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Notes -
Have you guys watched "The Bear"? A couple of notes on this show:
This show is absolutely excellent. If you've worked in a kitchen, or if you've ever worked in any sort of extreme-stress environment, this show captures the feeling perfectly.
Just to stress again, I absolutely loved this show. 10/10 acting, cinematography, story, music. It's a perfect show.
-------BEGIN SPOILERS--------
There is a heavily implied theme here, which is that the main character, Carmy, has a toxic personality, and that he needs to overcome this in order to succeed. Some of the other characters, the young female chef, as well as the older "gentler" male cake making chef have conflicts with the Carmy over how mean he is being to them. Eventually these two quit, then "forgive" him, then they eventually return.
Many bits have been spilled about how the theme of this show is "toxic masculinity".
The problem I have with this is: Carmy is presented at the beginning of the show as an absolute savant level of chef. He is young, has already been declared as the most promising up and coming chef by some prestigious magazine, and has worked at both The French Laundry, and Noma, two of the top restaurants in the world. In one scene the younger female chef is explaining to the cake maker chef how when she finished culinary school (she also went to a very prestigious school, CIA, but hasn't done anything yet) she went out on a tour of top restaurants, and that Carmy (the man she now works for) cooked the best meal she has ever had in her life.
The people who work with Carmy, who complain about how mean he is, are morons. Young chef girl screws up multiple times in ways that could be disastrous for the restaurant. Cake maker man has been essentially trying to teach himself how to bake while on the clock, and the "blowup moment" where he quits is during a high stress situation (that young female chef created and Carmy is in the process of trying to solve). Cake maker wants Carmy to taste/give feedback on some donuts he has been trying to learn to make. Carmy yells at him that he doesn't have time for this right now, and cake maker quits.
In the setting of the show, where Carmy is one of the top chefs in the entire world, the reality is that he would have an endless list of people willing to work for him for free, who would be willing to follow every command he gave to a t. Additionally, if this top chef was known to be working at some crappy beef sandwich restaurant in Chicago, they'd have a line around the block of people wanting to taste his food.
Again, this show is amazing, and the CW elements are easily ignorable. I'm curious if anybody else watched this show and had similar frustrations about it.
(Also: I'm not sure why I like writing posts like this as numbered lists.)
I didn't think Carmy had a toxic personality at all. The issue is more that he's coming in to a low end environment as the new boss and trying to get everyone there to hold themselves to a higher standard and change the way they do things and that's always a recipe for conflict. They don't fight him cause he's a toxic man they fight him because he's trying to change things from how they've always been done. His cousin is the much more stereotypically toxic man. Carmy turned into a sex symbol because of his amazing hair and intensity so I don't think the public judgement of him was a 'toxic' man.
The meltdown scene was great. There are time when you can totally be 'in the right' and other people have fucked up but part of good leadership is just understanding it's more important to keep everyone else functional than take out your own stress on them. Sydney's had his back the whole time and believes in his vision more then anyone else but she creates this massive crisis because she doesn't toggle one setting in their online order system. He's understandably furious but it's not a reason to lose confidence in her as a chef and when he takes it out on her, she feels betrayed because she's had his back in all the internal conflicts. So she takes it out on the baker guy and then melts down. Carmy is totally in the right, it's just everyone involved is stressed out and at each others throats and it would take superhuman self-control to handle that situation calmly.
But that's the point of his season long arc. Their restaurant is this deeply dysfunctional mess of weird arrangements with loansharks, deals with low level mob dudes, and random family and friends who do odd jobs. Carmy can't let it go even though it's driving him nuts because of his relationship to his brother. He wants to avoid perpetuating the abusive work culture he encountered in high end kitchens, but the stress of running this thing is such that he's inevitably going to lash out at the people who work for him. He can't win because the business is fucked and he needs to move on and do his own thing.
Yeah I didn't get the "toxic masculinity" thing either, if that was what the angle actually was. Seemed like the central arc was Carmy overcoming his depression and self-hate, and how all that intertwined with his brother's death and the stress of assuming his legacy.
I guess I’d like to see the “growth” happen among the people working for Camry then, too. Cake man should realize that he was getting sucked into his own side project, and the younger chef (I’m sorry I’m seriously terrible with names) should have had an aha moment where she realized her greenness and unwillingness to listen to Carmy almost sank the business.
Maybe there’s something there where the viewers are meant to take on the role of the naive staff and see Carmy as a bad guy?
The scene where he apologizes to the young chef was particularly ridiculous to me. She screwed up his restaurant, then in the middle of him trying to fix it, when he would most need help, she just walked out and he is now apologizing to her about this?
Again, loved the show. 10/10, can’t wait for more of it. Just like talking about this part of the writing.
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