'The Bear' Season 3 finale: Is masterful chef Carmy finally cooked?

Spoiler alert! The following dishes on plot points of "The Bear" Season 3, including its finale, now streaming on Hulu.

While bingeing the 10-course third season of “The Bear,” I couldn't help but think we’ve appeased the insatiable Carmy Berzatto with “Yes, Chef” enough. It’s time to hit him with an, “Oh, hell no!”

When Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Claire (Molly Gordon) broke up in the Season 2 finale, he lost the parachute that, in his quest for excellence, cushioned his full-speed sprint into a brick wall. As Carmy shared in that finale, he believes he can only succeed being a “psycho” about his craft. “I am the best,” he said, because “I could focus and I could concentrate, and I had a routine. ... I don’t need to receive any amusement or enjoyment," he added, heartbreakingly.

The robotic Carmy, defaulted to his factory settings, introduces a set of "non-negotiables" in Episode 2 of the new season (streaming in full on Hulu). He hopes the list – which includes directives like “Change menu every day” and “No surprises” – will elevate the restaurant to Michelin Star status.

“We’ve got to be excellent every day,” he tells his concerned sister, Natalie (“Sugar”) Berzatto (Abby Elliott). It’s as if Carmy, the accomplished chef, has forgotten even meat needs to rest. But he takes the weight of this goal on his shoulders and withdraws from collaborating with Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), who hesitates to sign a partnership agreement at the restaurant and considers a better offer with a competitor.

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Review:'The Bear' Season 3 is chewy, delicious and overindulgent

Throughout the new season, Carmy’s blind ambition is juxtaposed with the things that really matter in life. When pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) eulogizes his mom in Episode 3, he focuses not on her accomplishments but the way she made him feel, and how she was able to be present.

“She was really smart, and she loved everyone,” he says. “I think you can tell because there’s so many people here. I always felt loved. It didn’t matter what was going on or if I was in trouble or whatever. I knew she was listening, and she knew I was listening, too.”

Olivia Colman’s Chef Terry also reflects on her career in the finale on the closing night of her restaurant. Her last service reunites Carmy with his tormentor, David Fields (Joel McHale), an abusive New York City chef seen belittling Carmy in flashbacks.

“People often talk about restaurants as in ‘What’s the history of it?’ ‘What’s the impact it’s making?’ ‘Who has worked there previously?’ ‘What awards have they won?’ ‘What about their ‘chef’?’” Terry tells a dining room with Carmy, Sydney and real chefs appearing as themselves, including Grant Achatz and Christina Tosi. “And I think what I’ve learned over the years in all the places I’ve worked is people don’t remember the food. Sorry. It’s the people that they remember.”

Later in the episode, Terry tells Carmy that she’s swapped her career for more mornings sleeping in, parties, and trips to London.

In other words, to “live,” he assesses.

“Precisely,” Terry says.

When I chatted with White before the series' debut in 2022, he told me he was drawn to Carmy’s drive, which made the stakes feel “so life and death all the time.” It’s a pressure he knew earlier in his career, spent (also in Chicago) in the cast of Showtime's "Shameless," which aired from 2011-21.

“Certainly as a younger man and a younger actor, I think that my identity was incredibly wrapped up in acting, in my performance, and my success as an actor,” White, 33, said. “And that's a really scary place to be when you're so wrapped up in one thing as a person.”

The finale offers viewers a bit of hope that Carmy will be able to release some of his trauma after confronting David, the former boss who Carmy acknowledges “made me very probably mentally ill” yet “accomplishes more by 10 a.m. than most people do in a lifetime.

“I don’t think he sleeps,” Carmy adds. “I don’t think he eats. I don’t think he loves.”

Carmy gives David a verbal middle finger and vulnerably opens up about how the constant berating affected him.

“You gave me ulcers,” Carmy says, “and panic attacks and nightmares.”

But David stands firm in his belief that his brutal training methods transformed Carmy from an “OK chef” to a superb one.

“You wanted to be great,” David says. “You wanted to be excellent. So you got rid of all the (excess) and you concentrated and you got focused and you got great. You got excellent. It worked. You’re here.”

After their fiery interaction, Carmy lets out a smile, as if he’s proud of himself for confronting David, and that doing so will help him let go of at least some of his suffering.

Of course, any victory feels short-lived in the world of “The Bear,” as the same is true in kitchens and dramedy: “Every second counts.” In the final moments of the episode, Carmy reads his Chicago Tribune review, which includes words of praise, like “excellent,” “innovative” and “brilliant,” but also “confusing,” “sloppy,” and “inconsistent.” As a result, he might lose his funding from Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt).

Who knows what creator Christopher Storer will cook up for Season 4. Let’s just hope – for our parasympathetic nervous systems’ sake – that Carmy refrains from making a walking recipe for disaster his signature dish.