The coolest hidden show of the hour

You surely have friends who still brag about having seen Nirvana at Les Foufounes Electriques in 1991 and who themselves drank natural wines before Marc Séguin designed the chic labels for the bottles of Pinard & Filles, frankly.

Yes, I’m talking about those people, often snobbish and haughty, who have this universal gift of making us feel completely overwhelmed and useless.

These people are definitely watching The Bear on Disney+, the coolest – and least known – series of the last few months. No, wait. These people are hoodwinking The Bear. And these people don’t understand that we can look at anything other than The Bear right now, let’s see.

Critics are very much in agreement with these folks. They love to The Bear. Even the restaurant industry, depicted in a harsh and chaotic way in this American television series, praises The Bear.

Confession, here: I copiously hated the first episode of The Bear, as well as the second, which immerse us in the muddy kitchen of a messy restaurant in Chicago. It’s not watchable.

It screams, it’s damned, it gets pissed off, it constantly cuts off speech, it’s anxiety-provoking, it’s raw, the nervous camera shakes like at MusiquePlus in 2002, the ubiquitous music constantly attacks us, it’s It’s so stressful that it requires taking two Ativans (stat!) to keep our hearts from dropping out of our chests. In short, no pleasure to watch it.

think about the movie whiplashbut transposed into a family boui-boui that works off the hook and where periods of heavy traffic turn into an oily and toxic ballet, which always culminates in injuries or accidents.

That’s it, The Bear : a hyper-realistic foray behind the scenes of a restaurant populated by employees with shitty characters. I persevered and made it to the eighth and final episode, I was one of those people who sing the praises of The Bear loudly. I even caught myself googling recipes for brageole and spaghetti pomodoro, possessed by the autumnal spirit of Josée di Stasio. Discloser: I’m never going to cook all this, let’s be clear.

And why does this cacophonous and frantic series of eight half-hours captivate us so much? Because it makes us feel things. Urgency, tension, conflict, despair, anger, violence and grief.

In our living rooms, we can almost smell the sweat of badly yelled characters, the smoke of cigarettes smoked in the alley and the meat fat clinging to clothing. We are there, with them, during the gunshots.

The Bear revolves around the taciturn Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a young chef from Chicago trained at the greatest tables in the world. When her drug-addicted older brother commits suicide, Carmy inherits his “greasy spoon,” which serves Italian beef sandwiches to a clientele of bus drivers and blue-collar workers.

Disgusted with places laden with Michelin stars, the dark Carmy is working to enhance the gastronomic bar and hires a talented sous-chef to implement a French brigade method. Obviously, the old employees of the snack bar revolt and the fight takes over the pans, fueled by the rage of cousin Richie, a real asshole who yells all the time.

The Bear is torn between tradition, gentrification and modernity: should we seduce the sores of the neighborhood with fragrant risotto or focus on the faithful who have frequented the place for moons? The seventh episode is an endless 17-minute dive into kitchen hell, fasten your aprons, the heat remains at broil long time.

But the heart of the series beats under the white t-shirt of Carmy, a complex and deficient antihero. Why is Carmy struggling so much to save this – very ordinary – restaurant from bankruptcy? He could close it, shave it, or just sell it. Quickly, we understand that it is himself that Carmy is trying to rescue in this psychological-culinary adventure.

By keeping the snack bar open, it is the memory of his dead brother, and that of his once united family, that he preserves. Play a song from Radiohead, Wilco or Sufjan Stevens here.

Pastaga restaurant co-owner Martin Juneau gobbled up all eight episodes of The Bear, even if he swallowed the first two askew. “It was too aggressive, I really had misery. It was such a mess. But you end up getting on board, because the show sort of follows the organization of the kitchen. The more you advance in the episodes, the more the spirits calm down and things settle down. Even the kitchen looks cleaner in the end,” he explains.

According to Martin Juneau, The Bear vividly depicts the most catastrophic evenings in a restaurant. “The kitchen is a controlled mess, and it’s always a bit of chaos,” he slips.

For now, the French soundtrack does not come with The Bear, only subtitles work on Disney+. And what does the famous bear in the title of the series refer to? This is Carmy’s nickname, but also a punch that comes out during the final episode. A second service of The Bear has been ordered for next year. It looks both delicious and scary. Prepare the Tums and the Xanax.