Minor spoilers follow for Season 5 of The Bear. All eight episodes are now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
After becoming an overnight sensation in 2022, The Bear has come to an end with a fifth and final season that’s all about bringing it back home to the titular high-end restaurant and the people within it. The series, created by Christopher Storer, picks up the morning after the end of Season 4, where The Bear is on life support. Despite the Food & Wine Best New Chef accolade pastry wizard Marcus Brooks (Lionel Boyce) just won, Uncle Jimmy’s (Oliver Platt) money clock is still ticking down to zero. Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) told Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) and cousin Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) that he’s leaving the restaurant business, handing them the keys to The Bear.
Over the course of a day (outside of a teeny time jump at the end of the finale), we watch as the staff at The Bear cope with what might be their last-ever service. Per usual, things are going poorly. With their funds dwindling, purveyors have shut out The Bear; the kitchen needs to stretch the little that’s on hand into a worthy course menu for an overbooked night. A recent bad investment has run Uncle Jimmy’s bank account dry, and he, Computer (Brian Koppelman (get back to writing The Roman, brother)) and niece Cheese (Elsie Fischer) hit the streets of Chicago to try to scrounge up any loose change to keep things alive another day.
Worse yet, the torrential weather outside matches the stressy mood indoors as the staff hustles to fix one setback after the next while having hushed, reflective conversations with one another. After four seasons that have often strayed outside of the four walls of the former Original Beef of Chicagoland with mixed results, it’s a renewed focus on the core staff at The Bear desperately trying to make a meal of the scraps of time they have left together.
Where you land on this season will largely depend on how invested you still are — especially after the preceding two seasons of meandering television — in this restaurant’s success and the endpoint of its staff’s emotional wellbeing. For me, with every familiar two-person scene that fishtails into a monologue, I had a difficult time rejecting the intrusive thought of the Dr. Manhattan meme format. It’s 2026, I’m watching the characters on The Bear apologize to each other in the middle of their crumbling restaurant that may or may not make it. I think I might be tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.
This isn’t to say this season is devoid of high points. The final three-episode stretch sends The Bear off relatively nicely. Episode 7, “Caramel,” is legitimately triumphant — and could be counted amongst the series’ best episodes — as The Bear executes on its potential final dinner shift. Every member of the staff finally locks in to pirouette through the high-wire act of an impossible service; for as awful as the situation is, everyone is “maximizing,” as Richie has demanded with newfound positivity.
It’s not even necessarily disappointing that each of its long-struggling characters have made (albeit predictable) personal breakthroughs. Carmy has learned to tame his rage and speak to those around him with compassion instead of red-faced screaming when his pot boils over. Syd, the quality of her cooking acknowledged by the industry, has learned how to be the confident captain of the ship. Richie has become exactly the kind of creative and caring hospitality manager he’s admired. Marcus begins healing the broken relationship with his father. Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), Gary (Corey Hendrix), Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson), even Neil (Matty Matheson) — they all reach new pinnacles in their restaurant careers. On paper, it’s a lovely clean way to end things. In practice, it borders on mawkish, a sugary dessert that turns cloying after a few bites. It’s the happy ending you probably could have anticipated after Season 1; it didn’t need five seasons to get here.
“Restaurants suck, everything sucks,” cousin Richie says midway through this season that is often engaging in metatextual conversation with itself. While its characters continue to dig into their own personal ambitions, failures, anxieties, they’re also talking about the show itself, down to the impact The Bear (and the cottage industry of other glossy food TV shows like Chef’s Table) have had on how non-industry people perceive restaurants. The same kind of thinking is even reflected in the score. Instead of the same “New Noise” riff that’s become practically synonymous with The Bear, it’s backed by a steady, synthy Hans Zimmer score that seems to say the show, like its namesake restaurant, has left its scrappier days in the past for something more streamlined and mature.
In its hour-long final episode, The Bear flies off into the lens flare to finish with a soft landing that — without spoiling too much — finally gives Syd her flowers and I think pretty clearly answers what Carmy’s up to next, even if he doesn’t say the words explicitly. The series’ extraneous cast of cameos gather around for one last family party, for once drama-free. By then, the score and dead wife-style camera work working in tandem, The Bear has succumbed to the sentimentality it was teetering toward all season long. To use one last restaurant metaphor: It wasn’t a bad meal, but I wish the server dropped the check 20 minutes ago.
The Bear comes home for one last doomed service. The final season isn’t without high points — Episode 7, “Caramel,” easily ranks among the series’ best — but it is a somewhat treacly sendoff that finally succumbs to its own sentimentality at the end. Bye, chef!
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