I love television. The season 3 premiere of Bear was the best episode I’ve seen in a long time.

This article contains details about Season 3 of The bear.

The bear is, in a word, stressful.

The FX show’s third season premiere just broke Hulu’s scripted streaming record with 5.4 million views in just four days. The bear swept the 2024 awards ceremonies, winning Outstanding Comedy Series at the Golden Globes and Emmys and cementing the lead actors’ position as critic and media darlings. The show is also being praised for its writing and direction. I love it.

My expectations were so high that I was almost too nervous to watch it. Critics I trust panned the new season as stagnant and trying too hard. Still, in the 37 minutes between the moment I pressed play on the first episode of season three and the moment the next episode began, I knew I had watched one of my all-time favorite episodes of television.

Bracing myself for stress and disappointment did not prepare me for the first episode of the season, titled “Tomorrow.” The show is usually full of yelling, bad decisions, and the loud noises of a busy restaurant kitchen. This episode is calm, peaceful, and melancholy. The first line of dialogue isn’t uttered until nearly five minutes in, and in a normal episode, my nerves would have been frayed by this point.

Through a series of interwoven flashbacks we follow the chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) as he navigates key moments in his life. He struggles with guilt over leaving his family behind to pursue his dreams, the pain of failing in his pursuit of greatness, and the grief of his brother committing suicide.

We don’t learn much new information from these flashbacks; instead, we rely heavily on the emotions the show has built up to understand what’s going on. We see a lot of celebrity guest actors, like John Mulaney and Olivia Colman, which I’ve criticized as a lazy attempt to build suspense through star power. To me, these choices work as a celebration of the show’s successes. We’ve built an emotional connection with the characters strong enough to understand how they feel without it being expressed through dialogue. We’ve seen the show become so popular that big stars make room for it in their schedule. We’re a part of The bear Now.

Although I have concerns about the way The bear throws all 10 episodes of each season at us at once, rather than giving us time each week to process and discuss like we would with traditional television programming. This particular episode forces the audience to do something we rarely do in the streaming age: slow down and pay close attention. If you look at your phone while it’s on, you’re missing something. Honestly, that in itself is a little stressful for my extremely online-focused brain.

By undermining the typically chaotic tone, The bear shows its range. Through all those loud and stressful episodes, you’ve built up expectations about the setting and become attached to the characters. People criticize the show for crudely manipulating the audience’s emotions, but that’s a big reason why I watch TV. I want to be interested in something that isn’t part of my real life.

Many fans are disappointed with the third season of the show because Carmy regresses in it. He doesn’t develop much as a character. Whether that’s lazy or poorly written, I can’t tell you. I’m not a critic, I’m just a huge TV fan and I appreciate seeing grief portrayed on screen in a way that’s complicated, repetitive, and sometimes frustrating.

The bear has generated a lot of controversy between the second and third seasons. Is it even a comedy? Should people want co-stars Carmy and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) to have a romantic relationship, even though the showrunners are begging fans to stop? Does the show deserve its many accolades? In my opinion, the answer to all of these questions is yes, because once a show is released, it belongs to the fans. Writers, actors, and crew members can shape our experience with their art to their heart’s content, but ultimately we get what we want out of it.

Without giving too much away, the episode ends with a big reveal about the connection between two characters that we didn’t know about before. It’s a little cheesy, but so is showing tenderness to your coworkers and treating food like art. It stays true to the show’s message about the importance of a chosen family.

Carmy leaves the first episode with a list of “non-negotiable” rules that, by the second episode, will shake the restaurant’s practical and emotional stability. But we know exactly how we got there because we were part of it. The bear belongs to us.

The bear Season 3 is now streaming on Hulu.