A man dressed in a white T-shirt, jeans and a dark blue apron walks along an empty bridge at night.
In the middle of the bridge, a cage from which a bear slowly emerges.
The man abruptly awakens from the nightmare and both he and the bystanders are thrown face-first into frenzied chaos.
Invoices, orders, constant noise, crossed conversations, complaints, reproaches, yelling.
The clock strikes six (in the morning).
When the chapter ends 25 minutes later, the clock shows half past two.
This is the moment in which the spectator, who very probably is still not clear about what is happening or what the characters are called (is it possible that they are all called Chef, “yes, chef”?), can finally breathe, take air, lower the heart rate.
The final silence invites us to become aware of the level of stress and anxiety that the images, the sound —the music perfectly accompanies the images— and their montage have transferred to the other side of the screen.
You don't need a horror or suspense story.
Just a kitchen.
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The Bear
(the first season is available in its entirety on Disney+) is the latest little gem on television.
The chaos of its start reflects the adrenaline that is felt between the stoves of a restaurant.
The anxiety and stress experienced by the characters are transferred to the viewer, while the connections between them are cooked over a slow fire, their motivations and their past are inferred and we are participants in the achievements and failures they experience.
The best and the worst, drama and comedy, the ups and downs of life, condensed into eight episodes.
That alienated rhythm that the entire series shows reaches its peak in a seventh chapter that includes an adrenaline-pumping and virtuous 17-minute sequence shot with the camera accompanying the different characters through the narrow corridors of the kitchen.
Ayo Edebiri, Sydney in 'The Bear'.
The man in the white shirt and dark blue apron is Carmen (a hypnotic Jeremy Allen White), chef of the best restaurant in the world who returns to Chicago to take over the family restaurant, a sandwich shop, after the death of her brother.
The business is in the red and its workers go like a headless chicken between stoves.
Meanwhile, Carmen looks for a way to redirect the situation, deals with his anxiety attacks and with the thousand questions that the death of his brother has left her, whose duel has not yet ended.
With episodes that are around half an hour long (impossible to withstand that level of stress for a full hour), what is undoubtedly one of the best series of the year moves between the dirtiest drama and comedy with a suffocating pace.
The camera is careful to show close-ups of food and to hear the ingredients cooking.
You can almost smell and feel the grease on the walls in this series turned immersive experience that elevates itself by putting the characters and their emotions ahead of the action to seek the viewer's connection with those cooks (“yes, chef! ”) who, at that pace and with that intensity of work, forge a dysfunctional family with no blood ties that scream at each other and realize that they have no choice but to support each other.
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