Hulu’s The Bear stars Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, who play Carmy and Syd, two chefs trying to open a restaurant together, while navigating grief, anxiety, and life. The show follows their and the other characters’ personal struggles separate from the restaurant connecting them all. Collaborating in opening a successful restaurant prompts these characters to transform as individuals and as a group. For instance, Carmy arrives at the restaurant after leaving his previous position after his brother’s suicide. He’s ridden with anxiety and grief but only copes in solitude. Yet, as he invests energy and time into opening this restaurant, he also invests himself in his coworkers and sister Natalie. The loss of one sibling strengthens the bond between the other two, a bond that Carmy and Natalie both need.
The Bear was my hyper-fixation over winter break. When returning to campus, my creative writing professor introduced the concept of private logic to the class. Private logic refers to a character’s inner motives and can be revealed through behavior, especially how they say or move. It is one of my favorite concepts in screenwriting because I think it’s one of the most ambiguous. Can a few words and body language really reveal the internalized frameworks characters operate through? And are these characters themselves aware of their private logic? The characters and the way they interact in The Bear is a perfect example of how private logic can captivate viewers or readers.
Part of the show’s allure is its ability to condense complex dynamics and relationships in seemingly mundane scenes, like this one that Carmy and Syd share at the end of season two:
Syd: “You could do this without me.”
Carmy: “I couldn’t do this without you.”
Syd: “Yeah, you could.”
Carmy: “I wouldn’t even want to do this without you.”
All this is said underneath a broken table. Syd is lying on her back against the floor, looking up at the table’s surface. She holds a screwdriver in one hand, reaching for a loose bolt near the tabletop. Carmy is sitting upright underneath the table, slightly hunched. Sunlight from the windows behind them spills into the empty restaurant. I can’t remember if they are alone in the restaurant, but the scene is strangely quiet.
The show is known for being loud, with knives quickly hitting cutting boards, sizzling oil, shouting and swearing, and the ever-present “Yes, chef.” Frantic movements, tension, anger. Syd and Carmy are often at the center of these intense moments, like the scene in season one where Syd has an argument with Richie, one of the other chefs, which ends up in him getting stabbed with a kitchen knife. (Richie handles the stabbing with relative grace). Yet, on the day of the restaurant’s opening, we can only see Syd, Carmy, and the space between them underneath a broken table.
The show is not a romance– the official genre is a comedy-drama, but I wouldn’t consider it that either. However, the relationship between Syd and Carmy is incredibly intimate and tells a lot about each character’s private logic. The words they exchange in this interaction are short and simple; no wordy declaration of love mimicking classic romances is necessary. The scene can even be considered a bad metaphor: two broken people fixing a broken table, who get close to fixing each other. But there is much more to Syd and Carmy than being broken, as there is much more to this scene than just a table.
Syd and Carmy invest most of their time and energy into the restaurant opening. The restaurant is their life; if they can’t do the restaurant without one another, they can’t do life without one another. Their dependence on each other speaks to their relationship with themselves as individuals. They both have suffered losses in the past— in both their personal and professional lives– which creates their need for someone else to catch them in case they fall in their present. The trust they have in each other helps them deflect. Their private logic can be taken as two individuals feeling like they can’t do “this” alone without becoming victims of self-sabotage.
Admitting the need you have for another person is an incredibly vulnerable thing to do. Essentially, you are exposing the empty parts of yourself and asking another person to fill them. You’re revealing your insecurities. Syd and Carmy aren’t only exposing themselves for their lack of independence but also admitting their vulnerability.
The Bear has been praised for accurately reflecting the real restaurant life, like the reality that goes into preparing a meal, and the struggles of running a small business. However, what made it compelling for me is the way it treats the multiple manifestations of the human condition. Everyone in the show’s set of characters is treated as a complicated, multifaceted person, and each relationship that forms is, in turn, complicated. The intensity of the cooking scenes just heightens the intensity of these relationships and the people who are partaking in them. Viewers, in trying to understand these character’s next moves and following their arcs, are prompted to examine the characters’ private logic.
Such examination of fiction forces viewers like myself to consider our own private logic, and how it may translate to real life. The Bear makes me think that any interaction between two people, just like the ones between its characters, can reveal so much with only a few words. There are tells we may be fully ignorant of, that unintentionally reveal bits of our mind and personal history. Maybe we give the power to those around us to interpret our own private logic, diminishing our own autonomy.
“You know, you make me better at this.”
There’s a pause before Syd softly replies:
“You make me better at this.”
Syd and Carmy use the word “this” to drive their conversation. The restaurant, their lives, and maybe the act of fixing the broken table all fit under the umbrella term “this.” They have a mutual understanding of its implications. They never touch, and hardly make eye contact with each other. Carmy rarely looks away from Syd, but there are only several moments where Syd preys her eyes off the broken table to look at him. They adjust their positions and posture throughout the scene to fit under the table together, yet the physical space between them hardly shrinks or grows. They can’t seem to stray away from each other, and their physical closeness is a manifestation of their emotional one.
Even though their dynamic is not overtly romantic, I still think of this moment as a romantic one — it’s just more passive compared to conventional romances. But maybe my assumption says something more about my own private logic.