The Bear embraces career uncer­tain­ty and what it means to find a purpose

If you don’t know what you want to do with your life by the time you’ve left your teens, you might get the feel­ing that you’re some­how falling behind. Despite the fact that you’re still pret­ty young, soci­ety expects you to have it all worked out: the degree, the career, the full five-year plan. Often an unat­tain­able goal, the pres­sure leaves many feel­ing lost and direc­tion­less from an ear­ly age.

This phe­nom­e­non is some­thing thor­ough­ly explored in FX’s sleep­er hit The Bear. In sea­son one, we’re intro­duced to Car­men ​‘Carmy’ Berzat­to (Jere­my Allen-White) and Syd­ney ​‘Syd’ Adamu (Ayo Ede­biri) who have, on paper, man­aged to achieve this almost impos­si­ble feat. Carmy has won a James Beard Award and is wide­ly regard­ed as an up-and-com­ing pres­ence in the culi­nary world. Syd, a Culi­nary Insti­tute of Amer­i­ca grad­u­ate, has already had a bit­ter­sweet taste of suc­cess – the cater­ing busi­ness she estab­lished failed in part due to overde­mand for her services.

Young, tal­ent­ed and sure of their paths from a young age, suc­cess­ful both aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly, and pas­sion­ate about their work, it would be easy to assume that Carmy and Syd would be hap­py. But this is The Bear, and although the show allows itself occa­sion­al moments of fan­ta­sy (how did the mon­ey get into the toma­to cans?!) the show is ground­ed in real­i­ty – where achiev­ing your dreams presents a new set of nightmares.

Carmy, in par­tic­u­lar, is mis­er­able. Aside from the fact that his family’s a mess and the restau­rant indus­try is floun­der­ing, he ends up unable to tru­ly enjoy what he does. He’s under con­stant pres­sure to exceed him­self, talk­ing to Syd about the ​“pan­ic” he felt after receiv­ing three Miche­lin stars in New York: ​”Your brain bypass­es any sense of joy and just attach­es itself to dread,” he recalls. Now that he’s achieved this goal, expec­ta­tions rise and the fall from the top will only be more dev­as­tat­ing. Suc­cess at a young age has left him in a con­stant state of anx­i­ety, fear­ful that every­thing he’s built for him­self could crum­ble in seconds.

Flash­backs and ref­er­ences to his time as a chef in New York are a hor­ror sto­ry of anx­i­ety and inse­cu­ri­ty. Despite know­ing just how dam­ag­ing this lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion is, Carmy pass­es on the neces­si­ty of entire devo­tion to the restau­rant to Syd. With­out it, he assures her, the Miche­lin star that she dreams of is impos­si­ble. The younger chef already mir­rors Carmy’s anx­ious ten­den­cies, giv­ing a con­cern­ing glimpse of what may lie ahead for her character.

Amidst the chaos of the restau­rant refit, cousin-to-all Richie (Ebon Moss-Bacharach) ques­tions Carmy on his body-and-soul com­mit­ment to his career: ​“You love it,” he says, to which Carmy replies, ​“Yeah, but it’s not fun for me.” There’s so much pres­sure on him to exceed the stan­dards he has set for him­self that much of the actu­al joy of cook­ing is gone, replaced by oblig­a­tion and the need to live up to oth­ers’ expec­ta­tions. ​“I don’t need to pro­vide amuse­ment or enjoy­ment. I don’t need to receive any amuse­ment or enjoy­ment,” he says in his final, heart­break­ing mono­logue of the sea­son. ​“I’m com­plete­ly fine with that. Because no amount of good is worth how ter­ri­ble this feels.” Mak­ing it this far on the path to suc­cess has come at the cost of every­thing else – a per­son­al life, well-being and hap­pi­ness. Allow­ing him­self those things now would under­mine the myr­i­ad sac­ri­fices he’s made.

