The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘The Bear’ Season 2, Episodes 7-8 Recap

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Charles and Van share their thoughts on the seventh and eighth episodes of ‘The Bear’ Season 2. They discuss whether or not this season would have been better served on a weekly release schedule rather than a binge drop, Richie’s satisfying redemption arc, and criticisms of Claire’s role in the story. Along the way, the guys talk about why art about finding something can be even more compelling than art that revolves around loss. Hosts: Charles Holmes and Van Lathan Producer: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You may find this hard to believe, but 60 songs that explain the 90s. America's favorite poorly named music podcast is back. With 30 more songs than 120 songs total. I'm your host, Rob Harvilla, here to bring you more shrewd musical analysis, poignant nostalgic reveries, crude personal anecdotes, and rad special guests, all with even less restraint than usual. Join us once more on 60 Saws That Explain the 90s every Wednesday on Spotify. Welcome to the prestige TV podcast where every second counts. I'm Charles Holmes. He's Van

Lathen. Together we're known as the Midnight Boys and we're back to discuss utter beauty and significance of forks. Then, how are you feeling? We only have one more, one more prestige TV podcast. We're almost done with the bear. How are you holding up? I'm feeling like it's the show of the year. So I'm feeling like it's been like a meal. There were appetizers at the beginning, which were the first two episodes. And then they brought us out a main course in the middle, which had to do with Marcus's episode overseas and then episode six. And if they get this, dessert right, we got one of the best seasons of television. I've seen in a little bit in a little bit of time. I love this show. I think if they stick the landing, this is the best

season of TV of the entire year. And the thing that now that we're almost done with the entirety of season two that I want to ask you about is a lot of people on the interwebs, including me, have been griping. There's two sides. Should season two of the bear been a binge drop or should it have gone weekly?

Now, I've been on record being like, I think that this season actually deserved a little breathing room because I do think that there are certain episodes to your point, whether it's honeydew or fishes or forks, that if it had an entire week to breathe, we would be talking about this like it was Succession or Mad Men or Breaking Bad.

There would be that level of like, all right, like, let's focus on this and dig into this. And with a binge drop, I'll be honest, I just don't know where everybody is in the show. So it's very, very difficult to be like, to really hone in on all of these. episodes in a big way. What are you thinking in terms of like,

should it have been a binge or should it have been weekly? Look, this is one of the central questions to television programming now, binge versus weekly, binge, binge, weekly, weekly, binge, whatever. This is what I think. If you air here, it can really fuck up your show. Yeah. Give you an example.

She-Hulk. Now the bear, look at Charlie. Charles, he's doing. He's about to explode. The bearers of significantly higher quality than She-Hulk. We all know that, right? I don't think She-Hulk was as bad as everybody else thought that it was, right? I think that the show had some delightful moments.

It had some problems. But people act like the show is the cinematic Antichrist. I think it's judged more harshly because it didn't have the type of narrative energy to maintain itself from week to week. I watched the first four shows in a binge. They were made available to the press. And in those first four shows as a binge, I was coming away thinking that the show was actually delightful.

Say all that to say this. If you get it wrong, you can ruin your show. Yeah. So if the network, which is FX here, doesn't think that the bear has the viewership, or doesn't think that the bear has the type of energy and discussion spaces to warrant a week to week, the safe thing to do is to drop it as a binge.

We'll see what they do next season, building on these first two seasons, but I can't really find very much fault with them giving us a second season to test out what the audience of the bear was and really the type of hold that the show has on culture. If the show goes on and sweeps the Emmys and wins a bunch of awards

and becomes something more than the television watchers' favorite show, then maybe they'll do that. But if not, maybe they won't. What about you? I mean, I think you're totally right. I think there are two things to consider. I don't know how FX was feeling from a business standpoint, and I don't know how the creatives were feeling creatively.

you know, Christopher Storer and Joanna might have been like, creatively, we want this to be a binge. We want people to like watch this in rapid succession. To your point, I think the bear is definitely a popular show. Numbers-wise, I could see FX and Hulu being like, no, it is like a popular coastal elite show, but it's not a yellowstone. And that's not a shot at the bear.

It's just like it's a different type of programming. And I think because we think of the, Bear in a prestige landscape, we also forget. I sometimes forget that I'm like, this is still a half-hour comedy. Like, yeah, they haven't, like, and that might be some of the calculus being like, it makes

sense for succession, which are hour-long episodes, damn near like half a movie to be like, we need to like let Pete this breathe in a way where you're just like, does the Bear season two work as well if we just get

that first episode of this first second season. Like, not saying that that first episode was bad, but it was a little, like it was a palate cleanser. It was not fishes or honeydew. We had to get into this season. Well, the thing about Succession is, you know, HBO doesn't give you the opportunity to decide whether or not a show is important enough for a binge or a week-to-week watch

pattern, right? They tell you that the show is important. Succession has jets and helicopters and different nations. and presidents and all of that, they cannot sell that show to you in a binge format. If the show doesn't, if Succession, Game of Thrones,

House of the Dragon, if these shows don't feel important, particularly those. You can make an argument with Barry or some of the other ones, but if those shows don't feel important, even the idol, it makes such a big fucking deal about the show.

