Can <i>The Bear</i> Survive Without Carmy Berzatto?

Spoilers below.

If the season 4 finale of The Bear is to be believed, Carmy Berzatto no longer loves his restaurant. He definitely does not love himself—he hasn’t for a long time. He believes he needs to leave the restaurant industry as a whole, so he can discover his identity outside a kitchen. But is The Bear really the problem with its namesake chef?

The finale episode, aptly titled “Goodbye,” takes place in one drawn-out sequence, set amidst the garbage cans and corrugated metal fencing behind the Chicago fine-dining establishment known as The Bear. Show creator Christopher Storer wastes no time making it clear that Jeremy Allen White’s protagonist is eyeing the exit without having first consulted his partner, Sydney (or any of their teammates). His reasons, however selfish as they might seem, have some grounding in logic: Carmy is the genius behind The Bear, but he’s also the primary engine behind its faults. He has behaved like a “maniac,” according to Sydney. Carmy suggests he is a maniac, or rather he knows no other way of behaving. If he leaves, maybe he can change.

All of this tracks with what season 4 establishes throughout its initial nine episodes: Post-refrigerator incident and post-Chicago Tribune review, Carmy has realized he is the discordant note within The Bear. Carmy wants to make amends. Carmy wants to “participate” more, to be “better.” As he explains to Sydney during their nearly 15-minute-long shouting match, he has set up “barriers” against his own self-improvement, using the restaurant as a sort of laundering scheme for his traumas and anxieties. By transforming these traumas and anxieties into pristine dishes, he doesn’t have to address them; by the time they’re served, he can’t even recognize them anymore.

But such chaos isn’t sustainable, and finally Carmy knows it. His solution, then, is to leave The Bear behind altogether. As Sydney learns in the lead-up to “Goodbye,” Carmy has asked his brother-in-law and lawyer, Pete, to alter The Bear’s partnership agreement so that his name is no longer on the document. Should they proceed with signing the papers, ownership of the restaurant will split: A 50-percent stake will go to Sydney and Natalie, Carmy’s sister, and the other half to their benefactor, Uncle Jimmy. Carmy will remove himself from the mess he helped make.

The problem is, The Bear has spent four seasons now building up the narrative worldview that a restaurant is like a family. The people within its walls did not necessarily choose to come together, nor do they necessarily leave their baggage at the door. But they are never alone, and together they create an atmosphere of precision, pleasure, and unity that is difficult to replicate elsewhere or under different circumstances. Season 3 took pains to establish and re-establish this connective tissue specific to restaurants, frequently spending precious screen time hammering the theme home. And for Carmy, whose biological family is a mess, the family he forged within a restaurant setting has provided him not only with a distraction from his trauma, but with the kind of relationships that might help him heal it.

Why, then, would he abandon this family right as they’re starting to understand one another? In the finale episode, both Sydney and Richie hurl these frustrations at Carmy, accusing him of once again “running” away, fleeing the people who love him. He swears that’s not what’s happening this time. But isn’t it, though? Season 4 establishes that The Bear is operational. Even on an individual level, the team members are thriving: Marcus has been awarded a Best New Chef honor from Food & Wine magazine; Ebra has made The Original Beef worthy of franchising; Tina has shaved minutes off her cook time; and Sydney’s scallop dish is the stuff of “phone eats first” memes all across Instagram. However, as Computer (Jimmy’s math-inclined right-hand man) tells Natalie, the question isn’t whether the restaurant can keep going. It’s why should it?

The answer, judging by The Bear’s continually reinforced thesis, is because the people running this restaurant need one another. (In case you need reminding, they’re a family!) If Carmy chooses to leave them—even with the best of intentions, or for the right reasons—then what does that mean for their fragile synergy?

Even Sydney isn’t sure how to sort out Carmy’s reasoning. He claims they finally have “the right team in place,” and yet, she points out, “You’re removing yourself.” He insists that his issues shouldn’t have to be her problem, and yet he’s leaving her to deal with the problems he created. He tells her he doesn’t “love” being in the kitchen anymore, and yet his behavior indicates otherwise: When Carm finally goes to visit his estranged mother, Donna, in season 4’s penultimate episode, his truest act of love is cooking her a whole roast chicken he perfected while working at the French Laundry. (This is not the behavior of a man who’s lost all desire to be a chef.) Then, he informs Sydney that he doesn’t have anything to “draw on” or “pull from” outside of his work, and here, finally, we reach what might actually be the truth.

Having to parse through which of Carmy’s statements are true, and which are his stumbling approximations of the truth, is what makes him both a fascinating character and a frustrating one. It’s also what makes “Goodbye” both touching and convoluted. By the time Richie steps in to break up Carmy and Sydney’s debate—only to dive into the fray himself—the dialogue has circled itself repeatedly. Is the problem Carmy or the restaurant? Is Carmy putting himself or the restaurant first? Are they a family or aren’t they?

Carmy tells Richie he’s “retiring.” He’s “done.” In other words, he’s burnt out, spent, and sorry. Together, the “cousins” hash out their resentments as Syd watches, smoking a cigarette she’s not even certain how to light. When Richie asks if Carm thinks it’s “wrong” to walk away from cooking, Carm doesn’t answer the question. He replies, “Outside of the kitchen, I don’t know what I’m like. But the restaurant, it’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be fine.”

By this point in the episode, I’d already come to the conclusion that the problem with Carmy isn’t The Bear. It’s that, unlike his colleagues, he hasn’t a clue how to sustain a life that contains both The Bear and the world outside it. His thinking is always black-and-white: Either he is the owner of The Bear, and the restaurant must come at the expense of all else, or he leaves The Bear—and, with it, the people who’ve cared for him when he refused to care for himself.

The Bear can survive without Carmen, that much is clear. Sydney knows how to steer the ship, and her fear of failure will drive her story arc forward as she assumes the mantle of chef and owner. But I’m not convinced Carmy can thrive without The Bear. As Natalie puts it to him earlier in the season, it’s okay for Carmy not to love restaurants anymore. But now that he knows he’s capable of such love, he needs to learn how to let it in—outside the kitchen, but perhaps inside it, too.

My hope, for The Bear’s sake as a series, is that Carmy will not disappear as his peers assume the spotlight. Perhaps he’ll step away from his role as head chef but continue as an advisor, ceding his throne to Sydney, Natalie, and Richie but not abandoning the kingdom altogether. (For what it’s worth, the finale seems to imply this outcome.) In my estimation, that would be the truest fulfillment of this character’s storyline: Carmy learns how to confront himself, but also how to stay in one place without feeling stuck. Of all people, he should understand a kitchen is an ever-evolving organism, capable of remaking itself again and again. It’s like a recipe. Or, you know...like a family.