On June 26, 2024, Hulu released the third season of the awards season darling 'The Bear', which has received predominantly positive reviews from critics, holding at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a Critics Consensus that reads, "Having set an exceedingly high standard of excellence for itself, The Bear spends its third season simmering, stewing, and giving off an aroma that whets the appetite." For those new to the series, it focuses on the title restaurant and its staff. The ensemble cast includes Jeremy Allen White, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, and John Cena. But what exactly did the critics say?
David Bianculli of NPR says, "It's the best food-oriented TV series since Julia Child's "The French Chef." And Christopher Storer and his other writers and directors present montages of food preparation that are beautiful, exotic and mesmerizing all at once."
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| Photo by Odiseo Castrejon on Unsplash |
Abe Friedtanzer of Awards Buzz notes, "This show knows its characters and its world and is certainly capable of taking them on more grand, highly watchable misadventures." Adding, "Surely there are many fans of the series who have finished the entire third season in just over the time that it’s taken to read these few paragraphs, this reviewer opted to go a different direction and leave most of the season left to enjoy in bite-sized pieces over the next few weeks. Given that each roughly half-hour episode often feels like a true ordeal (in the best possible way), it’s an approach that enables certain supporting players, like Elliott and Oliver Platt, to shine in memorable scenes that will surely fade in prominence when looked at in the context of ten installments."
Eddie Harrison of film-authority.com was less impressed, stating, "Series 1 and 2 of The Bear was a great achievement in tv/streaming history, but nurturing a show is a difficult job, and the parsimonious amounts of half-cooked drama served at The Bear makes it look well nigh impossible. In the final seconds, we get to see snippets of the review The Bear restaurant finally gets, and ‘sloppy’ and ‘confusing’ are words featured; they could just as easily be applied to the new, wayward direction of this once impeccable show which just went off-the-boil big time." Adding, "There’s some scattered vestiges of the kind of high end-writing that made The Bear such a sensation; Richie’s confrontation with his ex-wife’s new husband (Josh Hartnett) lands, as does Carmy’s show-down with NYC nemesis (Joel McHale), and a few salty lines of dialogue about ‘taking a flying f&ck to a rolling donut’ and ‘never not being f&cked’. But instead of a strong, dramatic meal, The Bear serves up a 19 course degustation dinner, then seems to drop more than half of the food on the floor."
Leila Latif of Total Film praises the series, stating, "As The Rolling Stones once said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just get what you need." That’s solid advice that has steered many a heartbroken or disappointed soul through some tough times, but in Season 3 of The Bear, we see our central trio face an even more challenging conundrum. What happens if you get what you want and it's absolutely not what you need?"
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