You know, it's just a huge deal. If those shows don't feel important, they don't even work. I mean, they don't work if they don't feel important. This show is different. This show is almost, it's a connoisseur's show. It's a show, it's like a stripped down version of even succession. Because succession, for a lot of people, there's not enough going on for them to really say, I don't get it. You guys, nothing happens, and they're just talking and they're being qui.

I can understand that. but the show feels so grandiose. This one kind of doesn't. It doesn't feel grandiose at all. So, I mean, if you misread what the people are talking about and what they want, you could ruin something or it could get lost in a shuffle. That's really good. We'll see.

Like, we'll see. Like, Ted Lassow was a binge, right? At first. I know that I found it when it was a binge because it was during the pandemic. So I'm not sure. Yeah, actually, I'm not sure. I am sure that it did become. weekly, though. And for that

particular show, it wasn't, it didn't, it couldn't maintain its energy to, to, uh, to warrant the weekly job. So, you know, I don't know. It, it, but I know that I watched the bear and I feel like it's a very important show. I think it's a very

important show artistically. Culturally, we have a little waiting to do to see if it meets that kind of, if it gets kind of that threshold where it's a really important show culturally for people, not just who love television, but just watch TV. No, and I totally agree. I think a lot of my opinion on this is selfish from an artistic standpoint where I'm like,

I would have liked to talk about honeydew for a week. You know what I mean? I would have liked to see articles about honeydew, podcast about honeydew. Instead, it's like, it's an avalanche all at once. But hey, that's just me. Ligger, why don't you write an article about honeydune in? Hold on see what I'm talking about. Because I'm talking about. I got to do this. I got to do secret evasion. Come on, bro. If you like Honeydue that much, write an article about Honeydew. I read your article about The Flash. Brutal.

It was great, well written. You're such a great writer. But what about Honeydew? Write one. I want to see it. You got your deadline right now. You got until Friday EOD. No, this week's too busy.

Are you letting me tap out? Are you letting me tap out of secret invasion? No. Like, I need a thousand worlds on a honeydew before Friday EOD. Yo, but today We've talked about, you know, binge versus weekly, but it's time to get into this show.

Today, we're covering Forks, directed by Christopher Storer and written by Alex Russell and Bolognese, directed by Storer and written by Renee Goop. The first episode sees Richie Staging at the best restaurant in the world. The location they're filming at

is a real restaurant to Michelin Star in Chicago called Ever. The second episode revolves around whether the bear will clear their fire suppression test, And Van, I need your instant reactions to Forks. This is something that a lot of people have been hyping up. You and Kai actually were just like,

yo, you need to watch Forks. This is the one. Forks is a parentheses episode to me. Remember the era where songs had little parentheses in the title? You know what I'm talking about? Yes. You know, come on ride the train. Come on ride it.

And then it would be parentheses, the train. it would be whoop parentheses, there it is or something like that, I don't know. Forks to me is Forks parentheses The Redemption of Richie. Hell yeah.

Richie has been since the beginning of this show a delightfully grading character. He's the person that we all have in our lives that we love, but we're not quite sure why. He's my spirit animal. I identify with Richie.

We love him. him, but we really don't know why. Because people, everybody that we introduce him to is like, yo, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? Like, you know, everybody is around. I don't know. It's been with me for a long time. It's my guy. And you go to bath for him. You know that he has your back. You know that there's something more. You're just waiting for the right situation in his life for everything that you see in him to like kind of come to the forefront. You might not even be the one that's able to do it to make him be the best version of himself. or her be the best version of herself,

but you've seen glimpses of it so many times and you're so familiar with them that you love them. And oftentimes with those people, it never happens, right? They ride on the little moments of accountability, brilliance, ingenuity, all those things that you see and they come out in flashes. But then every once in a while, they meet the right person, they get in the right situation,

and they just harness it. And when that happens, it's so beautiful to see. It was never going to happen for Richie at the beef, but in a situation where he could understand the process of elegance, the sacrifice for service, the importance of what he does and who he is,

and someplace where he really felt good about himself, where he felt good about himself, it came out. And watching that process was dope. Like when he put, he has the suit on and the suit makes him feel good about himself, he wants to be better. He wants to feel good about himself. And there are so many things in his life that have made him not working at the beef did not make Richie feel good about himself. It didn't. We saw that in the

Christmas episode. That's why he keeps trying to escape. He tries to escape it. He tries to get a job here. He's been trying to escape the beef because to your point, it does not, it does not bring out the best in him. Yeah. You know, he loves his daughter, but I don't know if his family situation, or even being a father necessarily makes him feel good about itself because there's so much failure and shame. He loves his daughter. He loves his daughter. Loves her.

