It’s been a funny old road for The Bear.
Plenty of series which are met with initial acclaim drop off either dramatically in their second season, or gradually over time.
The Bear has been met with a slightly different fate, delivering two roundly praised and award-winning seasons only for seasons 3 and 4 to slightly confound both viewers and critics.
The series, which had previously delivered strong character drama, visually arresting cooking sequences, high tension scenarios and big laughs became known as a slightly navel-gazing, very slow paced affair, with very little narrative momentum.
At the end of season 4, I wrote that we might be able to see light at the end of the tunnel, that the series could be about to return to its former glories. There were green shoots in the back half of that season, with episodes such as Tonnato and Goodbye delivering the goods.
My argument at the time was simple – The Bear needed to return to episodic storytelling, delivering more contained instalments à la Honeydew, Fishes and Forks. It’s no coincidence that these are some of the show’s most acclaimed outings, while also having specific stories which play out within the 30-odd minutes assigned to them.
Sadly, I have to report that not only did the Christopher Storer and his team seemingly not read my piece (shocker!) but they’ve actually followed the complete opposite track. Having seen seven of the eight episodes in season 5, I can comfortably say The Bear has made a huge mistake in its final run, one which could seriously damage its legacy going forward.
At the end of season 4, the team in many ways set themselves a challenge. The final episode saw Carmy announcing his decision to not only leave the restaurant, but leave the food industry for good.
Fans’ minds were whirring – would season 5 not feature Carmy? Would it follow him in a new arena? Or would he spend some time away, only to return soon into the season, with a renewed love for the game?
It turns out, we needn’t have asked any of these questions. The show has no interest in answering them.
Instead, the writers have decided to set every episode of season 5 (or at least the first seven) on the same day, the exact day after Carmy announced his decision at the end of season 4.
Without spoiling anything (although, honestly, it would be quite difficult to do so given how little takes place), the main action of the season sees the team re-grouping for another day at The Bear after Cicero’s clock hit zero.
He is still intending to close the restaurant, but they still believe they can turn it around, in part by getting a Michelin star. It’s just unfortunate that, on this pivotal day for the restaurant, a storm batters the area, causing issues for the building itself while also potentially deterring customers.
Why they’ve chosen to make this structural choice is unclear. Perhaps they saw the buzz The Pitt was getting, and thought copying its format could be a way of returning the series to the relevance it once had.
The problem is, The Bear isn’t The Pitt and a kitchen isn’t a hospital. In spite of its structure, which sees each 15-episode season taking place over a 15-hour shift, The Pitt still has episodic elements that delineate the instalments, and a pace which keeps the on screen action riveting regardless.
In each episode of The Pitt, there are new patients entering the wards, new medical procedures to undertake, new developments in the dynamics between our central characters.
I would personally struggle to describe any one of the first seven episodes of The Bear season 5 independently. It’s all just a mush of ongoing story, and a very slight ongoing story at that.
This means that while there are nice moments dotted throughout, they are sparse and forgettable, and fail to come together to make a particularly standout episode. There’s no Review from season 1, no Forks from season 2, no Napkins from season 3, no Bears from season 4.
It also means that any decisions or revelations which are made are largely inconsequential. For instance, Carmy’s decision to leave should have been seismic, but instead it really doesn’t matter all that much to us as viewers – he’s still there, turning up for work the day after, so it’s primarily business as usual for this final season.
It’s such a shame, because season 5 had the opportunity to return the show to its former glories – with Cicero’s clock at zero and Carmy out of the business, this could have been an opportunity to really shake things up. There could even have been a time jump, picking up with the characters in new jobs, coming back together to revive the restaurant at a particular moment of opportunity.
Of course, when watching any form of media it’s important to judge what is there, rather than what could have been, some imagined version of the piece which never existed or was going to exist.
Still, even on that basis, this season is weak in comparison with previous efforts. There are lots of forgettable sequences, strung out conversations which brim with emotion but which we’ve witnessed many times before, and many variations on the theme of how difficult running a restaurant and working in a kitchen is.
The Bear has always been a character-led piece first and foremost, which is why I gave season 3 the benefit of the doubt. However, that doesn’t mean you can just abandon story entirely, at least not within individual episodes.
A day in the life of a kitchen at a fine dining restaurant could be an interesting prospect for an entire project, and in fact it has been – that was the whole concept of the excellent film Boiling Point.
However, we’ve already seen all of these elements from The Bear before. By season 5, to focus so exclusively on that, makes the show feels like its spinning it’s wheels, right at the point they should be coming to a natural stop.
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Of course, I still haven’t seen the final episode. It’s entirely possible that The Bear will still stick the landing on those terms, delivering a finale which wraps things up naturally, successfully and with gusto.
However, after the first seven episodes of the season, that proposed finale would arrive more as a sigh of relief than as a joyful exclamation of a final season done right to the last.
It’s so often the case that final seasons can set the legacy of formerly acclaimed shows for better or worse. Having seen The Bear season 5, I fear it is leaning the latter way. Closing time has never felt so disappointing, yet also so needed.
The Bear season 5 will premiere on Disney+ on Friday 26 June 2026. You can sign up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month now.
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