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TV Talk: 'The Bear' back in better shape, more story for former Pittsburgher star

Written By: Rob Owen

Spoiler alert: This column addresses Season 4 of “The Bear,” now available in its entirety, with mild thematic spoilers.

There was general consensus that Hulu’s restaurant dramedy “The Bear” declined in quality last summer during the show’s third season. But, good news: “The Bear” returns much improved, fresher and with more forward momentum in its fourth season, now streaming all 10 episodes.

This season the show emphasizes character growth as a timer ticks away, ostensibly counting down how long the restaurant can remain solvent but also foreshadowing endings more generally.

“There’s always a clock,” Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) says at one point.

Whether that countdown refers to the viability of a business, human mortality or how long a TV series will continue, viewers will watch and judge for themselves.

At the end of Season 3, Chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) got a glimpse at the Chicago Tribune review of his restaurant, but viewers saw only a few isolated words.

We learn whether that review was praise or a pan quickly in the new season, which also addresses Carmy’s relationship with former girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon) — Carmy seems to have taken an emotional laxative — and multiple family members who come together for an episode that’s a spiritual sequel to Season 2’s “Fishes,” the one set during a family Christmas Eve dinner.

This new family gathering episode runs more than an hour, but most new “Bear” episodes stick to around 30 minutes, a wise, disciplined choice.

This season “The Bear” connects best when it focuses on characters over plot, particularly Episode 4, focused on Syd (Ayo Edebiri). That episode’s guest star, Danielle Deadwyler, who starred in Netflix’s Pittsburgh-set “The Piano Lesson,” will surely earn a guest Emmy nomination a year from now for her role as Syd’s hairdresser.

“The Bear” advances plots involving Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Natalie (Abby Elliott), Carmy’s mom (Jamie Lee Curtis), Tiffany (Mt. Lebanon High School grad Gillian Jacobs) and Marcus (Lionel Boyce). Season 4 also gives more story to quiet, hardworking Ebraheim, played by former Pittsburgher Edwin Lee Gibson.

In a phone interview Monday, Gibson said this season depicts Ebraheim taking initiative that could save The Bear as a going concern.

“We get to see how he’s figured out his place in the ecosystem,” Gibson said, “and then it becomes something no one’s expecting of him.”

Ebraheim gets financial management advice from a new character, Albert, played by Rob Reiner.

“Hopefully people will view this season and look at the work Rob and I did together and say, ‘This is the comedy team we didn’t know we needed,’ ” Gibson said. “Being on set and working with him, it seemed really seamless. It might seem to people we had to have a lot of time to get this chemistry, but that was one of the things where we were just in sync from the jump.”

Gibson, who has a background in theater, said series creator Christopher Storer responded to Reiner and Gibson’s interaction on set.

“I think the crew might have had just as much fun as (Rob) and I did,” Gibson said. “Christopher was inventing things in the moment and (Rob) and I would just do it. You don’t get to play like that so much. Jamie Lee Curtis had our dinner the other night and she runs up to me and gives me a kiss and says, ‘Rob came back, and he can’t stop talking about you.’ ”

In addition to “The Bear,” Gibson, who earned an MFA in 2015 from Point Park University, wrote and directed a short film, “A Pink and Red Dress Made of Satin, Covered in Flowers, Mostly Rose,” which he wrote while at Point Park. It’s the story of a young woman in a border town dealing with love, mysticism and the secrets a dress holds to her family’s past. Gibson plans to enter it in film festivals in the months ahead.

By the end of Season 4 of “The Bear,” not all the stories conclude — a Marcus relationship plot hangs frustratingly unresolved — but one can imagine the series either ending or continuing forward.

“I think there will be more,” Gibson said. “What the show’s really done well is to create this perilous situation at the end, to actually create tension for the audience to have to sit with for an entire year. … On set there was a second wind, a new breath. I think people are going to be really excited about Season 4, and I think they’re gonna want more, and I think we are prepared to give them more.”