But what makes Richie feel good? What makes Richie feel like whole and fulfilled? And he finds it in this restaurant. And then he feels change. And it was really, really amazingly well done and brilliant and gorgeous to see. Yeah, to your point, I think what makes this episode so brilliant is that I think like structurally and thematically it reminded me of like a Rocky. It was like this episode unfolds like a sports movie where Richie represents and I think especially

in like those early Rocky movies, Richie represents something that is so traditionally Chicago. He is the type of man that through time gets pushed out, um, gentrification, ideals change. And there's something about Richie, both spiritually and emotionally, that does not want to give up on who he is and how he sees the world and how he wants to operate within it. And what this episode does is that it's showing that no discipline is the thing that he needs. He can be the old Richie. He can be the Richie that is proud of Chicago, proud of his block, proud of the beef, proud of his family, but can also realize that. that there's beauty in this world. There's beauty in this world

that Karmie has been forged in. And like the forks, it's like seeing him learn how important it is to clean these forks gave me the same feeling of watching Sylvester Sloan run up the Philadelphia Museum of Art Steps. You know what I'm saying?

Like that, and that is so weird because it's such a mundane task. But once he finally accomplishes it, It gives you that sports movie montage moment when he's going through all the stations and learning the importance of hospitality. That I'm just like, dog, I felt like I watched a prize fight. I felt like I watched somebody score the winning touchdown. This is like a player who finally realizes that they have more within them. And I just was not expecting that to happen within a cooking show.

Yeah. You know, and that, to me, that was just, yeah, it was so brilliant. And I wanted to know from you, do you think, did you think that the show would get here after the first episode? Because the first episode sets this up with Richie being like, I don't have a purpose. I don't know my passion. Did you expect that they were going to go here so soon? I expected an exploration of what Richie's purpose and passion is. I didn't expect it to be service because a character that seems so inherently self-centered.

It didn't seem like service and cooperation and making other people feel good was going to be Ritchie's calling. And I think when it makes me, which is what a good show really does, it makes me want to go back to prior episodes, just like I talked about friends and people that I've known in my own life, and examine the character and the portrayal of the character to see things that the writers might have injected Richie with that I might have missed. When in the first season of the bear, and even in this season of the bear, does Richie feel the most happy? What about him makes him the most content.

Are there things that I missed about the portrayal of the character or the writing of the character that might have told me that he was going to love to go and retrieve a deep dish pizza for somebody, come back,

watch a chef rework the deep dish pizza. That in and of itself was super interesting. And then be happy, almost flamboyantly serve it to a group of people and sit around and watch them smile and eat and have a great time the way my mother used to smile when she would see me eat something that she had cooked.

I just wouldn't have expected to see that from his character. But I'm betting that if I go back and pay a little bit more attention to him, that there were parts of him over the course of that, that they kind of injected, they foreshadowed, should I say, that this would be kind of where he found himself. I mean, I think even

even if you don't go back, if you just like think about where Richie is, Richie could have left this family, the Bearsados. His best friend, Mikey, is no longer alive. You know, the very person that brings him

into this family is not there. He never abandons them. He's been wanting to leave the beef for years. You know what I mean? He stays by Karmie. They argue.

You know, he yells at sugar. He is a dick. but he does not abandon them. He is always there. Even at the Christmas dinner, he could have, he could have pieced out. He could be like,

yo, this is getting wild. No, he thinks of himself as this family. He wants to help. Like, that was actually something where I was like,

that's always been into the, in the character, but they did a brilliant job of masking it with him, like, calling people fucking lizards and just yelling all the time. But the thing that I also think that this episode does brilliantly is it

takes something so mundane like a fork, and it kind of uses it as a symbol this entire season, because in the previous episode, in fishes, you know, what does the fork represent to the Bears Ato's? This is probably Mikey's last Christmas. And the fork represents something so positive in that this family comes together to eat, but it's also negative because Mikey throws it and this is kind of like the last Christmas. where you're like, okay, that was representational of Mikey kind of succumbing to his id, his baser self. And what this episode does with the Forks is like, it shows you like, hey, no, physically he needs to clear these smudges to prove that he can pay attention to detail,

but emotionally and mentally and spiritually, he has to get rid of these smudges of his past. He has to believe in himself. He has to clean himself up. He has to put on a suit. He has to invest in himself and stop only investing in the Barrisados to get out of this rut that he's been in. I'm just like, that is such a brilliant thing to do with something that we take for granted, which is just like a fork. It's something that you eat.

And even earlier, they're like, what a sugar keeps saying to Carm? Are we going to have enough forks? Are we going to have enough forks? Are we going to have enough forks? Throughout this season, this motif of like the fork as something that people need to conquer,

people don't. It's just such a brilliant thing. It is. And I think for Richie also, to your point, this is the episode where he traded in his armor. Yeah. Because his armor before was his personality that he used to keep people from hurting him. And he was able to find a different armor that fulfills him a little bit better that made him feel good about himself. And there's a difference in a person that protects himself by making other people feel bad.

and a person that protects themselves by making themselves feel fulfilled. Those are two completely different ways of looking at life. If I have to cut you down to make myself feel better, then really at the bottom of it, we're kind of both low.

