“You did this,” Donna Berzatto (Jamie Lee Curtis) kvells to her daughter Natalie (Abby Elliott), offering praise in the middle of a particularly stressful day. (Though in this family, all days are stressful days.) She’s referring to the restaurant that bears — pun intended — a shortened version of their family name, and which serves as the namesake of the FX drama “The Bear.” It’s a full circle moment for this fraught mother-daughter relationship: a sign of how far Donna has come in performing basic parental tasks like expressing pride in her children’s accomplishments, and a reminder to take a beat and admire what the Berzattos are typically too overwhelmed to appreciate. Natalie accepts the compliment, but also corrects it: “We all did this,” she says.
The acknowledgement is long overdue, and comes just under the wire. For two seasons, “The Bear” has all but abandoned its supporting cast to spend long stretches wallowing in the trauma-borne misery of Natalie’s brother Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), the brilliant and ambitious chef who took over the family sandwich shop after eldest Berzatto child Mikey (Jon Bernthal) died by suicide and transformed it into a fine dining restaurant. Natalie’s statement isn’t quite a mea culpa, but it is a noted adjustment from “The Bear”’s prior M.O. And it comes just as “The Bear” prepares to close up shop for good.
