The restaurant drama dropped a special episode yesterday, without any warning. And it shows brief flashes of the magic that once made it so brilliant
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couple of years ago, a surprise episode of The Bear would have been one of the highlights of the year. The stressful, tightly compressed comedy-drama about a restaurant in Chicago hit television like a juggernaut when it launched. It felt like nothing else and it was all anyone could talk about.
How things have changed. Two disappointing seasons have taken all of the wind out of The Bear, so when it was announced that a special episode had dropped (before what is expected to be the final season this summer), you would have been justified to feel trepidatious.
The good news, then, is that the new episode, Gary, isn’t terrible. A two-hander about Cousin Richie and Mikey Berzatto, written by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal (the actors who play them and are co-starring on Broadway in Dog Day Afternoon), it concerns a road trip to deliver a mysterious package to an unknown customer in an unfamiliar city in the hours before Richie’s wife gives birth.
