(Warning: Some spoilers are ahead.)
In case anyone doubted that The Bear was TV’s most artistically daring and electric series, the third season of Chris Storer’s acclaimed FX on Hulu hit, premiering July 26, comes out of the gate with an absolute knockout.
Upending expectations with a tone-poem memory piece that contextualizes Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) turmoil via fragmentary recollections of the formative good, bad, and ugly experiences that made him who he is—and left him in such dire straits—it’s a small-scale masterpiece that eschews the show’s typical frenzy for quiet, empathetic, warts-and-all contemplation. A mosaic of seminal pain and pleasure, triumph and failure, which is united by the sight of Carmy stroking a scar on his hand and interspersed with glimpses of the aftermath of last year’s traumatic finale, it’s proof that the smash sensation is as audacious and assured as ever.
