Moss-Bachrach, Ebon

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares24 Views

    Did ‘The Bear’ Bounce Back? Sort of, Chef

    by

    After a divisive previous season, the fine-dining dramedy regained some momentum. But other aspects of Season 4 might leave fans cold. Here, we recap it all.This recap includes spoilers for all of Season 4 of “The Bear.”Season 3 of the FX/Hulu series “The Bear” was generally well-received by critics and it will probably pick up plenty of Emmy nominations when they are announced next month. But there was a fair amount of fan grumbling when the season debuted last summer.The most common complaints were that the season felt unsatisfying and incomplete, with too much left unresolved, and that it heaped too much misery on the characters. There were fewer of the triumphant moments that made the first two seasons so beloved.It would be a stretch to call Season 4 a comeback because “The Bear” never stopped being top-shelf television — and because the ending of the new season might provoke more howls of frustration. For the most part though, these 10 episodes should give most fans what they want, as our heroes finally start notching some wins again, and, for once, they actually open up to each other.When Season 3 ended, the Chicago fine-dining restaurant the Bear was in big trouble, thanks largely to its co-founder and head chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), whose emotional unavailability and fussy pursuit of perfection resulted in consistent kitchen chaos.The Season 4 premiere, “Groundhogs,” is named for the movie “Groundhog Day,” in which a self-centered man repeats the same mistakes until he learns how to be a better person. The episode begins with what ends up being a turning point for Carmy: a mixed-to-negative Chicago Tribune review of the Bear, praising some of its dishes (including the Italian beef sandwiches served at its lunch window) but blasting the overall “culinary dissonance.”As the season starts, everyone at the Bear is about as low as they can be. To make matters worse, the restaurant’s chief financial backer, “Uncle” Cicero (Oliver Platt) — and his number-cruncher, “the Computer” (Brian Koppelman) — present the kitchen with a large countdown timer. They say the business has enough capital to keep losing money for another two months, but when the clock hits 0:00, if the Bear is not making enough profit to cover costs, it closes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares28 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Bear’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know

      by

      The kitchen dramedy returns Wednesday, a year after its divisive third season ended on a cliffhanger. Here’s what to remember for the new episodes.The FX dramedy “The Bear” arrived on Hulu in the summer of 2022, and unlike a lot of award-winning TV, this series has stuck to a yearly release schedule, always arriving in late June. So get ready to start hearing “Yes, chef!” during everyday interactions.Season 4 debuts in full on Wednesday, returning viewers to the eclectic, vibrant Chicago food scene and the struggling restaurant at the heart of the story, the Bear. At the end of last season, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), the Bear’s chef and co-owner, had just received a review in The Chicago Tribune that might determine whether or not his place stays open. But viewers still don’t know what it says.They almost certainly will find out in the new episodes, though Christopher Storer, the creator of “The Bear,” likes to keep the show unpredictable. Here are some things to keep in mind going into the new season.Chaos on the menuA quick reminder of how we got here: Carmy, suffering from self-doubt and burnout from his time working at high-end restaurants, returned to run the Original Beef of Chicagoland a few months after the suicide of his brother, Mikey (Jon Bernthal), who had inherited the restaurant from their volatile father. The first season ended with Carmy discovering Mikey had hidden thousands of dollars in tomato cans — enough to settle much of the restaurants’ debts, potentially.Instead, in Season 2, Carmy went deeper into debt with the family’s longtime backer, Jimmy Kalinowski (Oliver Platt), known variously as “Cicero” or “Unc,” to expand the restaurant into a new establishment called the Bear, serving sandwiches for lunch and a Michelin-level menu at night. The soft opening went well, despite a meltdown in the kitchen and a Carmy tantrum inside a walk-in refrigerator.Last season, the Bear built some buzz but still suffered from internal dysfunction, much of it because of Carmy’s persistent, restless reinvention of the menu. It all led up to the make-or-break review, which, based on Carmy’s reaction when he read it, does not seem to be the rave he and his team badly need.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 13 Shares181 Views

