‘The Bear’ and Rediscovering Your Passion

Among twenty-one Emmys and a top 200 show of all time on IMDB, Hulu’s ‘The Bear’ makes every second count of its usual 30-minute runtime per episode. The story follows Carmen Berzatto (Jeremey Allen White) trying to maintain and update his recently deceased brothers’ restaurant. While many of the store's employees are eager to produce the changes to a higher class establishment, Carmen’s older cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is keen on holding the strings of his old restaurant. In season 2 episode 7, titled ‘Forks’, Carmen is fed up with this and reaches out to a fellow Michelin star chef Terry (Olivia Colman) at her restaurant Ever to take Richie off his hands for a week.

Richie is annoyed to be doing nothing but polishing forks all day and complains to his supervisor, Garrett (Andrew Lopez). The two of them go outside and Garrett demands Richie to respect him, the establishment, and most importantly himself in a very heartfelt speech. Those words get to Richie, and he quickly realizes this was much bigger than just himself. As the week progresses, Richie finds himself fully invested in the culinary arts, more so than he did at the restaurant before the remodel. Garrett begins to see this newfound drive within him and decides to nurture it. He tells Richie to “suit up” and shadow him while he works with the customers. When Richie finally gets to be in the front end engaging with the clientele, he learns exactly what the feeling is like to put others’ needs in front of his own and how rewarding that can be. As Garrett puts it, every day at Ever is the Super Bowl, and the staff is the reason for it.

The ways that you can react to change tells a lot about the person you are. Change is an inevitable part of life and comes with a lot of blessings and hardships. Many people in Richie’s situation would take the easy road and become complacent in an environment that he did not want to be a part of. However, at the end of the episode he finds Chef Terry who was in a very similar situation to his own. She was very down on her luck, played her cards right and opened the best restaurant in Chicago. Richie realizes that even in his older age it’s never too late to rediscover what drives you. For the most part, the first thing that you set out to do is usually not the one you will stick with for the rest of your life.

‘Forks’ set the stage for a lot of narrative tie-ins later into the show. In season 3 Ever shut its doors for good, leaving behind a lot of great staff that we probably will see in the upcoming seasons. The main takeaway from it, however, is the deep exploration of Richie’s character, blossoming from humility into passion that acts as a huge turning point in the show. The very bleak moments from characters in season 3 are contrasted with the newfound passions of Richie to succeed in the place he once loathed. While Richie might’ve only come into Ever with the thought of polishing forks for the whole week, the fork served as the tool to recognize his own self worth.