The Bear Season 5 Episode 6 Review: "Focaccia" Serves Up Controlled Kitchen Mayhem

For its fifth and final season,The Bear continues serving up a parade of prickly pear issues for the restaurant staff of the same name, wrapped in the confines of one fateful day. Created by Christopher Storer, the farewell episodes have been presented this go-round as a five-star tasting menu, piling on the spice just to see how much one can take.

Starring Emmy-winners Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri as incredibly talented, yet decidedly insecure chefs, “Focaccia,” episode 6 of the popular original series, opens with guests finally arriving to the restaurant as the rain continues its relentless deluge over the city of Chicago.

Only this time, another kind of flood has taken over The Bear -- people, people, and more people. As we have seen in this season’s first five episodes, there is no time to bemoan the weather outside when the clock is ticking on the restaurant’s salvation inside. From jump, there is chaos in the kitchen, elevated voices, and scenes edited to drop like slides in a projector. Everyone is talking over everyone else. Chef Sydney (Edebiri) repeatedly asks her team to lower their voices while raising her own just to be heard. The dining room is packed and stacked with guests, people waiting in every corner as the staff rush to accommodate their much-needed paying patrons. Now would be as good a time as any to drop a “careful what you wish for” quip, but that would not be helpful.

What never stops in this episode is the movement of the characters from the front of the house to the back, with pulsating music layered in to pull you into the chaos. The anxiety settles in with each new frame, underscoring the growing sense that every second gone is one second too many.

Back in the kitchen, close-up camera angles capture the almost surgeon-like way White’s Chef Carmy cuts through the noise to prepare special tapas for guests now 15 minutes into their dinner wait. At the front of the house, Gary, played by Chicago native Corey Hendrix, and Richie, played by Emmy-nominee Ebon Moss-Bachrach, review the guest list, again, trying to figure out how they will move people around. It becomes apparent that  guest reservations, thought to be canceled, were not, leaving the team precious little time between each service to clear tables and reset. IYKYK.

Amid the chaos, Carmy’s sister Natalie (Abby Elliott) find a moment to slow down with her husband Pete, played by Second City alumnus Chris Witaske. Out back under the makeshift tarp, the couple talk in the rain recapping Pete’s night helping Uncle Jimmy, as the restaurant hemorrhages money. The couple’s moment in the rain turns rather special, to say the least. With wanton smiles and knowing looks, one thing leads to another. And yes, despite the elements, it is exactly what you are thinking.

Whether a glutton for punishment, or simply unable to read the room, back inside, Richie brings unexpected guests behind the scenes into the kitchen to kill wait time, much to the shock of his fellow chefs. Sydney stands wide-eyed, then pivots to Carmy to give the guests a tour. A host he is not, and the moment is every bit as awkward as you can imagine. White does a yeoman’s job showing Carmy as both befuddled and strangely calm under pressure. Neither Sydney nor Carmy is particularly good at public speaking in such instances, which is precisely why they are in the kitchen.

For his only scene of the episode, Oliver Platt’s Uncle Jimmy sits quietly in his office, lamenting having to possibly part with a family heirloom to continue generating cash for the building. All the while, the kitchen’s digital clock continues to tick-tock in the background. Every second counts.

As Richie continues workshopping extra table setups in his mind, out front, the plot thickens when an unexpected guest looking for Uncle Jimmy arrives. When Richie learns the gentleman is there to discuss that aforementioned family heirloom, he sends the guest away with the “promise” of a Jimmy reschedule. Feels like a throwaway moment, but I think we may revisit it again before it’s all said and done.

Back in the kitchen, Chef Carmy hands the guests off to Chef Luca to entertain. When Richie checks in, Chef Sydney questions him about a mysterious, unexpected guest table that has popped up on her dinner prep list. Suspicious, Syd asks just how many tables were actually canceled; Richie must come clean that number was less than one.

Without missing a beat, Richie pleads for understanding and what it means for the restaurant being able to serve every guest, on a night such as this. The brief speech is both impassioned and raw. And with it, the incredible character arc that is Cousin Richie comes into full view. With each passing episode of these past five years, Moss-Bachrach reaches deeper into Richie’s humanity to peel back yet another important layer of the character’s vulnerability. 

