The Bear S04

After focusing Season 3 on the opening and running of their new restaurant, The Bear returns to the characters we love so much in its fourth season. The FX and Hulu series, streaming on JioHotstar, returns with Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), and Ritchie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) working to get their financial losses in order while staring down a possible closure of the restaurant in their future. However, if last season was about chaos, this season is all about growth. The culinary series, created by Christopher Storer, also addresses the show’s future within the narrative. Spoilers ahead for narrative plots! While the craziness of Season 3 has been dialled down, Season 4 of The Bear looks at the grim realities of running a restaurant. The Bear’s sandwich shop window never slows down, but the main high-end restaurant sees some roadblocks. There’s a literal running clock, showing how much money the establishment has until it needs to shut down without solid profits. Apart from the culinary obstacles, each character faces a crisis of faith. There’s a family wedding, a health scare, and a baby to welcome. But most importantly, all of the characters actually talk to each other about problems they’ve hidden deep all this time.

The makers have returned with another season explores the culinary world through the restaurant and its highly talented staff. The show has been around for three seasons and always give at least 3-4 perfect episodes per season. Can the same be said for this one? Yes. Season 4 takes a little while to kick off but it does. And when it does there is so much more to look for. The new episodes begins right after season 3 as they begin to feel the wrath of a countdown which could decide the future of the restaurant. After finding out about uncle’s diminishing finances, a running clock is added to the restaurant as a reminder how they need to win a star or break even in 4000 hours. However, to do that Carmen and others have to first get through layers of emotional, their own and others. With a wedding and a new baby in the mist, the family drama also continues the influences the decisions in the kitchen.

In an opening flashback, Carmen aka Carmy — played by the irrepressible Jeremy Allen White — is seen telling his late brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) about his vision for a restaurant. He says: “We could make it calm, we could make it delicious, we could play good music, people would want to come in there and celebrate… we could make people happy.” Carmy’s recipe for a winner of a restaurant pretty much sums up what The Bear has meant to us over the last three seasons — a series, that true to its audacious and intense DNA, throws its players into the frying pan of adversity, but the fact that they come up trumps at the end, is inspiring. In short, it is an uplifting experience. The Bear has always “made people happy”. Season 4 of the much-loved and highly feted series is now streaming on JioHotstar, and it hits the ground running, taking off from where the third season had ended. The reason could possibly be that they were shot back-to-back. It is a more confident and calmer season than its immediate predecessor, though the 20-episode arc across the two seasons — with a ‘to be continued’ thrown in — means that they are essentially two sides of the same coin.