But if I build myself up and take an interest in myself, normally the people around me will relate to that and be inspired by that. And then you'll probably lift people up with how the attention you pay to yourself and how clean you keep your things and the standards you set for yourself. So long as you're not overpowering with it,

people knowing that you care about you that much and you prioritize yourself that much, it normally makes them ask the question, well, what am I not doing for me? And Richie, he switched. Another thing about the fort was I remember when I was a kid, like I walked into my room one time, and I might have told this. story before. I watched in my room one time. My room was all fucked up. I'm just moving, going

around. I'm just throwing stuff. My baseball stuff is in one corner. We've been playing the game. The game was all wires everywhere. The bed was all messed up. Clos were in the middle of the place. And it was the summer. And my dad comes over and he says, you're going to clean the room up today. And he saw the life drain out on my face. He's like, I know why

you're feeling that way. It looks like it's impossible right now. It looks like it's impossible right now. It looks like your life, like you've let this get so bad that it's impossible. But I'm telling you, pick up one thing, pick up one thing, pick up another thing, and make a hole. And once you make a hole, you'll see that actually finishing this job is possible. And then you'll want to be finished and you'll see what you're going to do after. You'll see how things will go later on this evening. You'll see a time where your room is clean.

And he was like, really, it don't matter because you're not going to do nothing today but stay in here and clean your motherfucking room up. So you might as well have some fun while doing it, put some music on. The important thing about Richie cleaning the fork is that he has to. Like he has to clean it.

You have to clean one thing. This restaurant, this whole big thing where people are coming from all over to eat. It doesn't matter if these forks aren't clean. Forget all the problems. problems in your life. Forget what's going on with your daughter. Forget what's going on with the bear. Forget all of those things. None of those things matter unless you clean this fork. That's how important. That's how much you have to want things to be better in your life. There's not that you're

willing to do the big things is that you're willing to do the small things. And when I saw him get that at the end when he's talking to the chef, she's peeling the mushrooms. And he goes, why? And what does she say? It just makes people feel like you spent a little bit more time on their dish. This little thing that I come in here and do, I'm tired of this whole restaurant, charge this whole restaurant.

But this little thing that I come in here and do just reiterates to people that this is a place where we take a little bit better care of them. And in order to get the entire big deal, you have to invest in that. And when Richie did, his whole outlook changed. Not only could I not agree with you more, but you think about, what I think this show gets right about grief is that if you've ever experienced, like, the depths of grief, I'm talking about can't get out of bed, apartment or house is a mess, your life is a mess, everything seems impossible, right?

To your point, if you start with a fork, like when you go to therapy, they're like, yo, just start with something small. Get yourself something to eat. Take a shower. You know, just clean your clothes. Everything starts to fall in line because you're taking care of yourself. You're reinvesting in yourself. And what does Richie do?

The fork makes him look at his own apartment. He starts cleaning it up. Think about the Taylor Swift song. He can't bear to listen to any more Taylor Swift with his daughter. That fork is like a domino. Now he's listening to Taylor Swift in a different way. all of these different things in his life, even the love of his life,

marrying someone else, doesn't seem so impossible because he spent one moment to be like, the most important thing in this world is cleaning a smudge off a fork, not because it's doing anything for me, like, because I need to take pride in whatever I'm doing.

Just by me taking pride in the smallest thing and being of service to someone else will help me. And that's what they tell. Like, when you go to there, all of these things are just like, yo, just take it one day at a time, one task at a time.

You will get out of this. And what's heartbreaking is, how long has Ritchie been in this muck? Probably before Mikey? Because in Fishes, we realized that, what, he has to lie about getting a job.

So he's definitely broke. So it's at least been, what, probably like three, four, five years of him being stuck in this. And it's heartbreaking him getting that call from his wife

being like, oh no, I've been stuck in this muck so long. There's no winning her back. She's moved on in her life. That was because I was actually scared when Jillian Jacobs called. I was like, is she going to say that she has cancer? Something happened to the daughter. And when she said, oh, man, I got married.

Like, how did you feel like when you realize like, oh, he lost a version of the life he wanted? I think that was important because the episode is more about what he found. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so even the Taylor Swift song, He found something in the song that he couldn't get before. I think the episode is more about what he found.

And I think a lot of great art, a lot of great artists, of course, about loss. But I think the greatest art is about what you find. Yeah. You know, we talk about, and it's not always good, you know what I mean? Sometimes you find Freddie Kruger. I'm scared of him. But I think the greatest art is about what you find.

