The Bear S3: Community Matters When...
Prologue: Today, October 5th 2024, felt as good as any other day to ponder what community means to me, as I bring together some of the early team at LinkedIn for a reunion; many moons after we started work on a lil' startup.
An ode to community. An ode to 'time well spent.' An ode to one of the best seasons of television—ever.
"Midway along the journey of our life / I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path." - Dante, Divina Commedia
The beauty of magic, is the tell is there all through the trick. You just don't see it.
In the grand tradition of great writing, Dante's Commedia, and Joyce's Dubliners, I watched Season 3 of The Bear, mesmerized, not knowing what had hit me, why it hit so hard, and what made it different from all of television.
American TV, whether comedy or drama, is one long setup to talk about family. Prestige TV (starting with The Sopranos; Breaking Bad, Mad Men all the way to The Bear) follows in the grand tradition of dissecting angst-ridden toxicity vs. the salve of community.
"The men that is now is only all palaver... (Joyce, Dubliners, 154).”
But Season 3 of The Bear takes that cliché-ridden trope through the grinder; as show-runner, Christopher Storer drives the lead Carmy through his own Inferno. But Storer does so in the most creative way possible since Matthew Weiner's final season of Mad Men; and in the process makes the leap from linear narrative to a visual mode of symbolist poetry.
The Bear is a story of three communities:
Through these concentric communities, Storer aims to plumb the depths of an individual’s own infernal journey through trauma and the trauma that trauma births in others.
Just like the metaphor of snowflakes, in James Joyce's masterpiece "The Dead," Storer & Calo juxtapose the main character's dissociation with the community, through brief interludes of 'snowflakes;' moments of transcendent stillness seen through the eyes of a supremely talented supporting cast: Sydney, Lucas, Marcus, Chef Terry, Richie, etc.
(In Dubliners, here's where Gabriel makes an entrance; follow the snow through the quotes below as Gabriel evolves, while we take a look at Carmy's own fugue.)
“A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds. 'Is it snowing again, Mr. Conroy?' asked Lily (Joyce, Dubliners, 154).”
Joyce's transcendent conclusion, two paragraphs of sheer visual poetry in words, connects the dots and leaves us breathless. There’s no escaping community, and when that community is seen by all; it works great. And when even one individual is blinded to it, it hurts everyone.
The chips are all connected. And all it takes for the dominoes to fall is one link, all alone.
Community; A Fugue, Not a Sonata.
“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. (Joyce, Dubliners, 191).”
I see community everywhere. Always have; always will.
As a self-professed 'community evangelist' (not sure why that title sounded right to me) at LinkedIn in 2006, every role I performed was in the service of community; whether the journalistic community (product comms), or the developer community, or leadership; wherever there's more than one individual, a community exists.
And, to not see community in every action of ours, in the long run, works to the collective detriment of a society.
Take Luca's words of wisdom to Marcus, a budding pastry genius who's sent to Noma (Copenhagen) lookalike—with guest appearance by René Redzepi—separates the method from the madness.
Lucas: At a certain stage, it becomes less about skill, and more about being open.
Marcus: Open?
Lucas: To the world, to your self, to other people. Most of the incredible things I've eaten, haven't been because the skill level is exceptionally high, or mad fancy techniques, it's been because it's really inspired. You could spend all the time in the world here. But if you don't spend all the time out there. Helps when you have good people around you too.
Whether it's that omelette that Sydney made for her pregnant colleague, Sugar; the omelette that made her day, made her smile, or the peeling of mushrooms with Chef Terry to Richie below. One cannot find inspiration within the glass confines of the latest iPhone, nor the insides of a fancy restaurant like Noma.
The tell, as I said above, is these moments of visual prolixitas (kinda like Dante uses with words in the Commedia); whether an ASMR moment of making a dish, or talking to a friend, or just peeling a mushroom. It's these moments like the snow in "The Dead" that is the tell.
This is what the writer wants you to hear. The slowing down of time.
The Ill-Tempered Clavier
These scenes of prolixitas delves into another aspect of Season 3 of The Bear I see; it being structured as a fugue, not a sonata. Not sure, the writers were going for this, but instead of it being a sonata by and of dear fallible leader, it delves into the subject of 'addiction' as a subject (whether to grief, trauma, control), in contrapuntal dialogue with other characters in the Bear's universe as they spiral out of the main subject.
