As a Bear character, Tina has never really gotten enough shine. We know she’s been there since Mikey and she’s developed dreams of becoming a chef, but we know little else about where she goes when she’s not working. Or, rather, we knew little else because “Napkins” opens the door wide into Tina’s life, apartment, marriage, and past, giving us a glimpse at how she landed at the Bear.
Directed by Ayo Edebiri, “Napkins” follows Tina’s everyday routine. We see her as a mom — though her son Louie is absent, last seen in season one. We see her as a wife to David, played by Liza Colón-Zayas’s real-life husband, Dexter’s David Zayas. And we see her as an office worker, plowing through payroll processing at Long Grove Confectionery, where she’s been for 15 years and where they seemingly make very nice nonpareils. However, she gets laid off out of the blue one day and is thrust into a job hunt with a brand new résumé. She’s seemingly unfamiliar with the world of LinkedIn, doesn’t have a college degree, and runs up against every young asshole working in Chicago.
Tina’s job hunt is dehumanizing and depressing, and it’s also very real. As a middle-aged woman myself, I find the way people just look through you at times to be positively haunting. It makes you feel worthless and invisible, and like your life is over even if you know you have decades left to give. At 46, Tina feels unemployable. She’s cheerful and positive and eager, but does it even matter? It’s illegal to discriminate based on age, but that doesn’t stop companies from shying away from middle-aged workers when 25-year-old chippies are vying for the same job. They don’t have families at home to care for, kids they might have to call out for, and decades more to offer the company. It’s bullshit, but it’s real.
Rejection after rejection — even one from the bus, which is 29 minutes late — Tina stumbles into the Beef for a cup of coffee. Richie gives it to her on the house and throws in some missing customer’s prepaid sandwich, and she goes into the back room to eat, newly enlightened to the mere concept of Italian Beef. She takes one bite and bursts into tears. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s good or just because she feels awful, but after some chatter between Richie, Neil, and Jon Bernthal’s Mikey, the late Berzatto comes over to talk.
What follows is a lovely back-and-forth, with the two commiserating about all the ways the world has done them wrong. Mikey’s got a possessed toilet, a rotten floor, a delivery guy with a net-30 billing schedule, and insufficient staff. (Ding!) Tina’s got her age, her lack of job, and a whole bunch of other stuff. We see Mikey show her the photo Carmy sent from Nomi, a callback to the same scene earlier in the season, and we hear Mikey deliver a deep, depressing story about how, even as a kid, he knew the opportunity wasn’t coming for him. “I knew I was getting skipped,” he tells Tina. “That dream shit? Ain’t gonna happen to me.”
For her part, Tina delivers an absolute killer of speech about young people, summing up the realities of competing against them for opportunities, but also that, fuck, we’re jealous of them. What I wouldn’t give to have disposable income and free weekends! To know the world was my oyster and that the bars were open late. It’s incredibly true and extremely enchanting, and it’s quickly clear that she and Mikey just get each other. He offers her a job at the Beef as a line cook before dipping out of the room to deal with one of Richie’s issues. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Small Bites
• Is it just me, or has this season had a lot of shots of people lying in their beds in the dark? Did they shoot them all on the same set with the same lighting? And why don’t they all just do what the rest of us do and stare at their phones aimlessly for hours?
• The first place Tina takes her résumé to is Mestiza, which is a nice store in Chicago.
• I’m interested in how the show put the old Beef back together. Even if they just used Mr. Beef and shot on location, they must have had the Ballbreaker games in storage somewhere.