We've seen so much large, like I watched leaving Las Vegas a couple of days ago. And I'm just, I'm amazed that I could get through that movie when I was 15 or 16. But the movie is just like a spiral into loss, right? And it's, in a way, just artistic in and of itself. And people don't, I guess, know who Nicholas Cage is, but, you know, Nicholas Cage is immensely talented. And so you watch that movie, it's kind of about somebody's spiral. And there's something intoxicated about watching someone who, is kind of cast off everything that

he, uh, that we want to be and just decided I'm just going to blow it all up and just drink myself to death. But I think, you know, as human beings, when we watch shows and we watch movies, there's a part of us that wants to believe that the art can show us

a way out. And not, it's not that's profound. I mean, the guy that didn't cure cancer. He started, he stopped acting like a dick. But sometimes, you know, watching somebody that can stop acting like a dick and seeing why they can do it, it's really relatable. You know,

another thing that happens is, in this episode, is like the process that I'm watching him learn, I keep waiting for it to break him. But I keep waiting for it to break him because it broke me as a viewer. I couldn't work in that restaurant. I don't have it. I don't think I could do it.

I don't have it up there. Dog, I was the best salesman at Best Buy, but I couldn't fill out like the, something called, it was called Action Report or, action item or something like that where you, I'd sell $15,000, $20,000 worth of merchandise.

And I was just the man, like fucking Top Gun and Maverick, to the point to where after, when I had to fill out the little, the process of it, the process of it is what used to get me in trouble because I didn't think that that stuff needed to be done. And so process, especially somebody else's process, when I'm a results guy, it always kind of breaks me.

And so I thought that it would break Richie, but it didn't. It turned out that that's actually what he likes. He just didn't allow himself to like it. So the entire time, I'm thinking, my God, they got to do all of this to serve fucking food. They're like they got private detectives working on people And they're anticipating what people want And they're sending cars to people And by the end of it

And I did not get it I did not get it I didn't think that Richie would get it At the end of the episode I fucking got it bro I did And I think Richie got a little I think he got a future

I think Richie I think he might have charmed the hostess lady. I think he might have charmed her. I think the host lady that he was talking to, I was just like, damn, Shottie might be his new, his new booth her. She was like, we don't miss you. I'm like,

damn, she said that in a way. She said, she told him, she said, also don't be a stranger. But here's the thing. Evan Eben Moss back rack talked to Rolling Stone. He said something that was just, he sums up the episode beautifully. He said, Richie realizes that in this Michelin Star

fancy restaurant, there actually is a place for him and a place for Chicago. a place for tradition and deep dish, and he feels like the new doesn't necessarily have to erase and eradicate the past. He grows, but the essence of it is that the things that are most essential to Richie, a little bit of riso-dazzle, Chicago accents, being a man of the people, still feel valuable there. And that is what I think that this episode does so perfectly, is that it's not teaching us that Richie has to bury a part of himself, that Richie has to change everything that fundamentally makes him tick as a human, it says that he needs to find

space in his life to let other things in. He has to take a risk that in becoming a new, better version of himself, there will still be enough left of the old that what comes out is a better mixture of both. And that is such a hard thing to depict on a TV show within the course of 30 minutes. And I think something that's even more difficult to kind of like interrogate in a beautiful non-clay way is something that, um, is Chef Terry says to him. Let me get the exact quote. She says, Chef Terry played by Olivia Coleman when they're peeling, um, the mushrooms.

She says, it's never too late to start over, which is like, I think a theme of this entire series, but especially when you look at someone like a Richie, where I'm like, what, this man is probably in his late 30s, early 40s. Richie said he's 45. He's, oh, he's 45? Mm-hmm. Imagine what it is to be a 45-year-old who has been slinging, you know, Italian beef sandwiches for the majority of his life, now asked to essentially learn from people, the guy that he was

talking to, the other guy Stas, the other guy Stas. that was his mentor. How old did he say he was? 30. Someone 15 years your junior who's just like you're going to clean forks for seven days. As a 45-year-old, like Ibra, perfect example,

couldn't do it. So what you're telling me is you think it's hard for me to envision being in your early to mid-40s and being around people who are 14, 15, 16, sometimes 20 years younger than you.

Doing the same shit. You have to clean forks, though. That's true. But think about it, because he has to think, knowing who Richie is, that's also one of the fundamental things of, like, he thinks this is a punishment. It is such a beautiful moment

when Chef Terry looks at him and he's like, carmi believes in you. He, like, he believes in you. He, like, and that is something that he never, that is to me the thing that seals the deal. He realizes that this was not a punishment, that carmi saw something in him that he couldn't see in himself. And that was one of, that was one of the moments where I was like, oh, no, carmi is a great leader. Not in all respects, but carmi is that type of coach, is that type of player where he's just like, yo, if you follow me, I'm going to get the best out of you. And I was just, I would, that like, my heart swelled when like, Chef Terry was like,

nah, he believes in you. And by the way, we got, we got confirmation. I know we got to move on to the next episode, but we got confirmation in this episode that Luca was talking about Karmie. Yeah, they, they worked together with Chef Terry at this restaurant, which is very, very, I really want to know what is the timeline of the bear because they say in, this is a fictional restaurant, but they say that this is the best restaurant in the world. And, I couldn't tell if that was just the employees putting gas on that shit, being like, we're the best. But this isn't, this wasn't Joe McCale's restaurant.

