FX’s ‘The Bear’ makes discomfort weirdly enjoyable

/ spoilers ahead /

Your mother just drove through the wall of your house right in the middle of Christmas dinner. The hundreds of thousands of dollars you have been missing were sitting there all along… inside canned tomatoes. On probably the most important and hectic night of your life, you get locked in the freezer and miss all of it. ‘The Bear’ sometimes feels like a fever dream, and sometimes it hits you like a ton of bricks, and that’s only a small part of why I love it so much.

This is neither a synopsis nor a review (although can be sort of treated as one), but rather an outpouring of thoughts a short while after watching one of my new all-time favorite pieces of modern TV.

The plot seemed to me as underwhelming at best, and tired and predictable at worst in the beginning: but not for long, as I was soon enlightened by ‘The Bear’s portrayal of problematic humanity, a neverending and high-pitched whirlwind of everyday life, and the masterful display of some of the best acting I have seen in years.

But let’s back up a bit. ‘The Bear’ is a show about people who cook, and not about the food that is being cooked, just like it is not about some abstract vision of ‘life’ viewed from the third person, but rather a fragile and intimate experience of each of its characters' inner…