Jeremy Allen White, @Courtesy of FX Networks

After a remarkable Season 1 and an even better Season 2, The Bear is back with another ten episodes that reaffirm the complete freedom of Christopher Storer’s creation. The creator and co-showrunner with Joanna Calo uses in fact Season 3 as a chance to go deeper into the characters’ issues without necessarily making them evolve in any significant way.

Because fundamentally this is life: being stuck in your own mind, incapable for a (too) long time to face your own problems, let alone the issues you have with other people. This is why at the end of the tenth episode of this new season you can rightly feel that nothing really happened, that Carmy, Sydney, Richie, and the other guys didn’t go through a meaningful narrative arc. And still, you can’t stop rooting for them, embracing their flaws, and feeling the kind of human empathy that only layered characters can deliver to you. 

The Bear Season 3 is at the core a psychological puzzle digging deeper into what we already experienced from the previous seasons: the value and the strength of the new episodes are in the chances that Storer takes exploring new ways to make the characters more compelling. This way we have a first episode that is a true, amazing labyrinth in Carmy’s life that explains perfectly not only his background but most importantly his twisted mind and soul.

Ayo Edebiri , @Courtesy of FX Networks

Again, nothing truly happens in this episode, but the mix of touching images, music, and atmosphere makes it pretty impossible to turn your eyes from it. This is possible especially because Jeremy Allen White is the kind of actor who knows when to hold a line just one more second and when to use silence to make his performance more effective. There are more than a few moments in this season where a close-up of his stunning blue eyes can convey to the audience the necessary emotional nuances. We don’t honestly know if this makes him a great actor, but the charisma and the stage presence are quite undeniable. 

Next to him the rest of the cast delivers exactly what is needed for their characters: Ayo Edebiri is once again capable of working on Sydney’s role with precision, and so is Ebon Moss-Bachrach with Richie. In these new episodes though, Abby Elliott as Natalie ‘Sugar’ Berzatto truly steps up as the biggest surprise of The Bear Season 3, building up her role’s narrative until the compelling explosion of the eighth episode, which she dominates together with her ‘mom’ Jamie Lee Curtis. If the series would have ended there, far from the restaurant’s drama, we would have nothing to complain about. In addition to that, when you keep filling the episodes with guest stars such as the returning Jon Bernthal, Olivia Colman, Will Poulter, the already mentioned Jamie Lee Curtis, plus a few surprises that we will not spoil to our readers, here you have a TV series that can rightfully be considered as one of the best in the last ten years. 

The Bear doesn’t follow the rules of classic or modern storytelling applied to serial television: it never did, it doesn’t with this third season and hopefully, it will not do it in the future. The courage of portraying the reality of people still being stuck with their personal demons – in the end, Carmy hasn’t dealt yet with the grief of his brother’s suicide – and give them the proper time to overcome (or succumb) to those, is a quality that must be totally endorsed. The only flaw of Season 3 is the slightly pointless open finale that doesn’t really fill with anticipation about the upcoming episodes. The characters and their inner pain do, and it’s more than enough.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach, @Courtesy of FX Networks

Rate: A- 

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This is the trailer for The Bear Season 3