The Bear prepares its final meal

The Bear’s fifth and final season debuts on June 25. There was an event yesterday with the whole cast in New York called the “Final Family Meal”. I will harp forever on The Bear not being a comedy, but it is a good show, a show that has been great at times, and while The Pitt has succeeded it as the most stressful show on TV, almost no one else does anxiety and pressure like The Bear. I am curious to see how Christopher Storer and the team at The Bear land the plane. Or perhaps more appropriately, serve their final meal.

The trailer is certainly very stressful, with the restaurant on the brink of going under and Carmy perhaps returning to help Syd and the crew pull off a miracle. The part I am most hung up on, though, is the rain and the flooding. That really happened!

We’ve had a ton of rain in Chicago this year so far, at times, a Biblical amount of rain. Between the river and the lake, the city floods, but this year the flooding feels personal. It just keeps happening. The ground floor apartments in my building flooded in January, and no sooner did they get that mess cleaned up than they flooded again in April, then again last week. At this point, those apartments are basically unlivable, they’ve flooded three times in six months. This is why I say we shouldn’t anger Poseidon! Eventually, he will come for you!  

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I love that The Bear is making the city’s habit of flooding part of the season’s plot. This is the real sh-t Chicagoans deal with, and the reason I keep coming back to The Bear is because whether it’s details like Chicago’s spiteful relationship with water or the anxiety nightmare that is a family holiday dinner, The Bear always gets at something real. It’s not a comedy, but it is a damn good drama. I look forward to watching the fifth and final season while chewing my fingernails into the quick because of the tension.