The Bear season 3 episode 1 recap: Carmy looks back to push forward

We're out of the fridge, folks, as The Bear season 3 is here! Yes, last we saw Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) in the The Bear season 2 finale , he was having his version of the worst night ever: due to an ill-timed door-handle break, the chef got trapped inside the walk-in refrigerator during his new restaurant's friends and family opening night, leaving Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Marcus (Lionel Boyce), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and the rest of the crew to navigate the high-stakes night without him.

Along with being an evening of professional frustration, Carmy also had some sour personal developments that night, in that his self-loathing and spiraling led to him inadvertently breaking up with his girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon) and tarnishing his friendship with Richie.

Though the dinner itself ended up being successful without him, the lock-in prompted a serious self-examination of where Carmy's been and where he's going, which is where we find the ambitious chef at the beginning of The Bear 's season 3 premiere, fittingly entitled "Tomorrow" and directed by series creator Christopher Storer.

Chicago looks just how we left it, all skyscraper glow and rumbling trains. Carmy looks the same, too (White's artful bedhead is still artful). But The Bear doesn't — or, at least, it won't for long if the chef has his way, and he will. The dialogue-free first few minutes of the episode see Carmy pressing onto that gnarly cooking wound on his hand, a visual cue of what's to come in the next 30 or so minutes of television, which interlace morsels of character updates with a whole spread of Carmy's deepest, darkest memories.

As present Carmy intently crosses out all of the dishes on last night's friends and family menu — no more cannoli, no more caviar — we see flashbacks to his fine-dining beginnings. We see him saying goodbye to Sugar (Abby Elliott) before taking off for New York; she doing the sisterly thing of sneaking money into his pocket before he goes. We see him, all towering toque and crisp chef's whites, getting instructed on how to peel root vegetables by Daniel Boulud himself. We see him tweezing microgreens alongside Luca (Will Poulter) in Copenhagen and living on a houseboat. We see him awestruck in the mere presence of Danish chef René Redzepi, the genius behind Noma.

He's also shown on the receiving end of over-the-top kitchen intensity (with Joel McHale reprising his role as Carmy's verbally abusive executive chef in New York), as well as dishing some out for himself, getting a bit too biting with Luca before being gently admonished by Olivia Coleman, back as Chef Terry (as has become custom, The Bear is loaded with guest stars this season). We see exactly how all of the meticulousness, professionalism, ego and brilliance that Carmy has experienced in each of these kitchens can simmer deliciously, until it all boils over.

Back in the present, Carmy and Sydney make peace over coffee while a new hinge gets installed on the walk-in. He apologizes to her about what happened the night before, but she advises he redirect those sentiments to Richie. While he leaves a devastated voicemail to Cousin, Sydney makes a remorseful phone call of her own, but to Marcus, who we see mourning the loss of his mother in the hospital after the long night.

Back in Carmy's hippocampus, the flashbacks have become repetitious, overlapping and distorting like real memories do. It seems the more self-critical Carmy acts in the present — laboriously recategorizing the fridge, with precise timestamps denoting an ingredient's freshness, or working up a list of "Non-Negotiables" for the restaurant staff — the deeper down we go into his retrospection.

The highs, like when he proudly sends his brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) a picture of the highfalutin plating that Redzepi & Co. are doing up at Noma, are offset by crushing lows, that sweet scene immediately segueing to Sugar calling him inconsolably with news of Mikey's suicide. We then see a flashback of Carmy outside the funeral, not able to bear stepping foot into the church (as awards category critics will relish, there is nothing particularly comedic about the episode).

It's clear all of those experiences, from his idyllic time in Copenhagen to that nightmarish Thanksgiving dinner and everything in between, have informed not only Carmy but his cooking. Back in New York, we see him go rogue, plating a paupiette of hamachi and subbing out his abusive boss's usual fennel sauce for a blood orange dressing. That plate gets eaten by a wide-eyed Sydney, who fangirls over it with the same awe Carmy did Redzepi.

It seems like that fridge lock-in will amount to yet another memory fueling Carmy's creativity — by the episode's end, he has constructed an entirely new menu for The Bear, made up of all that he is right now. That should go down well with Sydney and the rest of the staff, no?

All 10 episodes of The Bear season 3 are now available to stream on Hulu in the US and Disney Plus in the UK.