That restaurant was in New York. I think that I'm not, I think it would be great to know, like, the restaurants that Karmie worked at, because I always thought that he worked at French Laundry. And I don't know why I thought that. But I don't know what restaurant, because he was in New York, he was in Copenhagen, he was in, Chicago, obviously, because his restaurant's in Chicago. And I also thought he had been,

I thought he had, for some reason, worked at French Laundry. I really did. So the show does do a good job of being like, Karmie has worked at the best restaurants in the country or in the world, to be more clear. I'm just like, I'm always like,

okay, so we worked at Noma, or at least a restaurant that is supposed to be Noma. He worked in New York, fresh laundry, whatever it is. He worked at one of those restaurants. He's worked in Chicago. So he was in Chicago?

Was he in Chicago? Or was he working with Chef Terry at one of her other restaurants? Oh, no, no, no. Chef Terry, I'm not sure. Because maybe they could have this, because she had a restaurant before and that restaurant closed down. I think he might have been too young to work at that one

because she said that that happened, the financial crisis. So I don't think he was around for all of that stuff. So that would have been, what, 2008? Yeah. So I don't think it was there. I'm not sure. It might have been at this one,

but it might have been in another one too. That would be great to know. But to be fair, I don't know if, did Carmie even go to college? Oh, no, it says right here. He worked at, it says right here.

I'm looking at it right now. He worked at French laundry and Noma. When working at New York, he would puke every day before going to work. So Noma is in Copenhagen. Copenhagen. So he worked at French Laundry and Noma. So I'm not,

I'm not sure. So he worked in Chicago at one point. The reason I was confused is because so much of this season was like, Karmie doesn't come back to Chicago. Carmi doesn't come back to Chicago. So I'm just like, when did he work with Chef Terry? Was that photo just from another restaurant that she had opened in Chicago, maybe when he was like first starting out or whatever?

It's not important. I love Forks. It's fun to talk about. The one other thing I want to talk about before we get to our first Guys corner is, did you notice one of the shots and you would have blinked if you miss it? And I was just like, this is such symbolically, like this is such smart storytelling. In the first season, do you remember

when Richie's on a date that's going terribly? And he's telling that story that him and Mikey are constantly telling about Bill Murray. Yeah, and about the faceless statue. I think it's called the series statue in

Chicago. I remember the story. I remember him bombing the day because it's nothing harder for me to watch on television than people scaring the house. It's so hard to watch. Every time it happens on TV. You know what I'm saying?

But what was so cool, and this was a little thing. I was like, this show is so smart, is that they actually show us that same statue that they did from that story. It's triumph now.

Someone who literally was scaring the hose telling these stories. And like the first time you see that statue in the first season, it is like, it's not triumphant. It is very much like,

he's a loser that can't get out of his own way, who can't stop talking about the past. And in this, you're seeing this, the same statue, but it's like, this man is soaring. And I was just like, this is such a little itty-bitty thing, but it just proves why

the show is just like operating on the most amazing of levels. But Kai, turn on your microphone because this is the most important question for all of us of the day. They get Piquads in this episode. Have either of y'all ever eaten Piquods deep dish? No, no fucking. I've only had, I've never had Deep Dish

in Chicago. Like, deep, dish sits at the bottom of my stomach, and it's just a lot for me. So Piquaud is quite possibly one of the best pizzas I've ever tasted. I went to Chicago once. My Chicago editor at Rolling Stone, one of my best boys took me there. Transformational experience. So I have to ask the gourmand first of this podcast, deep dish or New York style? I know you love Pizza Kai.

That's a great question. I think, so I actually went to Chicago in the last few weeks for the first time ever tried Deep Dish. It was great, but I have to go New York style. Really? Yeah, I don't like, as you guys know this,

I don't like cheese. And so Deep Dish has a lot of cheese and that can kind of turn me off, but, you know, a lot more than like your regular slice of pizza. And, yeah, New York pizza is kind of, it's kind of goaded for me. All right, so.

Kind of you made me sick, another bad take? I even had explanation there. That's crazy. It's actually a good take. It's, so here's the thing, It's like, you know, like when somebody does something really bad and then, like, they do something, let's say they do something real bad.

Like, they steal three million people from like $3 million for like tax evasion or something like that. It's like really bad or whatever. It's not really that bad. I don't care. But then they do something almost a little bad. Like, you know, it's a video of them talking back to their mom or to their daughter. And you go, that's that person's personality because now they've made up, they have a foundation of, bullshit that now everything else that they do. And that's kind of the thing now. What you just

said is really, it's not consequential. It's so yeah, I get it. You don't like cheese. My friend, my friend Ian doesn't like cheese. We just, I'm not a cheese fan, but I love it. I love it. We went to, we went to Motherwolf here in Los Angeles, which is the best restaurant in town. And we got Brandzino. The best Branzino I've ever had. Whole Branzino at Mother Wolf, fantastic. And my friend Ian looks at the people and goes, is there any cheese on it? I'm like, My niggas. Bro, what's wrong with you, Doc? It's a whole fucking fish, bro.

They're going to put some mozzarella on the fish? I don't like, stop. What? What? What are you doing? It's like, yo, just let you know, is there any cheese on the fish? No, there's no cheese on the brand zino. All right?