      in Theater

      I’m

      by

      Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will star in a stage adaptation of the acclaimed 1975 film about a bank heist that goes tragically awry.“Dog Day Afternoon,” a classic New York film about an ill-planned bank robbery in Brooklyn, has been adapted for the stage and will come to Broadway next spring.The production will star Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, both of whom have won Emmy Awards for their work in FX’s “The Bear.” The director will be Rupert Goold, who is the artistic director of the Almeida Theater in London and who has received Tony nominations for two of his previous Broadway shows, “King Charles III” and “Ink.”“Dog Day Afternoon” tells the story of a group of hapless criminals who rob a bank, partly because one of them (a character named Sonny, played by Al Pacino in the 1975 film and to be played by Bernthal onstage) wants money to pay for his partner’s gender-transition surgery. The robbery turns into a hostage-taking and a confrontation with law enforcement. The film, directed by Sidney Lumet, was based on a true story; it won an Academy Award for Frank Pierson’s screenplay.The stage adaptation, a project that was previously announced in 2016, has been written by the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for his drama “Between Riverside and Crazy,” which was produced on Broadway in 2023. Guirgis has an ear for dialogue of down-and-out New Yorkers, and has written a number of acclaimed plays about working-class characters.Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach are best known for their work onscreen — Bernthal stars opposite Ben Affleck in “The Accountant” and “The Accountant 2,” while Moss-Bachrach’s credits include “Girls” and the upcoming movie “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”They will be making their Broadway debuts in this play, but both are experienced stage actors. Bernthal studied theater in Moscow, founded an upstate New York theater company, and has performed Off Broadway and at regional theaters; Moss-Bachrach began his stage career at Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts and has since performed Off Broadway and in California.The play is being produced by Warner Bros. Theater Ventures (Warner Bros. produced the movie), along with Sue Wagner, John Johnson and Patrick Catullo. The announcement on Wednesday did not specify dates or a theater. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Bear’ Season 3: Tastes Great, Less Fulfilling

      by

      It’s still TV’s best and most beautiful series about work and creation. But the new season is a tease.This article discusses scenes from the beginning through the end of FX’s “The Bear” Season 3, now available in full on Hulu.No one loves a mixed review. The final moments of “The Bear” Season 3 confirm this, as Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), the doe-eyed maniac at the center of the dramedy, receives an alert for the make-or-break Chicago Tribune review of his ambitious, cacophonous restaurant. He has imagined a million versions of it — absolute raves, devastating pans. Now it’s here.We don’t get to see the review, only a Mad Libs rush of contradictory words, out of context: “Brilliant.” “Complex.” “Confusing.” “Innovative.” “Stale.” “Talent.” “Disappointed.” Carmy, alone with his phone and the verdict, lets fly the season’s last words, a hearty curse.Sorry, Chef: Sometimes the truth is mixed. It is for the third season of “The Bear,” in which one of the most brilliant shows on TV attempts a complex, at times confusing, elaboration on its themes. The 10 episodes are often innovative in execution but sometimes stale in their repetition of established conflicts. It’s an astonishing display of talent. But it is likely to leave anyone hoping for narrative momentum disappointed.“The Bear” does not lack confidence. The premiere, “Tomorrow,” is a bravura scene-setter that is as much an overture as an episode. Picking up the morning after the Season 2 finale — in which Carmy successfully soft-launches the Bear but sabotages his romance with Claire (Molly Gordon) — it’s an impressionistic tour of his manic consciousness.There is very little dialogue; mostly this episode, written by the series creator Christopher Storer, tells its stories in a series of quick cuts set to a mesmerizing score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It dips into the near and remote past, flashing on scenes from the previous seasons, sneak-peeking moments from later in Season 3 and fleshing out events from Carmy’s history. At times it’s hard to tell what’s present and past as you tumble about in his perseverating mind.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      On ‘The Bear,’ Staging at a Fine-Dining Restaurant Is Rosier Than Reality