Though frustrated that her directives were ignored, Chef Sydney reluctantly agrees to accommodate the new table. Richie takes it and uses the approval to immediately ask for more tables. Give them an inch…You can literally feel Syd’s eye roll through the screen as Chef Carmy finally pipes in and asks his cousin where to put them. Cut to Richie setting up a chef’s table in the kitchen. Oy vey!

Across the room, we find Terry “Cheese” Cheddario (Elsie Fisher), the analytics wonderkid assisting Uncle Jimmy with the monetary mayhem of his investment, milling around. While inexplicably walking in the cooler, she finds the proposal to bring in much-needed revenue to the restaurant from Ebraheim, lying carelessly between the tuna and Wagyu. It is the profitability pitch the line cook, played by Edwin Lee Gibson, abandoned presenting in the season opener, following Carmy’s unexpected retirement announcement. Oddly enough, seems like we have not seen much of the character since.

Back at the pastry station, the tension that has been building throughout the day between Chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) and Chef Luca (Will Poulter) reaches a boiling point in front of the kitchen guests. Jess (Sarah Ramos) and Chef Carmy watch in wide-eyed horror as backstage comes on stage for the one-time pastry partners.  

Chef Marcus retreats out back; Chef Sydney follows. Outside, Sydney has another heart-felt co-worker conversation, reminding Marcus that he has talents are worth trusting and where the foundation of the restaurant truly lies. Marcus returns inside, and, for the second time in as many episodes, Chef Sydney must promise that they will all live to see another day at the restaurant.

Nevertheless, once alone, Edebiri’s Sydney finally succumbs to the emotion and madness of the day. Not only is she now the head chef, but, she also finds herself as the The Bear’s head counselor, head consoler, head mediator, head shoulder to cry on, and head inspirer to a Mötley Crüe of talented people who are really just awkward geniuses repeatedly needing reminders of how great they are. Whew! Each one of them, Sydney included, is barely holding onto this insatiable dream of making fetch happen while reality’s constant barrage of hard truths on this night says otherwise.

Enter Chef Carmy. Still learning how to be a better co-worker, he comes to check on Sydney after hearing her impromptu meltdown. As she talks to her soon-to-be-leaving partner, she tries to hold back tears behind words of frustration. There is tenderness in Carmy’s eyes because he has stood where she stands, but he also knows she can make magic where he could not. Before heading back in, Carmy admits the two of them are very different, and in that statement, you know he sees her talent and leadership clearly. Though their scenes this season have not brought elongated dialogue or big emotional moments, when Edebiri and White share the screen, you can literally taste the secret sauce of the show.

The episode closes as the team comes back together to discuss the last turn of the night, now faced with less food and more tables to serve. Looking pensively from one to the other, exhaustion has soaked through their throwback Beef shirts. They need to stretch the food one more time. When Chef Syd asks if there are any ideas on how to make it work — a voice in the group believes there may be one more.

From start to finishing fade to black, the episode is nonstop. Even in the short, quiet moments, there is this back-of-your-mind pressure to get back to work. The scenes cut back and forth with an energy that brings you in, chokes you out, and makes you feel every bit of the tension swelling inside these characters, as if you truly do have that front-row table to the kitchen chaos. And yet, for 28 solid minutes, you come to realize there is simply no comfortable place to find a seat at The Bear.

Written by Rene Gube and Rachel Wiggins, “Focaccia” lands as a narrative less about whether The Bear can survive one overbooked night and more about what it takes to keep showing up when everything is falling apart. Frantic, tender, and deeply anxious all at once, it understands that restaurants are built on food, yes, but also on timing, trust, sacrifice, ego, instinct, and the quiet mercy of someone deciding not to walk away.

Truly, that understanding is where this episode finds its core, not in that perfectly plated dish, but in the messy, human effort required to get it to the table.

Only two more courses remain for this Season 5 menu of The Bear. You have come this far; you must stay for dessert. It’s always the best part.

What did you think?

Change Image

• Loved it
• Hated it
• So/So