I’ll spare you too much throat clearing about the things I like about the now-embattled good-TV phenom The Bear. I’ll even say that the show might be slightly overdragged after an underwhelming Season 3. But here’s my personal beef with The Bear: It should be funnier.
I like good food. I identify with the passion for craft. But fussy haute cuisine—of the fourteen-dollar bread course, tableside brodo service, tweezered microbasil persuasion—is worthy of some irreverence. The Bear barely acknowledges this. Instead, the luxury dining industry is presented as a potential solvent for toxic masculinity and a path to self-betterment for the downtrodden.
A smarter show would treat the idea that there is something noble in submitting to a hyperexploitative workplace—to gratify a demonically entitled clientele, no less—with much more interrogating irony. (Fun fact: Writer Alex O’Keefe, who worked on Season 1, became a symbol of the 2023 writers’ strike when he spoke out about being paid poverty wages.) For all its attention to relatable Chicago folk, The Bear leaves the questi…