At the end of The bear Fourth season, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) withdraws his participation in the restaurant and declares that he is completely leaving the culinary industry. In what can be described as an act of martyrdom or growth, he recognizes that all his work has been linked to his family trauma and gives Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) her stake, making his cousin, Natalie sister (Abby Elliott) and Sydney catering partner (Ayo Edebiri).
For a show that has spent all this time exploring the duality of abuse and resilience in the toxic kitchens of American restaurants, it is a somewhat risky decision. But through the choice of Carmy, The bear Capture not only how we can use work to treat, escape or bury our trauma, but also potentially destroying us, our work and our relationships doing the things we love.
It is not a particularly new thread for the series, which spent four seasons exploring the destructive nature of passion, inspiring a wave of parts on the catering industry and its many problems. But what made the FX series, one of the greatest successes of television is how he uses professional cuisine to speak to a greater truth of toxic work and mental health.
As a merchants, we spend about a third of our life working, and this work is considered by many as a major metric to assess self -esteem. So, if work offers feelings of joy, accomplishment or success, then you have to do “good”, right? It is complicated in a culture where Americans with blue and white collar work more than ever while facing stagnant wages and less promotions in the middle of the cost increase. It is a modern work culture in which jobs are also increasingly encroaching on our personal life – houses becoming offices (and as we have cost) to personal devices providing more emails and work messages within hours.
It is more difficult to escape work and, therefore, American workers are faced with an increasingly psychological and physical tension, leaving “the balance between professional and private life” in dust. For those who have no healthy mechanisms to manage their trauma, this can be attractive. Everyone knows that the incessant speed of Carmy’s Kitchen, and their more recent obsession to reinvent the daily menu of the bear, was just as ambitious and bizarre. But if your work is the way you bury your feelings, reinvent your restaurant every 24 hours – while creating an endless flow of impossible objectives and expectations – means that you will never have time to think about these feelings.
Instead, you can stack more and more, distract yourself through work and justify everything by the moments it succeeds. In the meantime, you move away from your sleep, your diet, your relationships and other interests, becoming emotionally deregulated and cycling among the episodes of mania, fatigue, dissociation, anxiety and overstimulation. Destroy for a job you need, but hatred, while being trapped in a cycle of survival and responsibility, is not the same thing as the choice of work you love that ultimately hurts. As a person in this last category, I know that some people like work that does not like them – and there is a reason why they like this dynamic.
When I was 25, my mother died at 51 because she couldn’t stop working. On paper, it was renal failure after a series of disabilities and exacerbated medical emergencies being a single parent working more than 40 hours in a toxic and abusive position. But even if she became more and more sick and people started to tell her to retire early, she would not stop. Ask everyone who knew her and they will tell you why: she loved the work she did.
The complicated relationships of Carmy (to work, alcohol) are learned answers from his mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), and something most grateful as an adaptation mechanism. For almost a decade, I followed my mother on the path of the armament of my work to find a temporary relief of mental discomfort and the emotional pain of losing it. In our culture, (on) dedication to our jobs is defended, but as dependence, it can be destructive. I am not sure that I would even have realized that if I did not lose so quickly everything: friends and time with the family, but also emotional regulations, mental and physical health and, ultimately, the motivation to do what I have supported.
Of the first season of The bearCarmy ran against a check clock – to save the restaurant, reopen it, make it profitable, to prevent its own implosion. With each new objective or asks, he pushed himself and his cuisine, resulting mainly from the success of the skin of the skin. He also created a new trail of injuries fueled by constant professional chaos, leaving less time and energy to take care of the older injuries engraved by family trauma.
And that’s the idea. Carmy gave himself to his career and the bear, not only because it is easier to explain how you destroy yourself for something you love, but because transforming the restaurant of your dead brother into a success in his honor is easier than explaining why you have fled to him and your family to start.
But that is also why Carmy’s decision to leave the bear is not only its avoiding adaptation mechanism. It is a sign of his resilience. For Carmy to detach himself completely from what he and his crew like, he must accept that growth and healing will not always come from the thrust. No matter how many things or people you put between you and the bear, you cannot exceed it. You cannot exceed your trauma. You have to stop, get off the way and look at it in the face.
This story appeared for the first time in an autonomous issue of August of The Hollywood Reporter review. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
