“The Bear,” everyone’s favorite drama-with-just-enough-jokes-to-get-awards-nominations-as-a-comedy, which follows a tortured-genius chef who heads back to Chicago to take over his brother’s Italian beef sandwich shop, has released its third season. And because the season arrived in one bingeable drop, we started to hear the critical response well before we found time to finish it ourselves. And the critical response seemed unfavorable! “A bad show in especially annoying ways,” wrote Jack Hamilton at Slate. “Not The Bear at its best,” wrote Rebecca Nicholson in the Guardian. “Frustrating to watch,” wrote Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic. Some reviewers defended the new season, however. At The Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg argued that “most of the things this season that have sparked an absence of joy are intentional.”

One thing, however, doesn’t seem to be up for debate: whether it’s intentional or not, this season is tough to watch. That was certainly our experience! Some of the episodes (including the very first one) are simply half-hour montages. We spend more time in Carmy’s head, seeing repetitive trauma flashbacks, than we do seeing any of his development in the current timeline. The Faks are multiplying, even as their comic verbal jousting becomes more disconnected from the overall bleakness of the show. Chef de cuisine and creative partner Sydney is spinning her wheels; sous-chef Tina and pastry chef Marcus have receded to the margins, despite a lovely episode dipping into the backstory of how Tina ended up at the Beef. Yes, Carmy’s sister Natalie has her baby — and a cathartic conversation with their self-involved and emotionally reactive mother — but major developments are thin on the ground, despite 10 full episodes to explore these characters. We end on a particularly irritating cliffhanger, with only a hint about whether a much-anticipated review of the new fine-dining restaurant will be a rave or a pan. We’ll have to wait for next season for any developments that showrunners Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo have been seeding to actually bear fruit.

In this podcast, we discuss what happened (and didn’t) this season, the critical backlash, our own initial reactions to season 3, how the repetitiveness and stagnation of the season might serve a purpose in its artistic project, and where “The Bear” could go from here. And despite how this may sound, we had a lot of fun with this one! We hope you enjoy. xo

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