Prestige TV is always thinking bigger. Especially if it gets popular enough to command a hefty budget, an ambitious show will expand its playing field and reach for real-world resonance. In their ultimate act of bratty myopia, Succession’s billionaire failchildren put a fascist in the White House. Breaking Bad never stopped broadening the implications of Walter White’s villainy. Industry began as a cerebral soap about entry-level investment bankers. Now, as its final season approaches, the characters are driving not just international finance, but also a toxic political landscape and tech industry. One of them has essentially become Ghislaine Maxwell.
Although it’s a half-hour dramedy set in a restaurant, FX’s The Bear occupies a similar place to these high dramas in the TV landscape. Released in full on Hulu in June of 2022, its first season became a word-of-mouth sensation, coining catchphrases (“Yes, chef!”), launching A-list actors, and inspiring parasocial relationships between thirsty fans and the fictional staff of an establishment originally known as the Original Beef of Chicagoland. Then came the awards. Creator Christopher Storer raised the stakes by following the Beef’s reinvention as fine-dining destination the Bear; we delved into characters’ pasts and saw them evolve into skilled culinary artisans in the present. At the end of last year’s fourth season, with financial pressure escalating as the team pursued a Michelin star, brooding chef-owner Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) told his deputies, chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) and front-of-house manager Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), he was leaving the restaurant. Then, a special flashback episode culminated in the harrowing cliffhanger of a car smashing into Richie’s vehicle.
