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[ursaminder]

its them (they are so iconic i don't even need to say the name)

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[jigsaw voice] carmen berzatto...for years you have styled yourself as a culinary apex predator, a 'bear', if you will...i wonder what you will do now that your only hope for escape is the key i have placed in the stomach of this live american black bear which you mu- stop eating that broken glass. that's not part of the test that's for ambiance. stop

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#pursuing a career in the arts like

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the central flaw ppl make when they compare the bear to ratatouille is they make carmy linguini and not remy ratatouille. like he’s a little rat guy !! he’s a little rat guy and he’s a a chef and his family doesn’t understand him !!!

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Thinking this morning about Sydney Adamu, as one does. I mean, look at her, for a start.

I feel like I’ve focused more on Carmy in dissecting the show, and am realizing that that’s maybe because Sydney hits closer to home for me.

From about 2010-2015 I was a baker. I started working out of a friend’s cafe kitchen after hours, selling at farmers markets. I graduated to having my own trailer kitchen, parked out in front of my parents’ house, and then I got the opportunity to go in with a couple of friends and open a brick and mortar shop.

It was…hard. The hardest I’ve ever worked. It was 12-18 hour days, most days. I took home $1000 a month to live on. I moved back in with my parents. My feet hurt so much I was worried I’d permanently damaged them. I was always sticky with sugar and sweat. I think people who have never worked food service, or even only worked it part time, have no idea how emotionally and physically draining it is to do it all day, every day.

And then it closed, as food businesses regularly do, and that was that. There are still leftover bits and bobs from the business in my parents’ house. I feel like I’m constantly turning up something new every time I visit. And so watching Sheridan…the moment when we see the catering company boxes in Sydney’s room hit me like a ton of bricks.

Because I know exactly how that feels, waking up in your childhood bedroom and then seeing the detritus of the life you were trying to build, the future you had a vision for. You pour so much of yourself, body and soul, into an industry that will never thank you for it by making your life easier, but will just keep piling on more work.

I understand Syd’s dad not wanting her to go through that again. My bakery closing was devastating, but the work that went into it first was almost just as crushing, and the payout non-existent. He watched her struggle and sweat and not have any time or energy for anything else in her life for however long Sheridan Road ran, and then he watched that dream shatter and his little girl move back in with him with a stack of boxes. And now she wants to do it again, but with much higher overheads, and some white guy he’s never met? It would be strange if he wasn’t scared for her.

But it makes sense of why Sydney isn’t scared off by the Beef. She’s been in the trenches. She knows all the sad, bleak realities of the business. But the Beef gives her what she didn’t have before— a brick and mortar location, and a partner. It’s no wonder to me that she clung on tight, because I did the same when I got the chance. It’s no wonder she bristled at Carmy having creative control, when she was used to having it herself and wanted it more than anything, wanted it enough to give up working at some of the best restaurants in the US to have a chance at it.

Anyway I don’t have a larger point here, except to say that I see her and her dream, and the fact that she’s still standing and trying to make it in this industry is a testament to her strength. I see people not get that, and I just want to say from the bottom of my heart that I do. And I’m rooting for her.

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"I Googled "fun" the other day." - The Bear

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the berzatto kids and insecure attachment styles

(natalie - anxious/ambivalent mikey - avoidant/dismissive carmy - fearful-avoidant/disordered)

(text source)

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The guy at the party in Dogs having thought that he was the one who killed himself comes to mind too. Everyone has been worried about Carmy and assumed he was the emotionally unstable sibling, the one who was at risk.

Side note also re the ending of Fishes. I was so struck by how Carmy, the main character of the show, goes silent for the last several minutes of the episode and its climactic action. He’s not a participant in the action from basically the time Donna flips out on Sugar until the end, just a dissociating observer. It’s a window into how he survived growing up in that house and dealing with an abusive boss: stay quiet, fade into the background as much as possible, and make your work perfect.

rewatching Fishes, and that scene with Michelle and Carmy in front of the cannolis— Michelle saying that Carmy has to get out because it’s not good for his head makes me think that people may have thought that Carmy was the one in trouble mentally— i mean he is, very, BUT it seems that people think Carmy would end up doing to himself what Mikey did.

