Change of menu: How The Bear can get back on track in season four

The third season of the Bear concludes on somewhat of a cliffhanger, albeit an underwhelming one: Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), fresh off a funeral dinner for his mentor’s restaurant, gets a Google alert for the Chicago Tribune restaurant review that will make or break The Bear. (If only critics had that power!) We still don’t know whether Syd (Ayo Edebiri) will jump ship for a different, less emotionally intensive job, whether Carmy will ever make amends with Claire (Molly Gordon) or Cousin Richie (Eben Moss-Bachrach) after season two’s freezer meltdown, whether the Bear will crawl out of its debt. What we do know, through Carmy’s anxiety-spiral, fragmented intake, is that the Tribune critic uses such words as confusing, excellent, innovative, sloppy, delicious, inconsistent – in short, a seemingly mixed review. And ironically, a decent-enough take on the season itself, which went down lukewarm with most TV critics.

I’ve been a fan of The Bear, created and largely written and directed by Christopher Storer, since it premiered in summer 2022. The first season was a tour de force out of the gate – confident, frenetic, immediately lived-in, the rare show to capture both the soul and addictive, cortisol-laced chaos of a kitchen. The 10-episode follow-up, released last summer, offered a delicious, if sometimes too indulgent, second helping of character development, cacophony and growth, as The Beef morphed from local Chicago sandwich joint into fine dining upstart The Bear. This season is its third in as many summers – an impressive pace for television, though as my colleague Stuart Heritage has noted , the haste shows. I won’t go as far to say that The Bear is now a bad show, as Slate has argued . But its third outing definitely feels deflated from its previous highs – unfocused, self-indulgent, hollow, admirably ambitious yet frustratingly aimless.

Related: ‘It isn’t hard to see where things went wrong’: how The Bear went off the boil

Deadline reported in March that FX had quietly greenlit a season four to be filmed back-to-back with season three, though the network has never confirmed that filming took place. But should Storer and Co be looking for advice on what ingredients to beef up, tone down or discard in season four, we have some ideas.

Bring the heat back to Carmy and Syd’s work mance

The Bear has its hallmarks – the long, swiveling takes in a tight galley, the sizzling close-ups of food, “yes chef” – but arguably the backbone of the show was the intense, complicated, platonic working relationship between Carmy and sous chef Syd, which was all the better for eschewing any type of romantic spark. Which is not to say it was passionless – the two pushed each other, chewed each other out, and offered crucial, specific, irreplaceable reassurance in what Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi accurately called “the best kind of workplace romance”.

Season two gave us a show (and shipping) highlight , when they affirm each other with “you make me better at this” and choose going in on a fine dining restaurant. In the third season, though Carmy and Syd are working in the same kitchen, they are almost entirely on different wavelengths. We start with Carmy over-ruling Syd – an old pattern – by instituting his “non-negotiables”, including a rotating menu, and the two never regain their footing. They mostly interact with other characters over the 10 episodes, in understated, overlong conversations that barely inch the story forward. The show glances at Syd’s dissolution of trust in Carmy, and Carmy’s negligent handling of Syd’s talent, rather than prod and linger. This may be more accurate to plenty of complex working relationships, which can wither and fade in silence, but costs The Bear a crucial degree of heat.

Fewer spin-off episodes

The Bear hit a high watermark with critics (and awards bodies) in the second season with Fishes, the special Christmas flashback episode that ratcheted everyone’s stress up to 11. Though it was skirting the line with too many big-name guest starts (Jamie Lee Curtis! John Mulaney! Bob Odenkirk! Sarah Paulson!) – more on that later – Fishes had a stunning concentration of significant backstory and anxious family reunion vibe per minute.

The show appears to have learned the wrong lessons from its success; season three contains three chapters that people might inaccurately call “bottle episodes” – installments existing outside the main thrust of the plot that focus on a single character. Some of these digressions prove fruitful – the excellent Liza Colón-Zayas remains ever-watchable as line cook Tina. I can’t say the same for Curtis as the Berzattos’ needy, blurry-edged matriarch in an episode with Abby Elliott’s Sugar that felt mostly like a showcase for yelling.

Mostly, these episodes – particularly the near wordless pilot, a montage of Carmy’s past restaurant and relationship experience – seemed to come at the cost of the show’s bread and butter: watching the crew clash, gel, fight, fail and pull it off together, with expletives and momentum.

Don’t try to be a comedy

The Bear being submitted to the Emmys as a comedy – where it cleaned house last year – has become a joke unto itself. The first two seasons had its humorous elements, and the second its heartwarming moments, but this show about reeling from grief and our toxic relationship with genius was never a make-you-laugh comedy. It just had half-hour episodes. The third seasons seems to be compensating for that by dialing up the hijinks of the handymen Fak brothers (Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri) into what is nearly slapstick, sketch comedy level nonsense. The Faks, particularly real-life chef Matheson, worked excellently as a light seasoning in the earlier seasons, providing the rare optimistic, open heart glimmer in the kitchen. But elevated to main ingredient, the bits get tiresome quickly.

Fewer big-name guests

Speaking of the Faks … we did not need John Cena as the elder Sammy Fak. Nothing against John Cena! I always appreciate his gameness for any bit, however ill-conceived, but his appearance as the muscled, erratic Sammy only made me think, “What is John Cena doing in this universe?” The same goes for Josh Hartnett as Richie’s ex’s new husband, in a mostly unnecessary scene that felt written to give an eager actor a chance to be a part of the Bear family. Guest slots should enhance, not distract. More cameos like the eighth episode appearance by Chicago-based actor Keith Kupferer, a subtle nod to the city’s theater scene, and less montages of international renowned chefs that include, bafflingly, Bradley Cooper’s character from the 2015 flop Burnt .

Don’t muddle the message

On that note, underwhelming plot development and cliffhangers aside, perhaps the most disappointing element of the season finale was that it muddled the Bear’s ever-fruitful premise – how glorify toxicity, how we reward bad professional and personal behavior in the name of genius – by repeatedly allowing famous chef, in cameos, to wax poetics about the importance of their work. The Bear was thrillingly effective, especially in its first season, at undermining the figure of the fiery, passionate, fickle kitchen genius, the bad boy who could produce plates of gold, while still building some mystique. Watching Carmy battle his better and worse angels, balanced by Syd’s refusal to take less than she deserved, was magnetic. The Bear has always walked a fine line between mythologizing and debunking; the finale seemed to buy into one side. Yet it also set up a potential scenario where Carmy’s impossible standards, such as insisting on an ever-changing menu, helps The Bear’s reputation, but causes everyone else to look bad – a tough situation to which I can only say: yes, chef. Let’s see that play out.