The Bear Finale Recap: Opening Night Shivers — Plus, Grade Season 2
The Bear‘s big opening night is here… but you didn’t think it would go off without a hitch, did you?
As the Season 2 finale opens, diners are sitting down to eat at Carmy’s restaurant for the first time, and Sydney is calling out orders in the kitchen. (She’s still a little frazzled by that awkward moment she had with Marcus, though.) Natalie and Pete are at a table, waiting for her mom Donna to arrive, and Richie is putting his new hospitality skills to the test, greeting the customers warmly. Claire is there, too, as is Uncle Jimmy and Sydney’s dad. It’s getting tense in the kitchen, though: A chef named Josh went missing, so Carmy has to take over for him on the line, and they’re already running low on forks. Marcus finally yells at Sydney for ignoring him, and Carmy has to step in to separate them — and oh, did we mention the toilet is clogged?
Carmy takes the time to personally serve a course to Claire’s table, but while he’s out there, he thinks he hears his old chef boss saying the service is too slow. So when he gets back to the kitchen, he freaks out on Sydney because a fish dish has been sitting so long, it got cold. They cool down, though, and give each other that “I’m sorry” gesture by rubbing a fist on their chest in a circle. Then suddenly, we hear muffled screams from Carmy — because he went into the walk-in fridge and the handle broke again, locking him inside. The tickets are still coming fast and furious, so Sydney steps up to take over as head chef, with Richie taking her place and expediting. They have five minutes to get caught up, and Richie barks out orders as plates come flying out and the seconds tick down. Yep, this is The Bear we’re used to seeing.
Carmy is helpless, stuck inside the fridge and plagued by flashbacks of all the things that have gone wrong for him over the years. Sydney and Richie are killing it, though, to the hammering guitar sounds of Pearl Jam’s “Animal,” and they manage to fight their way out of the weeds. Pete catches a glimpse of Donna smoking outside and goes out to greet her, but she’s not going in: “I just don’t think I can take it… I don’t deserve to see how good this is.” He tries to convince her to come in with him, and he also slips and tells her Natalie is pregnant, which she didn’t know. She asks him not to tell her kids she was here before walking off into the night, and when Natalie sees Pete tearing up inside, he just says it’s because he’s happy for her.
Marcus finally locates the AWOL chef Josh, who was smoking crack in a back alley. (It helps him cook better!) He gets Sydney’s OK to fire the guy, while Richie has a special dessert delivered to Jimmy’s table: a chocolate-dipped banana. Once the tickets slow down, Sydney takes a moment to step outside… and throw up behind a dumpster. Claire wants to go back and say hi to Carmy, but Neil tells her he’s locked in the fridge. Tina tells Carmy through the fridge door that they’re doing great, but he’s just wallowing in self-pity: “I failed you guys.” He didn’t call the fridge guy like he was supposed to, and he blames his lack of focus on spending so much time with Claire. He can’t be in a relationship, he decides, because “no amount of good is worth how terrible this feels.” But oops: Claire was standing on the other side of the fridge door, and she heard everything.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Carmy,” she tells him, shedding a tear as she walks away. Richie chides Carmy for pushing her away, and the two scream obscenities and insults at each other through the fridge door, with Richie finally saying: “Hope you f—king freeze to death.” Drained and miserable, Carmy listens to a voicemail from Claire from earlier, where she tells him how great he is and how excited she is for his opening night: “I’m so proud of you, and Mikey would be so proud of you, Bear.” When she says, “I really love you,” a shivering Carmy can only drop the phone in disgust.
As R.E.M.’s “Half a World Away” strums in the background, Marcus opens a gift from his Copenhagen pastry chef friend Luca: an “Every Second Counts” sign that he hangs up on the kitchen wall. (But he’s also missing urgent calls from his mom’s nurse. Uh-oh.) Sydney’s dad discovers her puking outside and congratulates her on an “absolutely incredible” meal, and they share a tender hug. Richie takes a triumphant drag of his cigarette outside, celebrating a job well done, as a locksmith comes in to hack the fridge door open with a heavy-duty saw, with Carmy sitting in contemplation as sparks fly around him. What kind of world is waiting for him out there, though?
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