Green (The Bear)

Echoing Carmy's cooking-show nightmare from an earlier season, Sydney has a dream in which she demonstrates an insanely complex and unattainably expensive dish for a studio audience. It begins pouring rain indoors and a rioting mob breaks in, and she concludes her gritted-teeth monologue with a declaration that if the dish fails "it's no worry at all, no trouble, really. You'll just be a complete waste of space and a failure and a disappointment to anybody who's devoted any time or energy to you." She keeps smiling through the crisis while the camera zooms in on a stuffed blue teddy bear drenched in the studio rain. Then Sydney wakes up on a stage under falling snow in an empty theater, and flees, trailing glitter behind her, and emerges into a hot-looking space where she seems to be running on a treadmill, panicked but getting nowhere. Syd wakes up in her apartment bedroom, bundled into a green sweatshirt, next to a collection of post-it note reminders on the wall-facing window beside her bed.

A montage of dishes from the restaurant, paid bills, and Carmy chopping vegetables is accompanied by the song "I Got You Babe" from Groundhog Day. From a spot along the shore of Lake Michigan, Sydney calls Shapiro (Adam Shapiro) to decline his job offer; he reacts negatively, telling her it is an idiotic decision, and that she will remain a mid-tier chef going down with a sinking ship.

Natalie and Pete (Chris Witaske) enjoy some blissful time cuddling in bed with their infant before a phone call from Donna interrupts the moment. Sydney makes sure her dad (Robert Townsend) is squared away with medication for his heart condition. Luca (Will Poulter) looks for a cookbook in the office and finds a photo of himself, Carmy, and Chef Terry (Olivia Colman) from when they all worked together at Ever. Marcus stands up his estranged father. Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), who has been struggling to meet the goal of preparing pasta within three minutes, goes to Luca for help. Richie and Sydney stare mournfully at the expiring doomsday clock, they shake hands and agree to "leave it all on the dance floor." The Fak brothers help Sweeps (Corey Hendrix) with a blind taste test of Italian red wines.

In a callback to Carmy cooking expensive Wagyu beef for Chef Terry, and Luca reminiscing that it was very stressful for him to cook Wagyu beef in Carmy's kitchen, Sydney works on cooking Wagyu in the Bear kitchen. She asks Carmy to check her work; he tests for doneness by touch and tells her "five more seconds," which means it's all but perfect. In another callback to his training under Chef Terry, he gives her a spoon as a signifier of trust and empowerment.

Richie tells Jess (Sarah Ramos) about Mikey and the relationship dynamics of the original Beef crew. Sweeps and Sydney go over wine pairings for the evening; he reminds her that "delicious is impressive," which is what she told him while making family meal on her first day staging at the Original Beef of Chicagoland. Carmy and Sydney agree that they have a set nine-course dinner menu, "all hits." Carmy seems to finally be satisfied with his lamb dish, and Sydney makes a point to photograph his plate using her phone's camera. Natalie comes in to complain that Donna is hassling her about a "photo book," Carmy initially has no idea what she is talking about but eventually realizes it's the box of old family photos he found in the basement. Sydney agrees to "hold down the fort" while Carmy delivers the photos to Donna so she stops pestering Sugar. Carmy does not want to go but Syd encourages him to "just get it over with."

Carmy drives to the suburbs in the restaurant's decades-old minivan. He parks on his childhood street, Central Ave., and calls Claire (Molly Gordon). They discuss how the neighborhood is "very much the same," and Claire recalls an incident when Donna almost burned down the Berzatto house. Claire teases Carmy about being nervous sometimes. She hangs up because she has to work but then she calls back to be supportive of him seeing his mom, and in return he tells her he thinks she is wonderful.

Natalie and Computer (Brian Koppelman) go over the Bear's finances, which are improving thanks to wine, Sydney's scallop, and the beef window, but their future is still in peril despite the cost cuts; Computer asks whether the restaurant is worth saving. Natalie looks at the collection of photos of the Bear family on the board in the office and sees a reason to keep going. Box in hand, Carmy then reluctantly approaches Donna's (Jamie Lee Curtis) threshold for the first time in years and knocks on the door.