It's a brand zino. Okay, anyway. So I'm going to zag. I'm an East Coast boy. I live in New York. You know what I'm saying? Boy. I can walk to Lucali.

I love me some pizza. I personally think I would rather eat a perfect deep dish, Chicago deep dish pizza than a perfect New York style. Like I think deep dish is so easy to fuck up. Most deep dish is trash.

But if you can make a perfect deep dish, I like it more than New York. I'm not going to say it's a better slice than New York, but I like it more than New York stuff. Perfect New York pizza. It's good enough to make dealing with New Yorkers Perfect New York Because New Yorkers are talking

Everything is better in New York You know We got all this stuff But it's hard to find a perfect New York spice Like it's hard Like I mean it's hard But once you do it It's kind of like

Nah I feel y'all I get why y'all And I get it You know what I'm not gonna start wearing Tims But I get what y'all talking about A perfect new But I'd be honest with you You know what they don't talk about

In New York They talk about how good The pizza in New York is But what they don't talk about Is there is a lot of bad pizza. There is more mid-pisa to bad pizza than there is good pizza. Nobody talks about it.

And New York does a lot of great pizza. And that's not something that I can really say about the foods of other places. If you go to where I'm from, South Louisiana, I'm not going to say that there's a lot of bad gumbo. There's a lot of bad jumblelid. There's a lot of bad fish, a lot of bad muffaladas, a lot of bad, all of that stuff. I'm not going to say all that. There's a lot of good in there, some bad. But in New York, there is a shit ton of bad pizza that, to me, sometimes drowns out the people.

But when you find good, when you get the good New York pizza, it's nuts. All right. So wait, let me push back on you, though. I think pizza is among the hardest types of food in its genre to cook. And what I mean by that is that, like, because pizza has so few ingredients, if you fuck any one of them, like the whole slice is fucking done. You know what I'm saying? It's cheese. It's tomato. It's basil sometimes.

And it's dough. Any one of those components fucked up, like, I'm just like, just throw the whole slice away. It's bad. I mean, look, the thing is this. I feel you. But if you're going to hang your whole hat on, we got the best pizza, then come out swinging. You know what I'm saying? Like, come out swinging, man.

I'll take it's about grandmother house and get the food. You know what? I can't wait to Kai. comes to my mom in the house. My mama, she's already excited about it. She like people like Kai. She like,

you know what I'm saying? She like people like Kai. She like to take people like Kai and just submit them with the sheer excellence of South Louisiana cuisine. Kai going to come back there. I'm going to put 15 on Kai.

You know what I'm saying? Kai going to look like the 45 year old version of himself when, you know, when he gets to his fat stage where he got glasses and he's wearing like. No, Kyle come back looking like Kyle Lowry. You know what I'm saying?

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All right, so let's move on to Bolognais. The next episode, episode eight. We've been so positive out this season. We have been so positive. Can I just get a little, like, can I do a little nitpick with you, Van? Carmi, Sidney, and Claire, the trio, the tension. I love Claire as a, as like the actress who plays her. I'm just like, oh, I know why, like,

Carmi would fall in love with her. Like, this is the type of woman that Carmi needs. I understand why you would put Claire in this show. But is she a fully formed enough character throughout this season to be the wedge that's driven between Carney, Carmi and Sydney? And what I mean by that is because she doesn't get that much screen time, and we don't know that much about her,

she's almost like the sugar of last season, where this season Sugar has so much to do. I'm just like, I can't envision a season three without Sugar. She is such a phenomenal actress. But if you would have told me that that would happen in season one, I'm like, I don't know. Like, she didn't have much to do. And Claire is kind of getting the same type of raw deal

where I'm just like, I see what you're going for. I want to see my boy Carmi Happy, but she does not seem like a fleshed out character yet. She's not. She is a human McGuffin. something was going to get in the way of Karmie and Sid, and she just happens to be the thing. It's not necessarily her fault, okay?

But it is her proximity to things that is making it. I mean, Sid was feeling the way she was feeling about Karmie before Claire really came into the picture. But now that Karmie seems to be talking to Claire about things that he's not talking to sit about, it is really just, it's reaffirming, or it's affirming,

Sid's suspicion that Carmi doesn't look at her as an equal partner. And really, be honest with you, that happened more when Sid visited the bunch of different restaurants. And I just want to shout out all the chefs, all the actual chefs that were in that episode. I went back and looked and, you know, some of the best sets in Chicago,

they had them in the restaurant. So that was really cool with the show to do. And I followed some of those. those people on Instagram now and I'm professionally hungry. But yeah, I think it's kind of like the conversation ends up being that it's really not about clear.

It's really about Karmie and Sid and about what they're not saying. Like, for example, the little I'm sorry thing, it's good that it allows you to get through the day. But I wonder if it's not something that they should be doing based on the fact that it stops them from diving into some of the glitches that are developing in their relationship.