Richie saying that Carmy’s weird, and also saying that he never thought Mikey would really end up killing himself because he’s so loud and hilarious (opposite of Carmy). Michelle being so insistent in getting Carmy out of that environment, knowing Carmy’s the more reserved person out of everyone in the family.

Seeing Carmy be so hypervigilant in Fishes, him holding his breath and waiting who will snap after Donna walked out of the room, you could see his eyes waiting on Mikey, and when Donna drove the car through the house, he was staring at the cannolis, and we can somehow see that he’s made up his mind of what Michelle was telling him.

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i like how people call carmy from the bear "carmy bear" sometimes. it's like he's a children's stuffed animal with a little spinoff show about him but the show is about his crippling mental problems

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The Bear as Onion Headlines | Season 1, Episode 3: Brigade

The brainrot continues. Don't worry, I already have episode 4 planned out.

Episode 1

Episode 2

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spontaneous zine for the bear we made at @dykemaclachlan 's uni library. started silly, ended a little too mikey and carmy focused.

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You always had so many friends. I was like…I don't know. I really wanted that. Um… You know, Mike, Mikey, Mikey had that. ↳ carmen anthony berzatto + having fun at parties

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who the fuck is doing the lighting in The Bear. Are you trying to make me straight? Why are you shining the light of the archangel Gabriel directly into the turquoise eye sockets of my sad wet cat man Carmy?

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So, I’ll admit I’m a food nerd. Eating something especially delicious, is just fun to me. Also, being from Chicago, of course I’m obsessed with The Bear & its Chicago food scene roots. So I’m getting kind of annoyed by some fans who don’t understand how deliberately Syd is being illustrated as Extremely talented & capable. Her failures at some of the recipes when they were testing, is Normal & Expected at the level they’re aiming for. It’s the whole reason they were testing, and all high level restaurants do the same.

S1, we see Syd’s resume briefly, & Carmy says, “…that’s some serious heat…” - because it really, Really was. All the places listed, are real places. Alinea, specifically is, currently, the only 3 Michelin starred restaurant in Chicago & it’s regularly listed amongst the World’s best too. So for The Bear’s in world story to have Syd work there, is a Big deal.

If you like meta & have Netflix, you should go watch the Alinea/Grant Achatz episode of Chef’s Table - season 2, epi 2. It has so many tidbits that seem to reflect back on The Bear. Like, Achatz tells a story about working in misery under famous Chi chef, Charlie Trotter. Now, Trotter is deceased, but when he was working, he had this rep for being wildly cruel. And he’s supposedly who Carm’s nightmare boss in NYC is modeled after!

Achatz also explains how vital experimentation is to the creative process, & talks about how they went about inventing a helium ballon people could eat. All the failures they went through before they figured it out. So that should explain why Syd struggled, it’s a normal part of trying to Invent Something New.

I think that epi also can give you an idea of the difference between aiming for 1 star, as Syd wants, and the 3 stars Carm ended up dreading because he was trying to Retain someone else’s 3 stars (his nightmare boss.) The level 3 star restaurants like Alinea operate at, is just, really hard to comprehend. I’ve eaten there & not only was the food like Nothing I’d ever experienced before in my life, the act of eating there was just so Joyful. The staff wants you to experience “wonderment”. And when we ate our dessert balloons (!They tasted like bananas!) we laughed so hard in teeny helium laughs.

So, just know Syd doesn’t suck at her job or some such nonsense I see some goofy people contend, (not many over here, but some.) She & Carmy are aiming for levels of dining that’s pretty hard to get, until you’ve experienced it maybe. 🍽️

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“You’re such a soft, shitty bitch.”

- Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto, to her beloved little brother, Carmen “Carmy”Berzatto