By its fourth season, The Bear has stopped pretending it’s not a workplace drama in chef’s whites. The powdered sugar of stylisation has mostly been dusted off, and what now remains is a sleek, trimmed-down story about trying to keep a business alive while everyone involved is falling apart. It’s still quite fond of its 90-second close-up montages of someone birthing the future of modern gastronomy. But underneath the mood lighting and the string of curated needle drops, there’s something simpler, sweeter, and finally, human again.

The pendulum swing from the previous season’s art-house self-seriousness to this season’s almost earnest sentimentality is dramatic enough to cause whiplash. The Bear dials down that divisive haute cuisine pretension from last year and finally loosens its apron strings to let the rest of the kitchen serve up more of what we’ve been craving.

We pick up right where we left off: the Chicago Tribune review has dropped, and it’s a confusing, love-hate letter to The Bear, kind of like how season three was recieved. The tragic, Byronic Carmy is still brooding, Sydney is still visibly holding the place together with the strength of her eyes alone, and Uncle Jimmy is now literally counting down the hours until his patience (and money) runs out. But instead of spinning in never-ending loops of Carmy’s insufferable martyr complex, the series decides to do something truly radical in the wake of its previous season. Like moving forward, for one.

The revelation this time is Ayo Edebiri. After two seasons of playing the show’s designated rational adult, Sydney finally gets to be something resembling a person. Her big episode — written by Edebiri herself and Lionel Boyce — sees her spend time with her niece, reflecting, decompressing, and being torn between staying at The Bear and taking a job offer that would almost certainly involve fewer existential crises and more consistent health insurance. It’s one of the few understated moments this season where the series remembers what food costs the people who make it.

That said, The Bear still can’t help itself. Season four might just be even cornier than its predecessors. There are repeated platitudes masquerading as revelations about the sanctity of restaurants, about restaurants as families, families as restaurants, and so on. There’s still a whole lot of looking, pausing, and meaningful chewing. No one in this universe has ever said, “I don’t know,” and meant it. They’re always just one sentence away from a full-blown personal essay. But when it works, it really works, because like its characters, The Bear doesn’t always know how to express what it’s feeling, so it just says it very loudly, and then plates something beautiful.

Maybe it’s because of the extraordinary performances that the show still packs a punch. Jeremy Allen White has become almost allergic to words this season. He emotes through eyebrow twitches, hand tremors and ruffling those tattooed palms through his hazel curls. The tragic boy-genius of the kitchen spends much of this season listening, which is ironic, and oddly poignant. He is no longer the engine of the series so much as the ticking clock inside it.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach, meanwhile, continues to do miraculous things with Richie, turning what began as a loudmouth punchline into one of television’s most unexpectedly moving characters. He can go from absurd to profound without changing pace, delivering grief, growth, and dad-level bravado with the same cracked charm. This season gives him a bit more quiet, and the seasoned chef in Moss-Bachrach lets it breathe.

One of the biggest wins this season is how it gives its supporting cast actual things to do besides just marinate in trauma. Ebraheim finally gets to be more than the kitchen’s resident monk. Richie assembles his fine-dining Avengers — Jessica, Garrett, Rene from his tryst at Ever — to steady the ship. And even the infantile Faks are scaled back to semi-useful kitchen goblins of sorts. It’s an upgrade across the board.

This season also finally chills out on the cameo circus. Sure, a few still pop up (it’s The Bear, after all), but they don’t scream, “Surprise!”, like they’ve done so far. When the show does go big — particularly in the now-trademark “Episode 7” — the familiar faces feel like well-earned callbacks.

The smartest thing The Bear does in Season 4 is finally admit it might not need to orbit around its sad, sous-vide-edged white boy anymore. We’ve lived in Carmy’s head long enough to know the floor plan, and the Berzatto family trauma has been thoroughly sautéed. The more compelling question now is: what happens when someone else takes the wheel — someone who still believes food can fix people, or at least keep them from completely falling apart?

Season four is the closest The Bear has come to feeling like a real place again, but it’s still half-baked. Some arcs feel undercooked, emotions come slathered in too much sauce, and too often the show confuses shouting for jokes. But it’s also warm, nimble, and more generous than it’s been in a while. It has started to remember that it’s a show about people trying to make something beautiful together, even if they’re not entirely sure how.

Let them cook.

The Bear Season 4 is currently streaming on JioHotstar