Out of the Kitchen and onto the Couch:

On July 23rd, 2022, Hulu dropped its first episode of “The Bear”

– a gritty comedy drama depicting the struggles and day-to-day life of a little Chicago sandwich joint. It was instantly touted by my 9-5 friends as the most accurate depiction of restaurant life to hit the screen. Not like they’d know. But as someone with over 20 years in the kitchen trenches, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. I have never in my life had a show hit so damn close to home. The sheer emotions that washed over me watching the first episode: I laughed, I cried, and I had a little mental breakdown. I was hooked, it was like watching a torture porn of the trainwreck that is my life. The relentless screaming of a ticket printer, the chaos, the cuts, the burns, all of it, reminded me of my chosen career. A career that I spent way too much money going to college for, shout out to Johnson and Wales, but that’s beside the point. Not since the dumb-ass comedy “Waiting” have I felt so heard on a TV screen.

With everything that “The Bear” gets right, and it gets so many things right, there will always be a few parts that ick my gooch. The below observations are just me being a nitpicking professional, so these may not bother you, but to me, these inconsistencies between real life and the show definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

First things first, Carmy, I love his character. I feel his love and drive to keep his family’s restaurant open and successful.

Love aside, how in the hell did he stay so damn clean the entire show? 

Show me someone that cooks as hard as that man, that sexy white t-shirt is gonna have some tomato sauce and beef jus stains on it…it’s just gonna happen. Second, I know he was going for a Marco Pierre White look with that hair. Truth be told, he fucking nailed it, homie helped bring sexy chef appeal to the forefront. That being said, how much of his hair do you think ended up in those sandwiches? As someone who has had a rather beastly beard for the majority of his career, I’ve had to harness that bad boy behind a beard net more times than I would like. But sex sells, and lord knows he needs to sell some more sandwiches.

Another thing many civilians might not have thought about: The Bear didn’t offer any sort of to-go or online ordering. As Sydney said, “we’re sleeping on to-goes.” You  Are  A  Sandwich  Shop. Why in the hell wouldn’t you have had this sort of system set up, especially going through the bloody Covid pandemic? This is barely addressed until one of the final episodes of Season 2, when Syd forgets to turn off the online pre-ordering and shit hits the fan in a big way. That was a dumb, unrealistic business decision, but it made for a great, albeit trauma inducing, episode.

Continuing along the path of poor business decisions: why in gods name, if you were trying to hide money from the tax man, would you seal it in fucking cans of tomato sauce? That just seems super extra to me. I get it, it ties in the money, the food, the ingredients, all to the idea Carmy has to find himself or better yet re-find himself as The Bear. But there has got to be a more effective way to hide that much money from the greedy hands of the IRS. I thought that part was kind of dumb actually, then he just starts popping cans and throwing sauce everywhere… super dumb.