The Bear
Ribs
Season 5
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
Carmy atones and dinnertime approaches in a sleepy — but necessary — episode.
Photo: FX
At the beginning of “Ribs,” Richie is nervous about the pre-meal speech he has to make on what is, perhaps, the most important, fraught dinner service in the brief history of the Bear. Which is saying a lot, because most dinner services in that place are at least a little fraught. Carmy tells him to just speak honestly and from the heart, which Richie ultimately does after abandoning some bullshit he had written down about the quest for perfection. He winds up talking about the best “restaurant” he ever visited, and says it was the Berzatto home, where he would frequently go for Sunday-night meals.
“Everyone loved you there, and I just fuckin’ loved everybody,” he says. “You could stay as long as you wanted because they didn’t fucking kick you out and you didn’t care about Monday.” He then reminds the staff that at this point they have nothing: no money, barely any food, no waitstaff (they all quit, apparently). All they have is each other. “If you think about this shit, though, if you really think about it, we got nothing left to lose,” he says. “So we don’t gotta worry about a fucking thing, and that is fucking perfect. Also, if we’re going to invite people into our home, we’re gonna look like a fucking family.”
Cut to the entire staff of the Bear dressed in the “Original Berf of Chicagoland” T-shirts, the misprinted merch that survived the flood. That image puts a nice button on Richie’s speech and feels both nostalgic and hopeful, the exact combination of emotions you want from a final season of a beloved TV series.
This fourth episode of season five — we’re at the halfway point, Bears — functions as a bit of calm before the storm … well, the second storm, aside from the actual storm that has dumped tons of water into the restaurant. Pretty soon, the dining room is going to be full of customers, one of whom, we learn at the end of the episode, is someone with the last name Dearborn. That’s the Michelin-star guy. So in addition to saving this place, everyone on Team Bear now has to try to earn a Michelin star on a night when they may be least equipped to do their best work.
Presumably things are going to get tense in the next episode, which may be why creator and showrunner Chris Storer, who also directed “Ribs,” decided to keep things pretty chill here and give Carmy a chance to do what is, essentially, an apology tour in which he atones for his departure and his shortcomings as a head chef.
I watched this episode with two perspectives in my head. One was from the perspective of a person who finds themself getting impatient with The Bear. I understand fully why someone might be frustrated at this point. Nothing significant happens in terms of plot during these 39 minutes. The Fak brothers are acting like such dopes at this point that it’s hard to understand how they even function in society. Also, one could persuasively argue that Richie’s predinner remarks could basically be summed up with the Olive Garden slogan “When you’re here, you’re family.”
I get all of that. And yet I am still enjoying watching The Bear. I don’t care that “nothing happens.” To me, The Bear is and always has been a hangout show: I’m here to just be around these characters who I have grown to love and observe them trying to make sense of this thing we call life. And there are some lovely scenes in here that center Carmy in a way he has not quite been centered this season.
I love the conversation between Richie and Carmy that opens the episode, because Carmy, in true indecisive form, is already wavering about whether to leave, and Richie does not indulge him at all. When Carmy suggests that maybe he could stay at the restaurant and just do prep, Richie responds, without hesitation: “That sounds awful. That would last ten seconds and then you’d turn into a psycho again.”
Richie is correct! He also is correct when he tells Carmy that he’s not a great teammate and offers this extremely blunt advice: “Just be a team player, you know? Be a fucking human being.” Carmy immediately takes the advice to heart, asking Richie how he’s doing. “I’m struggling,” Richie confesses, then talks about the car accident and admits it was his fault, because he was thinking about when he slapped Mikey on that trip to Gary, Indiana. Carmy listens and reassures Richie that Mikey probably had it coming. They don’t yell at each other at all.
Carmy then checks in with his sister and asks if she’s okay. (He is really going all in on being a fucking human being!) They talk about their mother and Sugar’s concerns about having her babysit Sophie. “It’s like I want her to fuck up,” Sugar says of Donna. That’s a tough thing to acknowledge, but it makes sense. If Donna can watch Sugar’s baby and be responsible and nurturing, it makes Sugar wonder why her mother couldn’t have been that way with her.
In a subsequent scene, we see Sugar listening to the baby monitor and hearing her mother coo at Sophie, then read her the book Guess How Much I Love You, which: Go ahead, jerk my tears, The Bear. I’ll allow it. Sugar doesn’t say a word, but Abby Elliott sobs through this moment with such vivid feeling that you can guess what’s going through her mind: gratitude that her mother can have this relationship with her daughter, regret that her relationship with Donna is so prickly, and maybe even some recollections of times where Donna was a loving mother to Sugar. Becoming a parent really opens up a can of emotional worms. So does working under duress.
That’s something Carmy discusses with Marcus, praising him for his constant ability to stay cool under pressure: “You don’t get rattled. And if you do, you don’t take it out on anybody.” Marcus mentions that he’s been watching a lot of movies lately, including a foreign film that he doesn’t name, but he does quote, because something someone says in it sticks with him: “We let anxiety set limits on emotions, on feelings, on grief. And we trick ourselves into thinking there are limits because of fear.” Marcus says he’s trying to approach his work without limits, and Carmy seems to take that to heart.
By the end of this episode, Carmy has made nice with Marcus, Sugar, Richie, both Fak brothers, and Sydney, who finally admits to Carmy what she admitted to his mother in the season-four episode “Bears” — that she went to Carmy’s old restaurant, Empire, just to eat his food and it was the best meal she ever had.
