“The Bear” goes down in the grave as a unique television experience
Published 2026-06-26 12.14
TV REVIEW It’s time for the gang at The Bear to make their last serving. Which feels both sad and a little nice.
Because as inimitable and well-crafted as Christopher Storer’s series is, it has long gone in circles.
The Bear
Disney Plus
Season 5, Episodes 1-7
By Christopher Storer, with Jeremy Allen WhiteEbon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, Liza Colón-Zayas, Lionel Boyce, Jamie Lee Curtis, Matty Matheson, Oliver Platt, Edwin Lee Gibson, Will Poulter.
DRAMA. After an intense first season that made the series an instant talking point, and a second that was even better and more refined, cementing its status as one of the very finest creations of the 2020s, followed a third and a fourth round that divided fans and critics alike (personally, I didn’t love them).
And now shall Christopher Storers restaurant kitchen drama “The Bear” – which has won a slew of Emmys and Golden Globes as a comedy but is more of a psychological drama about people with anxiety – make its last serving.
Picking up more or less directly after the events of the fourth season finale, all seven (out of a total of eight) episodes sent to us reviewers take place during the same hectic and chaotic workday.
A downpour of biblical proportions has swept over Chicago and no one knows how many customers will arrive for the evening, as the weather threatens to interfere and the reservation system has also crashed. And the restaurant premises themselves are also falling apart, in the literal sense. Pipes are leaking and roofs are collapsing.
Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is involved in a minor traffic accident. Natalie (Abby Elliott) has left her daughter with her messy mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) and worries that she will traumatize her. Uncle Jimmie (Oliver Platt) worries about the continued financing of the restaurant, Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) worries about losing his job, and Marcus (Lionel Boyce), who has serious daddy issues, worries about his father’s impending visit.
There is a shortage of ingredients, it has to be skimped on, and in the kitchen Carmy struggles (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) with their new roles.
He’s going to quit, because cooking no longer makes him happy (if it ever did?) and she’s going to take over as boss. But he finds it hard not to get involved, and she is terrified of failure.
The shifting dynamic between them is the engine of this final season, which in parts, especially towards the end, reaches heights that the series has not reached in a long time, and in parts mostly feels like a collection of greatest hits that we already know. Now accompanied by Swedish-born Christian Lundberg’s pounding electronic music, which accentuates the constant battle against the clock so much that one wonders if it is really food to be served or if it is in fact an atomic bomb to be manufactured, handled and then released.
The intimacy, the sense of detail and the observations about how the social chemistry works in a group under pressure means that “The Bear” goes to the grave as a thoroughly unique television experience. But the character development peaked years ago, and since then the series has cranked over the same things over and over again, balancing on a fine line between uncompromising integrity and tiresome complacency.
It’s impressive and annoying at the same time.
The fifth season of “The Bear” premieres on Disney Plus on June 26.
