By now, everyone has heard about Gary, the surprise episode of The Bear that FX and Hulu released on May 5, ahead of the June debut of the series fifth and final season. After watching it, we had a good feeling that the final season my get back to what we loved about the series to begin with.

GARY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A smoldering, burned-out field of brush. Then we see a closeup of Richard “Richie” Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) zipping up his Members Only leather jacket and lacing his high tops.

The Gist:  Richie is getting ready to go on a road trip with his cousin and best friend, Michael “Mikey” Berzatto (Jon Bernthal), to Gary, Indiana. The two of them have been tasked with taking a package to the city on behalf of their “uncle”, James Kalinowski (Oliver Platt). As Mikey honks away in front of Richie’s building, Richie says goodbye to his pregnant wife Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs), who wants him back by 5:15.

Richie is excited to get out of Chicago for once, and that Jimmy has entrusted them to transport an important package. Mikey, on the other hand, is melancholy as usual, amazed at how his buddy is getting so happy about going on a 35 minute drive for this job.

When the guys get to Gary, they find out they have to wait before meeting Jimmy’s contact. They go to a hot dog joint and talk to the woman at the grill, relating what they like about working at (and in Richie’s case, owning) The Beef to her experiences. Then the two of them play some pickup basketball with some teens.

Mikey is still a little uptight, but he’s been loosened up a bit by some malt liquor and a bump of coke. Richie, on the other hand, sees a dive bar that’s open, and thinks that’s “a sign” of… something. A little while later, a woman named Sherri (Marin Ireland) comes out and tells him that Richie wants him to come inside. As Mikey enters the bar, he sees Richie holding court, playing “Fact or Fiction” with a group of women and one guy.

As the two guys drink and wait, Richie has a blast and Mikey gets to know Sherri. But then Mikey’s insecurities come out, with both Sherri and Richie being the recipients of his misery, in different ways.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It goes without saying that Gary is a flashback episode of The Bear. It was written by Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach, and directed by series creator Christopher Storer.

Our Take: One of the things that drew us to The Bear, besides the manic intensity of its early episodes, was that the relationships between the main characters had realistic “family” energy. These are people who have had a lot of history together, and they all love each other. But they also butt heads a lot, because they all know each other well, and can call them on their BS as well as point out each other’s fatal personality flaws.

That dynamic is on display in spades in Gary. We’ve gotten glimpses in the past at how close Richie and Mikey were, but this full flashback episode gives us a really in-depth look at how the two of them relate to each other. There certainly is a brotherhood between the two of them, as we see them each busting each other’s balls in one second and joking and laughing in the next.

But as the afternoon at the dive bar progresses, the deeper issues come out, especially when it comes to Mikey. We know, of course, that he succumbed to his mental health issues, which is what prompts his little brother Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) to take over The Beef. But this shows a bit of the roots of where his depression and anxiety comes from; he unloads on Sherri about his mother, about the pressure he feels, about his feelings that he should be doing something else with his life.

But he also unloads on Richie in a different way. Richie is riding high in this moment, given that his marriage to Tiffany is going well and she’s about to have their daughter. But if anyone knows how to burst that bubble, it’s Mikey, and he does just that. Still, the final scene of the episode shows us how much Richie misses all of that, the good and bad.

Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach have such a brotherly chemistry with each other that some of the scenes between Richie and Mickey felt improvised, even if they weren’t. And while there was some semblance of a plot to the episode, it was more of a look at this friendship that puts Richie’s path over the first four seasons of The Bear in better context.

Performance Worth Watching: This goes to both Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach, for the reasons we mentioned above. The fact that the pair wrote the episode shows how well they know Mikey and Richie and how much their friendship has informed the entire series.

Sex And Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As current-day Richie reflects on the empty seat next to him as he’s driving on a rainy day, something happens that might have a lot of impact on the final season of The Bear.

Sleeper Star: We are Marin Ireland fans going back to at least Sneaky Pete; as Sherri, she provides a good sounding board for Mikey while not hiding her obvious attraction to him.

Most Pilot-y Line: Tiffany’s reasons for wanting Richie back home by 5:15 are definitely in the “superstitious to a fault” category, but it does give us a little more information about Tiffany.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Gary does a good job of reminding fans of The Bear why the show was so compelling when it first blasted onto our screens, and we hope it’s a harbinger of a good final season.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.