Image: Chuck Hodes/Fx
When “Honeydew” opens, it appears like we’re in for a further frantic episode of The Bear. It is 7 weeks out from when the new place is meant to open up but the restaurant’s calendar is included with notes about permits and inspectors and notes to “STOP Working with Credit rating CARD.” The city has turned down some of their pleas, they have to do a 2nd deep clean, and the fire suppression group did not exhibit up when they ended up intended to. Further than that, they have to shell out a high-quality to the IRS simply because Mikey by no means adequately named the restaurant on legal files, a little something that really does not appear like it’s the new group’s fault for every se, but absolutely sure, ok.
And also, Natalie has a surprise. Specified that she’s clearly visibly expecting it does not appear to be like significantly of just one, but Carmy looks truthfully taken aback by Sugar’s roundabout reveal, which arrives couched in caveats about how she doesn’t want to be handled in different ways and is both of those terrified and excited “because of how we grew up and anything in our lives.” She also seriously, definitely does not want Richie to know, a plan that falls aside nearly instantly as nevertheless an additional wall inside of the restaurant collapses. Richie, to his credit, only gloats a tiny, screaming out “I FUCKING Realized IT!” together with some slight congratulations.
That is about all we get to see of the Chicago-dependent Bear crew this episode, though, preserve a couple phone calls. Directed by Ramy Youssef, “Honeydew” is all about Marcus, who’s off to Denmark to phase with a good friend of Carmy’s played by the completely satisfying Will Poulter. He’s anxious to depart his mom, of program, but as we come across out a little bit afterwards in the episode she’s been desperately ill for about 4 decades and was only intended to reside for two, so any bit of time he receives now is pretty significantly gravy. Soon after a speedy airport send-off from his at any time-positive roommate, Marcus is Copenhagen-bound, where by he roams the streets to the appears of Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” which most persons no doubt know as the theme to National Lampoon’s Holiday.
As it turns out, Marcus is being on a small boat that can make him look comically substantial, and when he’s not feeding on Danish scorching canines and strolling as a result of the gardens at Noma, he’s doing work with Poulter’s Luca to craft wildly finicking pastry creations like shiso gelee. It’s a huge swing for Marcus, who’s under no circumstances even built ice cream let alone tackled a quenelle, but by some means he handles it with question and aplomb. Personally, I would be throwing shit at the wall just after about five minutes having picked at about my tweezer use, but evidently Marcus is a better person than me—or most of us, seriously.
Though I’m not genuinely guaranteed the vibe of The Bear is heading to be gelee towers and weirdly beige puddings, I love that Marcus is acquiring out there into the world, getting packing containers and bins of Danish pastries to decide through, and genuinely growing his palate. Even the best desserts can even now style like a minty Snickers, but as Luca explains, “you can commit all the time in the world in [the kitchen] but if you don’t shell out sufficient time out” in the world, then your foodstuff genius will in no way actually arrive to fruition. Luca is aware this mainly because, immediately after finding into some hassle in his youth, he fell into cafe daily life about 14 years back. He imagined he was the greatest, but right after meeting another person else at a restaurant in Copenhagen (Carmy? Carmy!), he understood that no issue what he did he could never ever be the ideal. It took a little bit of stress off, in a way, and he rather worked to become the finest he could be, finding out extra than he could have at any time hoped from the unnamed excellent co-worker, who Marcus jokes was the Michael Jordan to Luca’s’ Scottie Pippen and absolutely 100 per cent has to be Carmy.
It’s a stark distinction to Marcus’s chef trajectory, which we find out commenced just about 18 months in the past when Mikey recruited him to make bread in the restaurant. He’d been doing the job at McDonald’s prior, in which he’d landed right after 5 many years at the phone enterprise. His genuine enthusiasm prior to that was soccer, and he performed outside linebacker for a Division 3 school all over faculty. (We really do not discover out if he bought a degree, which I’m curious about even nevertheless I don’t imagine it definitely matters.) He finished up at the Beef simply because he’d go there each and every day for lunch and sort of fell in with Mikey, who he states was “really very small but also seriously out of his fucking intellect.” Mikey, Marcus says, constantly wanted to open up a bakery, hence how Marcus received into the bread biz.
After Marcus leaves that discussion with Luca, there is an odd interlude in which he runs into a Danish man who’s crashed his bicycle into a fence. He’s pinned down by the crossbar and can’t get out. Marcus lifts the fence and tends to the man, who appears to be both drunk or just bizarre and old, and then the man takes off on his really Danish bicycle once all over again. I’m not confident what the information is right here other than “Marcus is a very good dude,” but it is great to be reminded of that all the similar.
The episode finishes with Marcus and Sydney on Facetime, obtaining a jittery delayed chat. Marcus tells her that he’s loving Copenhagen but he feels responsible for not getting in the shit again in Chicago, irrespective of whether that means investing time with his mom or receiving yelled at by the two Richie and Fak as element of no matter what “alliance” they’re in. She tells him she’s happy he’s happy and reminds him that, “you can’t choose treatment of [your mom] if you’re not using treatment of you,” which appears to be the concept for all of The Bear year two so far.
I left “Honeydew” even more in enjoy with Marcus than I currently was, and genuinely impressed with Lionel Boyce’s operate in the role. He’s an island of chill tranquil in an ocean of roiling, nightmarishly difficult periods and on a display like The Bear, that sort of electricity and existence is a must have, to say the least.
• A random Chicago-centric imagined: If Marcus was functioning at McDonald’s and eating lunch every single working day at the Initial Beef on Orleans, does that then signify that he worked at the now defunct Rock ‘N’ Roll McDonald’s of Wesley Willis music fame? Of course, that setting up underwent a fancy remodel all over 2018 so he could have never ever labored in the weird, retro area, but I like to consider him there all the exact.
• We get a look at Sydney’s interviews with opportunity personnel and they feel to be absolutely shitty, conserve SNL alum Alex Moffatt, who’s hired on the spot though sporting a quite great, extremely exciting asymmetrical haircut.