      by

      Real-life chefs said the portrayal of haute cuisine work was a bit soft-focus.In its second season, the hit FX show “The Bear” ventures into the world of fine dining. As the scrappy Chicago restaurant crashes toward a reopening, two of the employees leave to apprentice at top restaurants in Chicago and Copenhagen.They wake up early and stay late. One polishes forks for hours, the other practices the same pastry techniques over and over and over. They see excellence, and they learn. In fine dining, this sort of apprenticeship is called a “stage,” which rhymes with “mirage.”But for a show often praised for its realistic portrayal of restaurant life, “The Bear” depicts haute cuisine staging as much more personal and touchy-feely than some chefs remembered.After a yearslong industrywide upheaval over work culture and questions about the long-term sustainability of the fine-dining model, some chefs said the show could give diners a frustratingly sunny impression of the realities of working in fine-dining restaurants.“It’s kind of a soap opera,” said Kwang Uh, the chef of Baroo, which is preparing to reopen in Los Angeles. “It’s not a documentary.”Mr. Uh, who runs Baroo with his wife, Mina Park, staged for three months at Noma, in Copenhagen, which recently said it would close its doors to diners.In “The Bear,” Marcus, the pastry chef played by Lionel Boyce, also travels to Copenhagen to stage at a restaurant that closely resembles Noma, though it’s never named in the show.In his very first task, Marcus positions ingredients with long tweezers, focusing in the quiet kitchen on preparing a full dish.Mr. Uh said that rarely happens, even with seasoned chefs. When he arrived at Noma, he had eight years of experience and had even managed restaurants, including Nobu Bahamas. But in the beginning, he picked herbs at Noma and sawed bones for marrow by hand.“Maybe he’s more of a V.I.P.?” Mr. Uh said of Marcus.Eric Rivera, a chef based in Raleigh, N.C., who also staged at Noma said: “Ninety-five percent of your day is cleaning stuff, picking stuff. You’re not plating dishes.”Two of the chefs on “The Bear” also go to culinary school, where they learn knife skills.HuluRichie, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, stages at a top restaurant in Chicago. (It is also not named, but the scenes were filmed at Ever, which has two Michelin stars.)In one scene, he peels mushrooms with the executive chef, Chef Terry, played by Olivia Colman. As they work side by side, she quickly reveals an extraordinarily personal detail: memories from her dead father’s notebooks.“That would probably never, ever happen,” said Stephen Chavez, who teaches at the Institute of Culinary Education’s Los Angeles campus.Mr. Rivera also found such a scenario far-fetched. “It’s obscenely rare that stages will even be able to meet the chef,” he said.He also doubted that an employee at a scrappy restaurant in Chicago could afford to go live in Copenhagen and work at the restaurant, which did not pay its interns until recently.“That’s what that show does — they paint this rosy picture of even how it is,” Mr. Rivera said. He added, “This is like, puppies and rainbows.”And “The Bear” addresses the changing culture of kitchens, though neither portrayal is necessarily accurate.In Copenhagen, the chef training Marcus, played by Will Poulter, does not raise his voice as he corrects Marcus’s technique. “No, again, Chef,” he says. “No, worse. Again, Chef.” Firm, but even.Marcus has a wonderful time, but unpaid restaurant interns at some of Copenhagen’s top restaurants reportedly faced abuse and dangerous working conditions for years.Still, many chefs said, the show gets a lot right.Both chefs start early — Marcus arrives at 4:50 a.m. — and both head home after dark.At Noma, stages often work 15 hours, said David Zilber, who is the former director of the Fermentation Lab. Mr. Rivera said he regularly started at 8:30 a.m. and left at 2 a.m.Richie, right, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, gets into the excellence of Ever.Chuck Hoades/FXAnd at both stages, they see the cultish commitment to excellence at top restaurants.In Chicago, for instance, Richie shines forks for a full shift. He’s furious, swearing and throwing the cutlery until his mentor sets him straight.“Do you think this is below you, or something?” he asks Richie, before launching into a monologue. Shining forks is about respect, about standards. “Every day here is the freaking Super Bowl.”That part is accurate, too, said Amy Cordell, the director of hospitality for the Ever Restaurant Group. Cleaning silverware is not grunt work, she said. It’s an important detail, just like all the other important details.“There’s no one job that is more or less important than another,” she said. “Finding the perfect cook doesn’t come from them showcasing their knife skills. It comes from how they sweep the floor.”Even with the long hours, the precarity and the low pay, many cooks still agree that stages are essential learning experiences.Hannah Barton, a manager at Herons in North Carolina, staged at Ever for just two days.It has changed the way she does seating, and even the way she hires new staff members, she said.“It seemed like everyone in that building had also drunk the Kool-Aid,” she said. “I wish that all of my servers could have that exact same mentality.” More