If you spend too much time on Twitter like I do, your introduction to The Bear was probably this screenshot of Jeremy Allen White playing Carmine “Carmy” Berzatto, accompanied by some form of text describing how attractive he is. You may have also seen this other shot of White drinking out of a “deli” container praising the show’s fidelity to “BOH [back of house] details” and the reality of working in a kitchen. You may have also seen any number of well-respected cultural critics express some degree of skepticism of The Bear’s appeal, accusing the show of skimping out on story and character development and merely coasting on “vibes,” and maybe even a few other tweets lamenting the public’s willingness to hype up what is ultimately “mid” TV. In other words, The Bear, FX on Hulu’s eight-part Chicago-based kitchen workplace dramedy, has quickly become one of the most polarizing shows on TV, leading some people to question what, exactly, audiences are looking for as they sift through modern America’s seemingly endless stream of content and whether or not we’re still in the golden age of TV.

You can count me among the group of people who find The Bear to be incredibly engrossing. The series, which follows Carmy’s quest to class up a financially struggling Italian beef spot and deli that he inherited after his brother Mikey’s (Jon Bernthal, who probably made millions of dollars off of less than ten minutes of screentime) suicide, features scenes that recall the pins and needles anxiety of Uncut Gems paired with a rollercoaster level of unpredictability. But despite a number of panic-inducing moments (episode 7, “Review,” is basically a 20 minute nervous breakdown set to Wilco’s “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”) the show goes down easy, thanks in part to its breakneck speed and compact running time. White, with his hunched over intensity and simmering rage, is a compulsively watchable actor, as is Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who plays Carmy’s change-averse “cousin” and business partner Richie, the most outwardly resistant character to any and all attempts to professionalize what’s colloquially knowns as “The Beef.” Other characters, like Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), another classically trained chef who admires but is frequently frustrated by Carmy – and Marcus (Lionel Boyce), The Beef’s sensitive baker who’s inspired by Carmy’s mere presence, help to flesh out a generally impressive cast that spends most of their time in one interior location, but never let the show become stagey or static. Simply put, compared to prestige slow burns like Better Call Saul and The Old Man, there’s a lot of energy in this show, and most of the appeal comes from wondering if and when the resentments and frustrations of each individual character will eventually boil over.

Another big part of the appeal comes from the “just right” approach to the relationships and personal struggles of the characters, which eschews the solemn intensity associated with some many prestige programs but thankfully never pivots fully into “nicecore.” In other words, if Succession exists on one side of the TV emotional spectrum, where everyone is casually cruel and cynical, and Ted Lasso exists on the other, where people are boundlessly enthusiastic bordering on corny, then The Bear is somewhere squarely in the middle – a show about adults who deal with their adult problems in an imperfect but realistic way. Carmy’s more than happy to try and reinvent his brother’s restaurant as a way to both get closer to him and punish him for taking his own life, but for most of the series he’s loath to discuss his feelings with anybody else, including his similarly suffering sister, Sugar (Abby Elliott). Richie is a man who sees everything – his neighborhood, his marriage, his job – slowly slipping away from him, and he responds by violently, vulgarly, and futilely doubling down on his now obsolete ways. There are no didactic conversations about self-care and toxic masculinity, but there are no “you came for me with love?” moments of pure darkness either – just messy ways of dealing with messy problems.

Unfortunately, that sense of mess can’t help but seep into the show’s writing as well. With an average episode length of 30 minutes, The Bear is ostensibly a comedy and, amidst all the chaos, provides a number of comedic beats that land with varying forms of success. Like most shows about the feisty working class, The Bear’s most successful jokes are purely verbal (“surge rates, fucko!”) but occasionally the show’s script veers into full on comedy set pieces, like a scene where Carmy and Richie accidentally dose the drinks at a kids birthday party with Xanax (which inspires one great line reading from Oliver Platt) and the many foibles

of Neil Fak (Matty Matheson), The Beef’s resident handyman who talks about his feelings to the restaurant’s finicky arcade machines (in at least one scene, they also talk back). Combine that with some very real attempts to deal with storybeats about mental illness, addiction, grief, gentrification, and abuse, and what you get is tonal inconsistency, a show that can at times feel like a series of first drafts more than a completed thought. It’s this area where the accusations that the show is relying purely on the “vibes” of it all rings true. Shot well enough, any cooking scene can go toe to toe with the best Gene Kelly choreography, and the sizzling onions and boiling broths that trigger the viewers’ appetites also help wash away memories of the uneven storytelling. Likewise, the montage of Chicago history set to Sufjan Stevens’, uh, “Chicago” may not broaden our understanding of any of the characters or what lead to Mikey’s suicide, but it sure does look cool. Your enjoyment of The Bear is almost completely dependent on your ability to tolerate these kinds of distractions – it worked for me the first time around, but upon rewatch I wouldn’t be shocked if it all crumbles apart on me like one of Marcus’ subpar rolls.

In the Defector piece I referenced above, Soraya Roberts suggests that the vibes first style of storytelling is the consequence of “a streaming industry that prioritizes quantity over quality.” She’s not wrong about that, but I think the bigger story to be told about The Bear is that it is absolutely the kind of story that twenty, maybe even ten years ago, would’ve been turned into a film instead of a television show. The last two episodes especially are structured like the climax and denouement of a feature film. In episode 7, “Review,” the kitchen falls into chaos on the first day of their “new program” after they receive hundreds of pre-orders through a new service app, causing Carmy to snap at two major characters who end up resigning by the episode’s end (I’ll leave them anonymous for the sake of spoilers). Episode 8, “Braciole,” is the sober day after – Carmy speaks for the first time at his Al-Anon meeting about his brother’s death, Ritchie’s frustration explodes into a career threatening incident and, eventually, Carmy gets his hand on Mikey’s suicide note that, unexpectedley, leads him to a discovery that will not only save The Beef but help him turn it into the restaurant he always wanted it to be. Once again, for the sake of spoilers, I won’t reveal what Carmy discovers or how. All I’ll say is that it borders on a deus ex machina, and ends the first season on a note that seems fairly incompatible with the rest of the series, and actually makes a case against their being a second season. But if you had taken the roughly four hours of The Bear, and chopped it up into a two hour movie, the ending would feel a little more earned and like an actual resolution. The Bear’s story feels so thin because it’s stretched out across way too long of a runtime and presented in the entirely wrong medium. The best television shows of all time either deal with a character undergoing a gradual change (Breaking Bad), immersion in a particular milieu (The Wire or, if you’re thinking comedically, Seinfeld) or some combination of the two (The Sopranos). The Bear has the milieu part down, but the change Carmy and company go through isn’t gradual – they’re thrust into the midst of a very acute crisis and have to react accordingly, which demands a much more compact narrative.

The Bear isn’t alone in this regard. Over the past five years or so a number of shows, such as The Queen’s Gambit, Mare of Easttown, and any number of the Disney+ Marvel series, either could have or should have been movies, but market forces prompted their creators to turn them into streaming content instead. Considering the decline of non-IP based blockbusters and the popularity of these streaming platforms, there isn’t much reason to believe that this trend will reverse itself any time soon. But the idea that the endless tail of streaming content is beginning to provide viewers with diminishing returns, and a ripple effect from Netflix’s ongoing financial turmoil, could temper streaming’s growth in the not so long term, and create an even playing field for creators who are more interested in theatrical than streaming releases. Until then, though, viewers will have to put up with some degree of inconsistency and frustration until – like the harried chefs at the center of The Bear – writers, directors, and producers learn to adapt to the industry’s rapidly changing circumstances.