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When You’re The Bear, You’re Family


Season four is basically an Olive Garden commercial, but who doesn’t love Olive Garden?

It’s nice to have a change of pace, but even more, the show’s ability to see itself from the outside leavens all the grandiose pronouncements and persistent thesis statements that get thrown around whenever Carmy stares deeply into someone’s eyes or Richie struggles over a motivational speech for the staff. Thank God it has tamped down on the Faks (the restaurant’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern–style hangers-on played by Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri), and it’s given more space for Sydney to be a independent character in her own right rather than an eternally frustrated hand brake for Carmy’s worst instincts. An episode at a family wedding plays into The Bear ’s love of getting a bunch of Berzattos together and letting them loose on one another, and it similarly features a scene with some improbable emotional spectacle in the form of a clown-car-size banquet table (likewise laden with thesis statements).

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