领英推荐
That's why these moments resonate; whether Sydney making an omelet for Sugar, or Marcus learning from Lucas, or Chef Terry peeling mushrooms with Richie sharing how she learned after a very public wipeout; these are scenes of timelessness, learned through time.
The calm moments are contrapuntal to the frenetic turbulence whenever Carmy's involved, his isolated grief blinding him to what Sydney, Lucas and Chef Terry see; an isolation that feeds off of itself spiraling into his grief at every given opportunity. Just like any fugue, there is unity in that dissonance, and that unity can only be found in the contrapuntal. Never alone.
When every person (second) counts...
Chef Terry: “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?...”
As I'd mentioned at the start of this piece, today, October 5th, 2024; we're hosting a small reunion at a bookstore co-owned by two of the folks we once worked with. And, the season finale of The Bear, does bring this moment to my mind, right now.
What we worked on, when we worked there, how it turned out, how many zeroes it made on IPO, how much wealth was minted, how many accolades it earned, yada yada yada, none of it friggin' matters. After nearly two decades, for some of us (we have someone flying in from Italy, and another from Seattle), for an evening with a few folks with whom we have broken bread into the late hours of an evening the day before a product launch decades ago.
All we remember, is each other.
That is all I remember, that is all we will remember. The people. The community.
... "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 they remember.” - Season 3 Finale, The Bear, FX
Once again, I do think of all the places I've worked; there has been just one or two that I miss most, and it's always—the people.
Of all the things I remember from my days at LinkedIn, one was a late evening as we prepped for a product launch and I was writing & editing a blog post. And, Kay (who hired me at LinkedIn) kept asking me to rewrite it, over and over again, and it turned out great; but what I enjoyed the most was not the wordplay but the process of how it came together.
The learning from a teacher. That is 'time well spent.'
What matters as well, is a deep respect for the communities we cook for, we build for, and we code for; whether a restaurant or a startup we work for; as well as the audience (in LinkedIn's case, professionals everywhere) our product is meant for. Once the intentions of our lives align with the right 'incentives,' it makes the work we do truly come alive.
Community is 'time well spent.'
"It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns (Joyce, Dubliners, 191).”
... every community matters: Outro.
“If, by a ‘_______’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘_______,’ then I am proud to say I’m a ‘_______.’ ” -- Senator John F. Kennedy, accepting the New York _______ Party's presidential nomination (September 14, 1960)
The last two paragraphs of James Joyce’s Dubliners, “The Dead,” are the most glorious lines of poetry masquerading as prose, that I kept thinking of as I watched the season finale of “The Bear.” I have no idea if Christopher Storer was inspired by Joyce, it’s the greatest compliment to a writer to be compared to to the greatest writer in the English language.
Joyce, takes a character in the finale of Dubliners, 'The Dead,' Gabriel, much like Carmy, whose heightened ambitions & fatuousness mask deep-seated insecurities, and lays them bare much like Carmy in the finale.
What starts with Gabriel, walking in to a Christmas dinner party furious about the snow that now rests on his fancy goloshes and cannot see the reality of the people around him that beautiful Christmas Day, ends with him pondering the equality of the snow that enveloped all of Dublin.
Maybe the season finale of “The Bear” will mimic Matthew Weiner’s “Mad Men,” where he sees the light creating the famed Pepsi add that has community as its refrain, but if we see truly through all of life, is built on community.
What started the story "The Dead" with snow 'as a cape, and on his galoshes," on Gabriel, winds down toward the end as he sees the reality of all place & time, only through community—the community of Ireland & the communities within that he and his wife were a part of; even before he recognized it.
And, while we might revel in the anxiety and PTSD-driven episodes of "The Bear" a through-line, throughout the series are breadcrumbs of compassion, community & stillness in these same restaurants that show runners Christopher Storer & Joanna Calo; and Courtney Storer have so beautifully cooked over three seasons, and much like Dante & Joyce's masterworks, I hope they bring it to a boil, a Paradiso, worthy of Carmy's journey.
Worthy of all our journeys in life. Peace.
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead (Joyce, Dubliners, 192).”