Last summer, The Bear swooped in and brought audiences into the world of a Chicago restaurant. Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) was a professional chef who comes back home to run The Original Beef—a total dive with great food. His brother Mikey Berzatto (Jon Bernthal) dies by suicide, leaving Carmy in charge of the restaurant, trying to balance his own training as a chef with the restaurant that made his brother a local legend.
But it’s not easy and Carmy has to deal with Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and his own connection with Mikey on top of trying to make The Original Beef something better than how Mikey left it. It led to one of the best first seasons of a show and had an all-star cast including Allen White, Moss-Bachrach, Bernthal, Ayo Edebiri as Sydney, and more.
Now, we’re heading into season 2 with a lot of work on Carmy and Sydney’s plates. At the end of the first season, the two chefs had been butting heads. They finally got their egos and their emotions in check and realized that if they worked together, the Original Beef could be better than it ever was, which is where we’re at in the trailer for season 2!
Much like the first season, it seems like Cousin is struggling with the changes happening to the restaurant but with Carmy’s sister Natalie (Abby Elliot) being more invested in her late brother’s legacy, the restaurant is clearly getting a makeover.
This show only just came out last summer but man, I’ve missed it. It’s incredibly addicting and if you haven’t watched yet, you have a little over a month to catch up before we get back into the think of it with The Original Beef.
There’s work to do
As Cousin and Carmy are working together to keep Mikey’s vision alive in the above trailer, it seems like the rest of the team are going to culinary school on Sydney’s (and presumably Carmy’s) assistance. And great, it’s what The Original Berf (oops) Beef needed. Because making Italian beef sandwiches is one thing but they won’t keep the restaurant alive all on their own.
With Carmy in charge, it was only a matter of time before he started making changes to the restaurant to make it something more elevated. But the trailer shows us that everyone is, seemingly and maybe surprisingly, determined to help. Last season, it was all about The Original Beef refusing to change to fit how Carmy wanted to run things. When he brought on Sydney—another trained, exceptionally skilled chef—that introduced a whole other layer of conflict.
It makes sense that they’re now working together but the anxious energy we came to know from season one still seems to be there in this trailer. It’s just redirected into the big-picture redesign of The Original Beef instead of the day-to-day chaos that littered our first introduction into these characters. Nearly a year after its original release date, The Bear season 2 drops on June 23rd and boy, it’s going to feel great to be back with Carmy and the staff of The Original Beef.
(Featured image: Matt Dinerstein/FX)