While Carmy and Syd are dogged by the fear of fail­ure and are con­stant­ly try­ing to out­do their past selves (whether through busi­ness suc­cess or culi­nary prowess), oth­er mem­bers of the team approach their work from a dif­fer­ent angle. Although they all have a vest­ed inter­est in the restaurant’s suc­cess (neat­ly illus­trat­ed in episode eight’s mon­tage), they’re also dis­cov­er­ing their pas­sion and tal­ent for a cer­tain aspect of the busi­ness for the first time. Start­ing from the ground up, a lot of the pres­sure is off. They aren’t try­ing to live up to lofty aspi­ra­tions, they’re not com­pet­ing against any­one – they’re doing this work, learn­ing and evolv­ing because they love it.

Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) is a prime exam­ple of this. Once a reluc­tant sub­scriber to Carmy and Syd’s strict brigade style in the kitchen, sea­son two sees her pro­mot­ed to sous chef, flour­ish in culi­nary school and be deemed wor­thy of one of Carmy’s spe­cial knives. Her love for culi­nary school is vis­i­ble from the sec­ond she puts on her new chef’s whites, and her broad smile as she’s com­pli­ment­ed on fil­let­ing a fish by a teacher and her sauce is giv­en no notes by Syd demon­strates just how ful­fill­ing this job is for her.

Step­ping away from the stoves, Richie’s sea­son two sto­ry­line is where the show’s mes­sage of find­ing pur­pose gets inter­est­ing. While Carmy suf­fers from hav­ing found his call­ing, Richie suf­fers from a lack of it. Richie finds it dif­fi­cult to real­ly under­stand his friend, whose unwa­ver­ing pas­sion for cook­ing dic­tates his life. This also dri­ves some of his fre­quent annoy­ance at Carmy, the roots of which are seen in the flash­back to a far-from-peace­ful Berzat­to Christ­mas (sea­son two, episode six, ​‘Fish­es’). His best friend’s kid broth­er has his life appar­ent­ly sort­ed out, and has moved to New York to become a big shot. Mean­while, Richie’s rela­tion­ship is show­ing cracks and he’s hav­ing to beg Uncle Jim­my (Oliv­er Platt) for a job, already fear­ing that he’s wast­ing some untapped potential.

It’s not until sea­son two’s sev­enth episode that Carmy and Richie’s view­points align. Ini­tial­ly, Richie hates his work expe­ri­ence in a Miche­lin-star restau­rant, forced to wake up before dawn to pol­ish forks in an exer­cise that seems beyond monot­o­nous, but once he sees that the team’s minute­ly metic­u­lous work and unwa­ver­ing­ly bespoke ser­vice brings peo­ple pure joy, his scep­ti­cism seems to fade away.

From yet again being an out­sider in a world that feels far from the one he knows, by the end of the episode Richie has forged real bonds with the staff and has found some­thing he excels at. From his fears in the first episode that Carmy and the team will ​“drop this ass” once they realise his self-per­ceived use­less­ness, his depar­ture from the restau­rant is met with assur­ances that he is val­ued and will be missed. It’s one of the few times we see Richie tru­ly hap­py, and presents a more pos­i­tive out­come from find­ing one’s call­ing than Carmy and Syd’s anguish.

The Bear posits that not only is it nev­er too late to start – some­thing we’ve heard a thou­sand times before – but adds that start­ing too ear­ly could be far more dam­ag­ing. Char­ac­ters who have found their call­ing at a young age tend to end up wrecked, where­as those who find their call­ings lat­er on, like Tina and Richie, thrive as a result of their new­found pas­sions and gen­uine­ly enjoy what they do.

It’s a reas­sur­ing mes­sage for any­one who hasn’t got their life worked out before they leave their teens, but as with any­thing in The Bear, it’s not cer­tain how long the pos­i­tiv­i­ty will last. This season’s finale sees dessert chef Mar­cus (Lionel Boyce) miss vital per­son­al calls as his cook­ing tri­umphs, while Syd throws up out­side after the restaurant’s friends and fam­i­ly open­ing. Whether Carmy’s fate is escapable for the rest of The Bear’s team is cur­rent­ly unknown, but one thing’s for sure – even if they’re hav­ing a ter­ri­ble time, they’re going down doing what they love.