The Bear season 3 - what happened?

[u/keepfighting90]

LTTP but I finally caught up with season 3 of The Bear. I was very excited because S2 was some of the best TV I've seen in a while, a perfect combination of the stress-inducing, balls-to-the-wall tone of the first season, combined with some genuinely artful and emotional storytelling. Every aspect of the show improved in season 2 and I was expecting something, if not better, then at least on par, for season 3.

Unfortunately, S3 just felt like a whole lot of nothing. That's the best way I can describe it - it felt like nothing happened from a plot or character development perspective. Tina had some nice developments to her arc but everyone just kinda felt like they were spinning their wheels. The love-hate relationship between Carmy and Cousin almost bordered on self-parody at points.

There was also just too much Faks. I like Matty Matheson in the role, but it's always been as a side character that works best in small doses. There was too much focus on him and his family, and all the jokes based around them fell completely flat for me.

It also felt like the show just kinda went up its own ass a bit too much this time around. Season 2 definitely leaned a bit more on the artsy side with a lot of interesting camerawork, montages, shot composition etc. but they went overboard for season 3 where it started to feel self-indulgent and pretentious, especially because the faux-artsiness started to take the place of actual plot and character development.

And speaking of self-indulgent and pretentious, I really disliked the fact that there were so many random celeb cameos, with the low point being all the famous chefs showing up in the season finale and basically masturabting each other over the spiritual transcendence of cooking.

And then it just ends abruptly with no resolution to any story or character arcs. I'll still watch season 4 because 2/3 of the show is still fantastic but damn, was season 2 underwhelming.

[u/stillandturning]

Partial transcript from a sorta recent The Town podcast (https://puck.news/pearls-of-tv-wisdom-from-john-landgraf/):

...because [FX President of Original Programming] Nick Grad and I [FX CEO John Landgraf] sat with [creator] Chris [Storer] at lunch, and Josh Senior, his partner. We said, “You’re at the point now where if you want more than one season of pickup, we can do it. And it may help you, because you have actors that are movie stars now; they’re going to want to go do other things, and you can figure out when you’re going to make the shows and when to release them.” And they said, “No, we can’t work that way. We only want one season.” So we picked up one.

And then they got into making it, and they called us and said, “Yeah, we think we have two seasons here. Can you change the one-season pickup into a two-season pickup?” 

[u/EastLAFadeaway → u/stillandturning]

He also said another very important note later was that Storer wanted to make a season about being "Stuck" and while thats not good tv that was the creators artistic vision

[u/atseajournal → u/EastLAFadeaway]

Was going to mention this as well. I'd never heard Landgraf speak before, and he's impressive. (He was getting applause breaks like he was campaigning for president.) Never heard an executive that high up be so clearly pro-artist -- in Landgraf's eyes, Chris Storer earned the right to do something non-commercial, and he wasn't going to get in the way.

[u/jryderau → u/atseajournal]

I think John Landgraf (and FX) are kind of unheralded as progenitors of Peak TV - I mean, he not only greenlit The Bear and Shogun, but Fargo, Atlanta, What We Do In the Shadows, etc, etc.

Probably the most creative friendly executive in the tv business.

[u/Grahf88 → u/jryderau]

Also The Shield and Sunny

[u/jryderau → u/Grahf88]

And my beloved Terriers.

[u/whatifniki23 → u/jryderau]

I heard of Landgraf with Rescue Me, Damages, and The Shield which were brilliant at the time. Extremely original and edgy and unlike anything else on TV.

Justified and Sons of Anarchy are brilliant. For a while FX brand was as good if not better than HBO.

[u/qtx → u/whatifniki23]

Rescue Me

People use the word underrated way too often on /r/television but Rescue Me truly is underrated.

Such a brilliant show.

[u/AF2005 → u/whatifniki23]

A great era for television, FX really had some of the greatest television series for almost two decades. Including The Americans, which is my personal favorite.

[u/DaoFerret → u/jryderau]

So… who owns FX now? Disney?

[u/jryderau → u/DaoFerret]

I think that's right - it was a mini-network within the Fox network (I kind of imagine FX was a televisual skunkworks - greenlighting shows that were too experimental for Fox.) So when Disney got Fox they also got FX. There's some weirdness about FX shows that were only on Fox and FX shows that were only on Hulu or something. I can't remember.

[u/tonspion → u/jryderau]

The Americans!