The Bear’s Best Episode Is a Beautiful Mind-Fork
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The post The Bear’s Best Episode Is a Beautiful Mind-Fork appeared first on Consequence.
When The Bear Season 2 premiered earlier this summer, it wasn’t immediately clear that the meaning of life was buried in one of its episodes. The release model was a factor in this, with every episode debuting at once, nudging the audience towards bingeing. However, it’s also a wild season in terms of the emotional extremes it hits: There are quiet, delicate stories, but also epic and loud moments that burn a lot of oxygen, all culminating in a dizzying finale.
Now that some time has passed, though, it’s easier to appreciate Episode 7, “Forks,” for the masterpiece it is. Set over the course of a week, it chronicles Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as he stages at “the best restaurant in the world.” Called Ever, it’s a place where modernist refinement blends with the occasional whimsical touch, and the attention to detail is exacting, from the timing of its courses to the way in which they’re served to even the dang forks on the table.
Sometimes, it’s hard to remember what an episode is about just from the title, but “Forks” is not one of those episodes, as Richie’s first task upon arrival at the crack of dawn is to spend the day polishing forks for service, making sure they are clean and streak-free. This is, by anyone’s standards, an incredibly dull and monotonous task, yet those forks become Richie’s own personal “wax on/wax off” practice. Whether it be painting a fence, taking a kundalini yoga class, or polishing a sensei’s car, repetitive tasks can offer a certain kind of enlightenment; at a certain point in the repetition, you zone out, ascending to some degree to a higher plane.
Of course, Richie has not yet found enlightenment when first set with this task, and he quickly becomes frustrated by it, especially after Garrett (Andrew Lopez), his guide to this strange new world, critiques the presence of streaks. However, Richie’s frustration is not equal to his spite at Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) for making him do this in the first place, and he’s determined to “do his time” and see the week through.
What Richie is there to learn is not food, but service. It’s fundamentally an episode of television about the importance of values that aren’t often celebrated: Ceremony, focus, and respect. The latter quite literally, as Garrett puts it bluntly, “I just need you to respect me, I need you to respect the staff, I need you to respect the diners, and I need you to respect yourself.” And that respect comes in the form of details, in paying attention, in taking that step beyond the required — something Richie discovers he loves, once he understands the impact it has on the restaurant’s guests.
The importance of details is something the episode itself knows instinctually, baking in plenty of “show, don’t tell” moments to make its point. Take Richie’s alarm clock — the alarm going off incrementally earlier and earlier, until finally he’s too excited to greet the day, awake and alert before the numbers click over to 5:30 a.m. There’s an electricity to that moment, because it’s electric to see a person care about something as much as Richie comes to care about this work he’s doing. It’s a shift epitomized by his idea to fulfill a diner’s idle wish to try deep-dish pizza before leaving Chicago, resulting in an extraordinary plate of food that blows his patrons’ minds. (The book Richie is seen reading a few minutes later, Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, contains a very similar anecdote involving a New York “dirty water hot dog.”)
The Bear (FX)
The brilliance of “Forks” isn’t limited to its existence as a stand-alone installment — the very best TV shows know how to balance standalone stories with the overall flow of a season, and in the case of The Bear Season 2, this episode follows “Fishes,” a 76-minute descent into the depths of family holiday hell. Surviving “Fishes” creates a deep need for some sort of solace; while at first “Forks” does not seem like it’d be the solution, the catharsis it delivers is profound, all bound up in the most unexpected needle drop of the season, as Richie’s path to enlightenment becomes synonymous with (of all things) “Love Story (Taylor’s Version).”
Season 2 takes its time to explore the lives of other supporting characters, depicting the journeys of Marcus (Lionel Boyce), Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), and Sugar (Abby Elliott) with equal care even while the chaos of the kitchen swirls around them. However, “Forks” stands out because it’s the committed non-believer, the curmudgeon, who’s at the center of it. How often do we get to see the full transformation of a character in just half an hour?
It is also a little bit like watching someone get inducted into a cult, and to a degree maybe that’s exactly what’s happening: “You really drink this Kool-aid?” a still-skeptical Richie lobs at Garrett, a direct reference to the Jonestown massacre. Garrett’s response is a firm yes. “I love this, I really do.” Because sometimes one person’s cult is another person’s deeply healing experience.
One doesn’t feel like you’re seeing Richie become less than himself over the course of “Forks,” is the thing. Instead, it feels like he’s becoming his best self, someone who knows how to operate at a higher level, without losing the skills that make him the kind of person that Carmy would recommend to one of the greatest chefs in the world.
In Zen Buddhism, the relevant proverb is “before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.” And this is reflected in Richie’s last day at Ever, which he begins with frustration at knowing he won’t be able to return to this magical place… before he finally encounters the mysterious Chef Terry (Olivia Colman, because good things do happen in this life). She’s not polishing forks, but she is hand-carving mushrooms for a lamb dish. “I think time spent doing this is time well spent,” she tells Richie as he joins her. “Time well spent, that’s what it’s all about.”
The biggest critique of “Forks,” and a valid one, is that despite some slight confusion caused by an early conversation with Garrett about how “the first week is forks,” later dialogue does confirm that Richie’s stage only lasts a week. It doesn’t feel like a week, is the issue; there’s something far more epic about watching Richie blossom in this new environment, embrace how his natural skillset can be applied to this kind of service. Can a person’s life really change in just one week?
Maybe think about that a bit as the next seven days pass for you. Think about the work you do, the people you see, the experiences you have, and how long a week might be, in both the scope of a lifetime and in the moment itself. And remember:
Every second counts.
FX’s The Bear is streaming now on Hulu.
The Bear’s Best Episode Is a Beautiful Mind-Fork
Liz Shannon Miller
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