It's a Band-Aid and not a fix for, like, the lapses and communication that are going on between them. As far as the Claire character, it's literally at this point, she's like the Holy Girl. Or in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or she's like the Dial of Destiny. It's like they're not really using her because there's really nothing for her to do

except to fuck shit up. We haven't really delved deep into her relationship with Karmie. We just know that he's not communicate with it like he should be. I mean, because I bring that up because we get something, we get a lot of substantial things in this episode in Boney's, even if it is not as explosive

or emotional as a forks or a honey-dew or a fishes where we realize that Karmie has been talking to Claire about his trauma, about his family, and then we get the canoes. The canoles that we see in fishes. Karmie is now trying to reclaim a bunch of the food from his childhood. And like throughout the season, with the season,

the thing that I was missing so much, I was just like, there's not a lot of food in this season. Like, we don't get to see Karmie cooking as much as I'd like. We don't get him, we don't get to see him form. these dishes as much. But what we do, what this did kind of like raise to me is like, what does

Karmie need to let go of emotionally and spiritually to succeed as a chef? Karmie's already succeeded as a chef. He needs to succeed as a leader. Karmie's already been chef of the year. Right? Or young chef of the year, chef of the year.

Everybody. No, business wise and status wise, he succeeded as a chef, but like emotionally as a person. don't think he's the chef he wants to be. That's what I'm saying is I don't know, I don't know if he even considers that like he's so, this is what I would say. Carmi needs to do something that his mother

didn't seem like she could do and that his brother didn't seem like they could do. Carmi needs to build a family. That's what Carmen needs to do. That's Carmi's thing. Cooking food is second nature to him because he's so hyper-focused on it, right? He's been everybody's best chef.

His success, everybody else is finding success in the bear. Kami needs to find a success in the people that are around there. And I think that's another reason why the show has given us such an intimate look at the people and their lives away from it. And some of the things like Tina singing karaoke, like what that meant, Ibra's inability, which we see in this episode, to try something new. These people have fears. They have fears and they have doubt

that crept into their performance at work. And it was informing it. Informing it. Sid is insecure about a lot of things because she had a restaurant that failed and also because of things she's heard from other people. We've seen Richie find his form. We've seen all of these things.

What Carmi needs to do is learn how to invest into the people around him as much as he invests into his vision of a restaurant or into him cooking food because only until he's able to do that, only until he's able to be like a person outside of that, it won't be until, should I say, that the restaurant is actually a success

because he's asking people to give parts of their lives to build, maintain this that they've never done before. And he's going to have to do something that he's never done before, too. That's the way I look at it. Because, no, I agree with everything you say. I just thought it was very, very interesting that in this episode, Carmi and Sid, the way they're talking,

it almost felt like there are things that Carmi learned as a chef at these Michelin Star Restaurant, at these three, two, one-star Michelin restaurants that I was coming away. I'm like, is this how Carmi wants to cook? because it seems like he's trying to reclaim this more wholesome, more down-to-earth cooking

that his mom used to do at Christmas dinner. But when he's drawing, I felt like everything that he's doing is very much like what does my vision of cooking look like when Joe Mikhail is not yelling at me?

When I'm not trying to get stars, when I'm literally just trying to, like, For example, what I'm trying to present to Piquot to pizza in the best way, like Chef Terry's restaurants do. And that's the thing that I was just like, is the show interrogating that enough? And maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

I mean, I see what you're saying. Look, real quick question for you. Two episodes left. What does the show have to do to land of playing two episodes left? To be honest, this is going to be such a basic bro answer? Just don't fuck up. Like, don't. Like, they've done everything already.

They've made me care about these characters more. They've made me invest in their lives more. What the only thing that they could do, in my opinion, to really, really fail is to stop hitting that emotional tenor. Is to get away from that. At this point, like, the show, it exceeded my expectations for a season two. I love these characters more. I love this place more. I'm more invested.

Nip picks aside, Claire, this, that. hey, if we get the same type of cooking that we had, to your point, all they need to do to land is land dessert. As long as they don't fuck up dessert, we're fucking good. But I will throw it to you, is there anything in your mind that you're like, this is going to mess up the season or no? I'm looking at Cid and Carms dynamic to see how they get to wherever they're going in two episodes.

If there was one thing I would say that I'm a little worried about is that you literally have two more shows for them to either end in traction or clean everything up. And I'm just wondering how they're going to go about doing it. But there always should be some questions going to a penultimate and an ultimate. And that's the biggest question for me right now.

Also, just don't make Karmie and Sid kiss. If there's a romantic relationship. Nobody's kissing. But also, like, I just this entire episode with the fire test and everything that we learned about, Mikey and how he was intentionally sabotaging the place and everything that was

going on. I think when a lot of what we've seen is what happens to people when they get out of their own way. And I'm interested to see if Carmy and Cia can get out of their own way and partner. No, I couldn't agree more. And with that,

we're almost done covering the bear. We only have two more episodes left. Thank you as always to the man behind the boards, the Risking. Thank you to my co-host, Van Lathen. And y'all, we will be back very, very, very soon to wrap up our coverage of the bear. See y'all there.