Food Is Both A Love Language And Act Of Self-Sabotage On The Bear Season 2
Contains spoilers for "The Bear" Season 2
There's no denying how powerful food can be. It can bring people together or, as it happens in FX's "The Bear," it can push people apart. In Season 2, Episode 2, Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) and her father Emmanuel (Robert Townsend) are at a diner sharing a piece of chocolate cake and reminiscing about Sydney's late mother on her birthday. As they laugh together, the father and daughter appear closer than ever. But in the next moment, food becomes a wedge between them in the form of Sydney and Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto's (Jeremy Allen White) restaurant venture. Emmanuel reveals his doubts about its likelihood of success by suggesting she can take up her Uncle Monty's offer and work at Boeing.
While the characters in "The Bear" are passionate about what they do and have the drive to make their dreams a reality, many struggle to connect with others outside of the food business. In Episode 3, we see Carmy in group therapy talking about forgetting what fun is because he's so caught up in opening the restaurant. He reconnects with Claire (Molly Gordon), which gives him some social engagement unrelated to the restaurant, but food still plays a part in their relationship. As an act of love, Carmy cooks dinner for her after she reveals that no one ever has. But when he ends up in a disastrous situation at the restaurant, his first instinct is to sabotage the one thing outside food that makes him happy.
Both Carmy and his mother use cooking for validation
In many ways, food is the most practical love language. When we are celebrating a loved one's birthday, we present them with a cake or their favorite dessert. When we want to reconnect with friends, we often suggest meeting for dinner or brunch. In "The Bear," we see Christmas dinner at the Berzattos from years past, and it's a scene many of us are familiar with. Mama Donna Berzatto (Jamie Lee Curtis) has been cooking Feast of the Seven Fishes dinner since daybreak, along with the entire Christmas meal. Despite Natalie "Sugar" Berzatto (Abby Elliott) offering to help, Donna insists she doesn't need any. But as Donna's alcoholism gets the best of her, she soon becomes drunk and belligerent and ends up driving her car through the house.
Carmy and Donna have more in common than he's willing to recognize. Both he and his mother have a passion for cooking for others and a need for validation. Donna expresses this through her annual extravagant Christmas meal, and Carmy does the same with his quest to create a world-renowned fine dining establishment. But after we see the emotional scars Carmy and Sugar carry from those yearly holiday meals and their mother in general, we hope that Carmy is able to learn from that chaos and remember his passion for food as love, and not a hindrance.