ARTS

4. PAST TRAUMA

5. CONTROL

6. SYDNEY AND CLAIRE

REJECTION OF MEALS

in season 1 we repeatedly see him not present at family unless it's a meeting, normally seen outside smoking or distracted. despite this one of the few times we do see him acknowledge the food is when he brings a plate to sydney. leaving himself empty handed.

in some ways I think that this is just his easy way to get out of eating. he can say he's distracted, or he's smoking and no one really bothers. he's a grown man, he can handle himself.

In the finale we finally see him eat. I think for once in his career he doesn't feel like he needs or is out of control, he's content where he is. doesn't need to climb higher above his colleagues. he's smiling, he's thinking of mikey, he got sydney back, the resturant he dreamed of is in his grip. He's got it, he doesn't need anything more.

*while we rarely see a family meal mentioned post season 1, it's safe to assume the same pattern reappeared during both construction and execution of bear

DANGEROUS FOOD MOTIFS

when carmy is cooking for himself, or solo, most of the time it ends in either pain or agony. this is most present in the nightmare and the apartment fire.

The apartment fire is interesting, there's ties to so many things. It being an italian dish, the fact he says this is a reoccurring issue. That it gets so bad he calls Nat and spills it out. Fire comes up a lot for Carmy, whether it's because the fire inside him for this career is so insane it's ingulfing him, or he's burning himself out. It's interesting to note.

The nightmare ties back to Mikey clearly, his entire monologue is about Mikey, the visions of the bear, of him. And again, it all goes down in flames.

— My big call for this is that he's losing his fire when he loses Mikey, instead of it being something that's motivating him to keep running it's the only thing keeping him from continuing, from moving, getting better.

CULINARY ARTS + PAST TRAUMA

he absolutely started culinary arts as a fuck you to Mikey, to prove to him he belongs in the resturant. That even without him he could succeed, so he abused himself to get there.

I think he associates both Mikey's loss and his own abuse with food and cooking. Chef David, his mom, and other people we've yet to meet have such a fork in his food experience. Damaging it for the long run, almost to a point of no saving— But he can't let Mikey down.

CONTROL

i mentioned this before but I don't think his ed is weight based, it's entirely a desperate attempt for control.

He lost control with food when Chef David would tell him every small thing he did wrong, so now that he stands in his own shoes and is his own Chef David, he wants that control. In some ways he misses the voice in his ear, not the way it made him feel but it was always there. Booming, spitting, bitching. So, he took the control back, but he never changed how he acted.

I also think being the youngest and the black sheep, in a way he definitely felt at a loss for trying to fight back. Now he can.

SYDNEY AND CLAIRE

The only non customers he's cooked for (pre season 4).

Claire's is obvious, it's the pasta dish he made. It's bland, it's basic, it's exactly what he wanted from Claire.

But Sydney's gets unique, he doesn't truly cook for her, instead of her. Dishes made with small motifs to her, colors tying to a bandana or a dress. When food becomes an art form she always his muse, it never ends in flames, the dish always looks beautiful—She's the one thing he can relinquish control to, starting with food, ending with the resturant.

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Ready for Syd to star in all of Carmy's dreams for Season 5. Go ahead and return that dusty sweatshirt back to Claire. You'll be sorry.