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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
132
Mixed:
19
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
The GuardianOct 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The Bear is half-hour gobbets of kinetic, pressurised, propulsive brilliance with occasional moments of stillness that make you see how much has been done in order to serve up something so delicious. This is a show that has been meticulously prepped, simmered, reduced, balanced and eventually plated up to perfection by the creator Christopher Storer and co-showrunner Joanna Calo. Dig in.
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Jun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
On an episode-by-episode basis, the third season of The Bear is as good as anything the show has ever done. Possibly better? .... Indecision can be exciting and I found the risks The Bear takes in these 10 episodes to be thrilling. But if you’re hoping to see things progress at an adrenalized rate, this is a season in limbo that reflects its main characters and their respective holding patterns. It all builds to a finale that’s impossibly joyful and impossibly miserable, perhaps as pure an evocation of the rollercoaster of depression as I’ve ever seen on television.
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Jun 21, 2023The IndependentJun 26, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Like its protagonist, The Bear feels trapped in a loop of its own creation. Will the restaurant succeed? Will Sydney be satisfied? Will Carmy find peace? To unequivocally answer any of those questions would denude the menu of its most appetising morsels, and so The Bear keeps on whetting our appetites, putting only the most delicate amusement in its amuse-bouche.
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The IndependentJul 17, 2023
Jun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
Veracity is tempered by the show’s appetite for contrivance. Barnburner monologues give way to dialogue so repetitive it might as well be a Meisner exercise.. .... The show’s highs remain incredibly, dazzlingly high, and its ability to overwhelm you is thrilling — it’s the front car of the roller coaster for 10 episodes.
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Jul 3, 2024
Season 3 Review:
A bafflingly bad batch of episodes that gravely misjudge the series’ appeal. .... The new season suffers from both a surfeit of ideas and a lack of vision, relegating beloved relationships to the background while larding the show with characters and story lines that fail to compel. .... “The Bear” has lost the plot—even the food looks unappetizing this season.
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The Observer (UK)Sep 10, 2024
Season 2 Review:
An extended mid-series flashback episode (no spoilers here) is an exhilarating tour de force. From there, the series ignites: a scorching, shooting blue flame of humour, intensity, camaraderie, disaster, passion. If it sometimes seems like a television prescription for workaholism, the professional kitchen presented as a proxy for the human soul, The Bear gets away with it.
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The PlaylistJun 28, 2024
Season 3 Review:
“The Bear” is still a watchable show, thanks to the cast, but season three is a disappointment nonetheless. Allen White, Edebiri, and Moss-Bachrach are highly engaging, and the way Matty Matheson’s Neil Fak character steps up is interesting too, but the writing generally underserves them all in a filler, spinning-its-wheels season that feels like a placeholder waiting for season four.
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The TelegraphJun 26, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Every exchange is a heart-to-heart, every character is constantly trying to impart something meaningful, everyone says what is on their mind. It’s as if they are in a massive immersive therapy session. As such, the script is too often dragged down into a steaming swamp of triteness. Some of it is downright guff.
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The TelegraphJun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
There is no doubt that The Bear remains among the very best shows on television, its own non-negotiables – a singular marriage of peace and chaos framed in superb camerawork and terrific performances – are all present and correct. Could it have pushed it more in season three, let it rip, strived ever more for excellence and vibrant collaboration? I know what Carmy would say.
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The TelegraphOct 5, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The Bear gets the balance between atmosphere and story, sour and sweet, just right. At a time when big budget TV, with things such as House of the Dragon or The Rings of Power, has decided that more is more, The Bear is a real palate cleanser. It’s a masterpiece in reduction - and the sauce has bite.
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The TimesJun 27, 2024
The TimesJul 19, 2023
Sep 5, 2025
Season 4 Review:
It’s as confident and singular in its artistic vision as ever. But even though more is happening than there was in Season 3, it’s not quite enough to give the show a shape. Its overemphasis on character and vibe at the expense of narrative momentum leaves it repetitive and flabby. Like the Chicago Tribune’s mixed restaurant review says, it’s missing some Bear necessities — namely, a compelling enough plot.