At this time, I would like to say the following: I am begging people on the internet not to start shipping Carmy and Syd again. There are some scenes in this episode that will tempt people to do exactly that, including the aforementioned one where Sydney praises his cooking and, also, that moment where they run into each other, and Syd suddenly shouts, “Fuck me!” Then: “Just kidding.” Let me say this as clearly as I can: What Carmy and Syd crave from each other is affirmation, not sex. Sometimes people who mutually crave admiration from each other also have romantic feelings. But that is not the case here. With only four episodes, I feel confident that these two are not going to suddenly profess their love for each other or start making out after they get locked in the freezer together. Carmy and Syd as a couple is the equivalent of fetch. It’s never going to happen.
Bear detractors may feel that Carmy is getting off too easily in this episode, and that the grace he’s shown is a bit too narratively convenient. Which … maybe. They also might feel that this episode consists of nothing but a bunch of conversations, which is largely true. But you know what else consists of nothing but conversations when you get right down to it? Life!
Actually, the most moving of the many chats in “Ribs” does not involve Carmy or anyone offering forgiveness to Carmy. It’s between Tina and Sydney. Syd knows how hard Tina works and how terrific she is at what she does. (I love that T gets to create a Brussels sprouts dish after she labored over a test version in the opening scene of the season.) The new head chef says she understands if Tina no longer wants to work at the Bear after Carmy is gone. The subtext beneath that statement is that Syd recognizes why Tina might be loath to take orders from a boss who is younger and, relative to Carmy, inexperienced in the business. Tina does not hesitate to reassure her: “Syd. Whenever, wherever: I’m your Jeff.” Jeff is, of course, the nickname she gave to Carmy. Invoking it in this context is a demonstration of Tina’s respect for Sydney, and it’s really lovely to see.
In a more subtle way, that exchange is conveying the same thing as Richie’s speech, which is saying the same thing as another comment Sydney made to Donna back in season four’s “Bears”: “Sometimes your work family is part of your family-family.”
• I have a question: Is Neil Fak even an adult? I understand why he’s upset that Carmy is leaving, and I also know that infantilizing him is a cute running joke on The Bear. But what kind of grown man locks himself in a bathroom and refuses to come out until another grown man promises him they’re “still gonna be pimps”?
• Carmy receives another phone call from an unknown caller while he’s talking to Richie. He doesn’t answer, and we still don’t know who keeps reaching out. I feel like Carmy knows who it is, though, and I feel like The Bear won’t reveal the person’s identity until episode seven or eight.
• The spoon thief remains at large. Please try to remain calm. Apparently, no one has taken the bait that Ebra carefully laid out in the previous episode. (“There’s no spoons; where are all the spoons?” Sydney asks.) At the moment, I think the hoarders might be Marcus and Luca, who want to save as many spoons as possible for their precious sweet-and-savory dessert.
• I loved how Syd set her own tone for how the kitchen would function on this night. “In here, I want it to be clean and quiet,” she instructs. “Speak to each other cleanly, clearly, kindly, and watching our language.” Will everyone actually be able to do this?
• The Bear loves its movie references, and this season it’s been particularly deferential to director Tony Scott. In “Mint,” Teddy references Scott’s Days of Thunder, and in this episode, Marcus notes that as part of his recent movie-watching spree, he viewed Tony Scott’s entire filmography. Marcus also says he’s trying to get dessert ideas from these movies, which makes me wonder if he and Luca could maybe turn the candle into a pastry version of an airplane that somehow starts playing Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” as soon as you crack into it. It’s 2026. Shouldn’t all of our desserts be able to play Kenny Loggins songs at this point?
This is the section of the recap where I highlight the laugh-out-loud moments in each episode as part of my crusade to prove that The Bear is actually funny. There are several subtle but amusing moments in “Ribs.”
• No attention is called to it at all, but it’s hilarious that Richie and Carmy take such a lengthy smoke break, then walk back in the kitchen where Teddy’s legs are still dangling from the ceiling. Yeah, right after a guy crashes through the roof is the perfect time to step out for a cigarette. Good work, everyone!
• While attempting to argue in favor of keeping all the reservations, Richie says some truly ridiculous things, but nothing is more nonsensical than: “I once walked in here, and I saw a turtle and a cat sharing a pop in the back booth.” What he’s trying to say is that anything is possible in this restaurant if everybody puts their mind to it. But the turtle/cat comment just sounds like a summary of Aesop’s absolute worst fable.
• Richie is incapable of canceling some of the reservations, as Sydney requested, because he gets sucked into the stories of the people who are planning to come in to eat. “Oh really?” he asks. “Fifteen years since you’ve seen your brother. Norway?” I am almost certain he canceled exactly zero reservations, and they’re going to be completely slammed.
• Abby Elliott’s impression of Jamie Lee Curtis yelling, “Carmen!”: Outstanding.
• While I feel strongly that Jimmy needs to be more imaginative in his use of profanity, I still laughed when he lost it at the city worker attempting to help him figure out who owns the air rights to the Bear’s building. “I mean no disrespect when I say this, but if you ask us to fill out another form of any kind, I’m gonna jump through this window, and I’m gonna teach you how to suck your own cock.” Jimmy: always classy. Also, apparently, someone Jimmy refers to as Crazy Mary owns those rights, and I’m really hoping she is played by Chicago native and Toy Story 5 star Joan Cusack.
• Carmy adds lamb tonnato to the menu, noting that they can stretch out the meat if he mixes tuna and mayonnaise into the sauce. Syd then instructs the staff to refer to what is essentially tuna fish salad as “albacore aioli.” See, this is what being a great chef is all about: using the word aioli when you need something to sound fancy.
