The Bear

Forget your reservations about last season and step up for one final feast at Chicago’s finest, feistiest family restaurant. Two words—Yes chef!

The final season isn’t without high points — Episode 7, “Caramel,” easily ranks among the series’ best — but it is a somewhat treacly sendoff that finally succumbs to its own sentimentality at the end. Bye, chef!

While the penultimate episode of The Bear is the fireworks show, finishing off a seemingly apocalyptic service, the gentle series finale wraps everything up perfectly. Stripping the show of all the nail-biting anxiety and pretentious trimmings that previously held it back, the episode is saccharine but earned. It's also hopeful and bright, with a conclusion in which everyone finally finds some sort of peace.

For a series that spent part of its run wandering through its own anxieties, this final season feels like a triumphant, hard-fought victory and a sweet redemption after a third and fourth season that wobbled more than anyone wanted to admit. More than that, it cements "The Bear" as a modern classic despite those bumps.

Storer and his team have created a fitting sendoff to one of the most intimate series in modern television.

It’s a show that has thrived on taking risks, and the first six episodes here, leading up to the series finale that isn’t a series finale, are very safe. But is “safe” the same as “playing to its strengths”? I’m less sure.

It’s time for The Bear, and “The Bear,” to stick the landing. And, though this review comes without the benefit of seeing the season’s final episode, all signs point to success.

The show continues to lean on its preferred crutches: catchphrases like Mikey’s old adage “let it rip,” clichés about the redemptive power of feeding others and a cloying sentimentality that started to grate once the spell wore off. But for those who’ve stuck with “The Bear” through its low point — and anecdotally, I know many one-time fans who have not — these final episodes may cement a memory of the show that’s more than its worst moments.

What’s bittersweet is watching it go out of business with the best season since it opened in 2022.

Season 5 is scrappy and stressful in a good way, as the characters struggle to succeed against difficult odds. Season 5 is the best since Season 2, thanks to a streamlined focus on the restaurant.

Storer and co-showrunner Joanna Calo seem focused on completing each character’s emotional arc. By this measure and others, the season is uneven, better than its most recent predecessors but rarely as sublime as the second half of Season 1 and Season 2. But it’s at its best when training its observant gaze on Sydney.

In its fifth and final season, The Bear scales back down to its fundamentals and delivers a satisfying farewell to one of the most electrifying television series of the past decade.

We can report the show gets good around Episode 6 and even approaches the quality of vintage 2022 and 2023 “Bear” in Episode 7. This upward trend suggests the onetime Emmy magnet and cultural phenomenon will wrap up on a satisfying note. Early Season 5 episodes, however, are haunted by the same narrative indecisiveness that has long followed “The Bear” like a county health inspector with an itchy thermometer finger.

Based on the first seven episodes, "The Bear" still has the opportunity to go down as one of the greatest or worst finales of all time. It all comes down to one final service.

The show and the restaurant still have their cracks. The Faks still attack, we meet unnecessary new characters, and the series remains a savory drama with comedy sprinkles. .... But if the superb, affecting penultimate episode is any indication of what’s to come, The Bear‘s series finale should eat.

The Bear lets it rip one last time, earning all of the Michelin stars and then some. If this is truly the final service, it’s going out with a bang.

Here are the characters you’ve come to love in the situation in which you’ve come to love them. No monologues or bottle episodes or dialogue-free mood-board vignettes; no celebrity chefs popping up because they can… just a classic recipe done very, very well.

I’d like to have seen more of Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and less of the Faks, who are intended (I presume) to bring light relief but are, I’m afraid, as irritating as ever. What The Bear always does well is depict the minutiae of service and make astute observations about social chemistry when a group of humans work together closely in stressful conditions — and these qualities continue to the end.

The show delivers one of the most compelling final seasons, while also being quiet, intentional, and deliberate in every beat.

The seven episodes I've seen are fast-paced and watchable, but there's a sameness here that keeps Season 5 from feeling like a real finale.

The zeitgeist may have slightly shifted its attention elsewhere, but this inimitable gem goes out on top.

By The Bear’s standards the air-punch moments veer into indulgence, but we've been through so much together that we've earned episode seven, the most tearful, joyful, human hour of television you'll see anywhere this year. It also contains three or four of The Bear's best ever gags and by far its most hilarious ever one-off character.

In the latter half of season five, once the customers finally show up and the saucepots and interpersonal conflicts start to really boil over, The Bear reminds us of its own potential for greatness.

At its best, The Bear reminded us of the difference, and this season was the perfect final bite.

The Bear’s kitchen is still chaotic, but it is also now a place of community and compassion. If there is a happy ending, the gang have earned it – and so have viewers who have stuck with a show whose refusal to water down its own peculiar flavour (mostly) paid off in the end.