The Bear - Season 3 (FX-Hulu - streaming)
Like millions of others, we finally succumbed to the heaping gobs of overwhelming praise lavished on this series about chefs struggling to run Chicago restaurant.
We came late to the party, but after binging Seasons 1 and 2, we found the hype was more than justified.
This show was the real thing......bristling with actors at the top of their game tearing into scenes and situations with a fury we hadn't enjoyed for a long time.
No wonder everybody was crazy about it.
But after two explosively entertaining seasons, you know who read too much into all the hype? The show's creator and writer-director, Christopher Storer.
We can only assume the 'The Bear's hitting the pop culture zeitgeist like a nuclear detonation resulted in pumping up Storer's ego to Hindenburg size.
That's the only explanation we can come up with to explain the maddening, self-indulgent excesses if Season 3.....10 episodes that play out as if deliberately crafted to aggravate, antagonize and exhaust the good will of viewers accumulated by the previous seasons.
Storer made the ruinous choice to throw propulsive storytelling out the window and concentrate solely on individual episodes devoted solely to character development. Each of these episodes unfolds as a wearying slog, force feeding an audience a mini film festival culture vulture ordeal Punishing close-ups....no pacing whatsoever and rubbing our noses in the characters' worst traits.
Evidently, nobody dared tell Storer that it would be possible to continue to tell the story and deepen the characters all at the same time.
We won't deny, however, that there's individual moments where the actors get to break free of the torpor and strut their stuff. But you could count those moments on the fingers of one hand.
A damn shame, this. 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2).
But for a show like this that started off on fire, hope springs yada yada yada.......we await a Season 4 that will get back on the rails at the bullet train speed it started off with.
BQ quick memo to Christopher Storer......even if takes major surgery, get your head out of your ass and your shit together.
No comments:
Post a Comment