“The Bear’s” Visually Stunning Season 3 Premiere

The Bear continues to impress by telling an effective season opener primarily through its stunning visuals.

The Bear is back, and the premiere has succeeded at hooking its claws into this fan to pull them in for more. The first episode of Season 3, without completely spoiling the experience, is not a departure from previous seasons, but an evolution. I’ve only heard that Season 3’s premiere is unlike anything the series has experimented with in the past, but I believe the strength in “Tomorrow” is that it actually is quite related to what previous seasons have done with its storytelling mode: communicating the narrative through visuals. Some of The Bear’s most emotionally affecting and memorable moments are void of dialogue or made meaningful from everything that is shown to audiences rather than told, and some of its weakest are those where characters inexplicably feel the need to fill empty space with the exposition equivalent of hot air rather than letting the audience put together the visual clues for a satisfying a-ha moment. The visual of Carmy and Richie split by the freezer door in Season 2’s finale is a visualization of everything the two are feeling; is it not telling that Carmy quite literally apologizes to Richie by saying his furious screaming in that moment was all meaningless? So often, The Bear delights in delivering its story through visuals ranging from heartfelt and artistic to viscerally nerve racking. No fan will forget the explosiveness of the first Season, the emotional thrill guiding them through a season of clean, efficient storytelling made such by the fluidity of the visuals aligning with the fast paced dialogue. Essentially, “Tomorrow’s” bold approach to a season opener, being mostly void of dialogue while doubling as the longest episode of season, is not as much a departure from the series storytelling practices as one may assume. However, instead of simply repeating what’s worked in the past, The Bear has a perfectionist mentality, and simply couldn’t help itself from evolving its previous techniques that make for the episode's most successful moments.

The episode utilizes previous cinematic techniques in new instances to deliver and communicate specific information. Particularly, I found this episode’s use of a mobile camera paired with a dutch angle especially revealing. While Season 2 saw this technique heavily utilized in episode’s focusing on individual character’s like Richie in “Forks,” I found this visual expression of anxiety to be typically confined to representing the city. I took this to mean that not only are the characters in these scenes lost and confused, but specifically within the context of Chicago. When Sydney questions her partnership with Carmy, the dutch angles slip into the delightful sight-seeing montage Syd occupies. As Richie grasps at straws and forks for a sense of purpose, the dutch angles capture his droning drive to work. However, in “Tomorrow,” the dutch angle becomes more intimate, being used in spaces Carmy once saw as a home now turned into an inescapable nightmare. His childhood house, the kitchen, his own apartment; by applying a consistently used technique from previous seasons in new contexts, The Bear carries over its themes through visuals alone to reveal further information about our lead. While other characters are certainly struggling with the direction in their lives, Carmy has no escape from his own mental maze of anxiety, as communicated through the evolved use of specific visual technique. 

That’s just one example of how the episode manages to continue delivering intimate portraits of characters we’ve known for seasons in new and interesting ways through its visuals, but what about the dialogue? How could this episode be an example of “visual storytelling” if it’s not silent? This is because the dialogue that is present is hardly the focus of any given scene. Instead, the age-old rule of “show don’t tell” is flipped for subtle communication of themes and character. Read independently of the rest of the episode, Carmy telling Sugar they’ll see each other again seems like a remorseful goodbye, but nothing more than a “see you later.” However, the silent push in’s on a smoking Carmy during a flashback to the fateful Christmas night depicted in Season 2’s “Seven Fishes” informs the audience of Carmy’s true intentions. Another example of visual storytelling, Carmy pulls out a cigarette as he turns his back to Sugar, a visual motif used throughout the episode that triggers whenever Carmy enters panic mode. The subtle inclusion of the cigarette thus works similarly to the silent scenes contextualizing these more talkative moments: it helps us read between the words the characters are saying to get at the real story being told primarily through visuals. 

In this way, the episode is able to fill in gaps, contextualize Carmy’s past, and overall inform audience’s with genuinely new information, while still managing to progress the overall narrative of the season. I believe the visual storytelling performed here works as well as it does purely because it still progresses the story, still gives audiences something new to chew on rather than rehashing old plot points. In fact, the weakest parts of the episode are when the cast are given too much to say, or when we cut to flashbacks that repeat information we’ve known since Season 1’s finale. Carmy ignores his blaring phone from Sugar, he’s distracted practicing as the last chef in the kitchen. Cut to Sugar silently crying. Cut back to Carmy, finally grabbing the phone in frustration. We then enter a low dutch angle, what is now another visual consistency in The Bear’s repertoire for communicating moments of extreme emotional impact. If one is even half-watching the show, they would know the significance of the call, how Carmy being distracted initially is a demonstration of his greatest flaw, and thus, how this moment silently conveys the themes of toxic perfectionism. It’s Carmy’s character and the thematic conceit of the show delivered purely through visuals…until the episode breaks its own rules and Sugar simply says what happened. I felt stripped of a genuinely more affecting emotional experience because of this; I didn’t want to be told what, as a consistent fan, I already discovered. Rather than feeling proud, I was patronized, and while these moments are few and far between, it does demonstrate how effective visual storytelling is more than just incorporating pretty images into a given scene.

This range of quality, one that by far skews heavily towards effective, shows that while not perfect, The Bear is a show willing to take risks with conventions. Season 3’s premiere continues to tell fans that The Bear is a show as open-minded as its characters desperately need to be if they ever want to grow. Carmy obsesses over every minute detail, over every anxious thought, over any potential distraction. He is locked in his ways, rigidly so. Luckily, the show itself performs the experimentation Carmy struggles to, and as a result, we learn infinitely more about the man who refuses to open up, specifically because the show focuses on the moments where he doesn’t.