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Jun 26, 2025Jun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
“Tomorrow” is the season’s weakest episode (and in fairness to creator Christopher Storer, The Bear never loses sight of how self-absorbed its tortured-artist chef can be). .... In Episode 3, “Doors”—a classic half-hour of frenzy in the kitchen—the season hits its stride.
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TV Guide MagazineJul 12, 2024
Season 3 Review:
The Beat is a triumph. .... While the cuisine looks great, it really is about the people. [15 Jul - 4 Aug 2024, p.4]
TV Guide MagazineJul 20, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Brilliant second season. [24 Jul - 13 Aug 2023, p.4]
Jun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
The Bear continues to make viewers laugh, dab tears and watch ravenously as the most lived-in characters on TV ply their trades and shake off setbacks. Whether they’re chatty or contemplative, you won’t be able to take your eyes off this unmatched cast and the gorgeous dishes they prepare.
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Jun 22, 2023
Season 2 Review:
It is a true testament to the writers and actors that the series remains riveting and rhythmic amid the chaos. In lesser hands, the mayhem would be just that. In the hands of creator Christopher Storer and his writing team, it is a well-choreographed, foul-mouthed ballet.
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Jun 22, 2022
Season 1 Review:
"Bear" is nerve-wracking and a delight. The frenzied pace and the shouty, freewheeling dialogue create an intense, stressful atmosphere that reaches out from the screen and practically tenses your shoulders. But it's also about (mostly) likable people trying to do their best, and that striving energy is as addictive and satisfying as a really good sandwich.
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Jun 26, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Growth is in short supply on The Bear, save for a few effective moments when a character actually makes a decision—to move on, to forgive, to love, whatever. Maybe that slowness is indeed how people process things in real life, but it makes for fatally inert television.
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Jun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
The Bear is loaded with generic conversations about Big Things and plaintive needle drops to the point of self-parody. Only toward the very end of a ten-episode season do we see some true processing of Carmy’s tortured professional psyche—it’s appreciated, but arrives too late.
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Jun 26, 2023
Season 2 Review:
I have a handful of quibbles with the show’s pacing (there’s too much crammed into some of these half hour episodes) and its soundtrack (why so many 80s and 90s songs? Carmy and Sydney would’ve been in diapers during the Replacements’ heyday!). But ultimately, The Bear is an addictive mix of sweet and salty.
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Jul 1, 2022
Season 1 Review:
[The restaurant, the Original Beef of Chicagoland] is in a state of complete chaos: filthy, undisciplined, and crushed by debt. All of this fuels Carmy’s mounting panic, which is matched by the series’ taut pacing, propelling us through each frenetic and poetic half-hour episode. ... The Bear is an ensemble production packed with prickly, vibrant performances.
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Jun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
At times, the absence of a uniting goal allows Storer and co-showrunner Joanna Calo to continue adding texture to the monotony of restaurant life. .... But not all detours this season are as effective, and without a fixed destination, the main narrative itself can get bogged down with repetition and stunt casting before the season ends with most storylines unresolved.
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Jun 21, 2022
Season 1 Review:
"The Bear" was created by Christopher Storer and has the winning menu item of people doing things well. Original Beef is a mess when Carmen gets there, but the cooking is lovely to watch once he gets things on track. What's even lovelier is the way Carmen's imposition of elevated standards changes the staff.
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Jun 26, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Best of all, the season justifies those early reprises. Each time the show revisits an earlier scene, it adds a layer that deepens the group’s (and the show’s, and the audience’s) sense of shared meaning. It’s a very beautiful thing to watch all those separate elements, and their associated dreams and nightmares, start to link up.
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Jun 27, 2024
Season 3 Review:
The show’s greatest gambit this time — when it could have embraced an easy and redemptive story, one in which the Bear delivers on its promise to be all things to all people, bringing together the old and the new (honoring Mikey, making space for Syd, and reconciling the regulars and the rich by offering deconstructed mirepoix as well as the OG sandwiches) — is gamely chasing the dysfunction. While still allowing for grace. And growth.
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Jun 22, 2023
Season 2 Review:
If the show has very plausibly presented Carmy’s professional success as an artifact of his trauma and isolation, it has also, to its credit, gently released his stranglehold on the story to make space for quieter players such as Marcus, Lisa and Syd. (And noisier ones, such as Richie.).
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