Mary McNamara: 'The Bear' isn't about the pressures of fine dining. It's about the damage alcoholism inflicts
The doors to the Bear may be open, but the elephant is still in the kitchen.
"The Bear," FX's Emmy sweeping, meme-generating, kitchen-whites selling, deeply immersive experience of a series dropped on Hulu on Wednesday, and viewers are scrambling to see what kind of sweat-of-their-brow delicacies it serves up next. By exposing the world to the wonder of the Chicago beef sandwich, the regimented patois of the kitchen and a cast that appears to have been assembled in heaven, "The Bear" has taken restaurant culture to a whole new "Yes, chef!" level.
For an adult child of an alcoholic, however, "The Bear" isn't about restaurants. Not the wonder of bringing order to the unholy mess of a kitchen that produced Chicagoland's best beef sandwiches, as happened in the first season, or the NASA-like precision required to conjure a high-end fine dining establishment, as happened in the second.
It certainly isn't about the intricate "corner," "hands," "Yes, chef!" ballet or the meticulous genius required to create a masterpiece out of a scallop, a sprig of fennel and a blood-orange reduction. It's not even