The countdown clock shown shows 19 then 18 then 17 hours remaining, meaning it is roughly Saturday, October 7, 2023. The Bear-kitchen action of "Green," "Tonnato," and "Goodbye" all seem to take place over the course of one day. Jess (Sarah Ramos) tells Richie that rain is forecast for the evening, which may mean some no-shows. Luca has been staging for two weeks.

• Emmanuel's doctors have him on children's aspirin and beta blockers to manage his heart disease.
• When anxious, Sugar breathes in the "hee hee hee" pattern Donna aggressively taught her while she was in labor in "Ice Chips."
• For much of seasons one, two, and three, Carmy often seems to "stim" in the kitchen with an "emotional-support spoon" he carries around with him.^[1] Camera operator Gary Malouf stated in an interview: "[Our job is] find those textures that the actors are so good at bringing. [In season one], Jeremy would just be waiting to go while they reset all the food, but he'd keep tapping that spoon like crazy—someone shoot that. We were constantly trying to find these little details that could help build the world around us without ever feeling like we were in anybody's way."^[1] In the season two episode "Sundae," while Sydney is developing a ravioli dish in the borrowed Elske kitchen, one shot of Syd at work indicates that she had temporarily adopted Carmy's habit of keeping a spoon at the small of his back. In the season three premiere episode "Tomorrow," the origin story of the spoon is told: once upon a time, mentor Chef Terry (Olivia Colman) ceded control of saucing a dish, tacitly acknowledging Carmy as a worthy successor, at which time she quietly told him, "keep the spoon." In "Green," Carmy, in turn, passes the torch to Sydney, handing her his "emotional-support spoon" as a gesture of trust in anticipation of his forthcoming departure from day-to-day management of the Bear. In 2024 the New York Times surmised that Carmy's spoon is a Gary Kunz-brand sauce spoon, which is "a workhorse of restaurant kitchens" and "beloved by professional chefs".^[2]
• "The van" appears to be a mid-1990s Plymouth Voyager Sport.
• Richie reminds Neil Fak of their hand sign for "come here," which Garrett (Andrew Lopez) taught the group as one of their key non-verbal signals in the season premiere episode "Groundhogs." Off-screen, Sweeps (Corey Hendrix) says "that means 'I love you,' I think," but Richie corrects him and then states, "This is a restaurant, a workspace, there's no I love you." However, in season two, Marcus uses manual communication and mouths words at the same time to communicate with his terminally ill, non-verbal mother. In "Beef" he gestures to his hand and says "Itchy?" before he puts lotion on her, and he touches his forehead and says "Towel?" before putting a damp towel on her forehead. In "Honeydew" he signs again, he uses the same hand sign as "Come here" when he kisses his mother goodbye and tells her "I love you" before heading off to Copenhagen, Denmark. So in Marcus' family, at least, that hand sign does mean "I love you."

Joanna Calo and Christopher Storer wrote the teleplay for "Green."^[3]

Richie and Jess (Sarah Ramos) immediately connected when they first met in "Forks." By the time of "Green," Richie's personal growth is on full display as he "pauses to ask Jessica if he's oversharing, showing a level of emotional awareness," leading a Collider writer to comment that "at this considerable, slow-burning pace, it's safe to say they might hold real romantic potential that neither feels forced nor rushed."^[4]

The episode begins with a dream sequence where Sydney appears as an Ina Garten-esque television-host version of herself.^[5] The beginning of the dream is similar to Carmy's cooking show nightmare from "Braciole."^[6] The title sequence of Sydney's televised kitchen nightmare features a Barefoot Contessa-inspired Hamptons beach romp.^[5] Syd channels Garten with a bob-cut hairstyle, a "tendency to overestimate her viewer's time and resource availability," and "off-the-cuff references to high-end materials and ingredients."^[5]

According to the show's sound producer "the wind and water flooding the set, cabinets banging open and shut, and general mayhem, [were] all...actual on-set effects, as opposed to CGI."^[7] The sound team thus needed to accommodate "a Ritter fan off to the side that's blowing stuff all over. There are water effects. There's hydraulics slapping the cabinet doors open and closed."^[8] The sound team suggested having an overhead boom mic drop into the Barefoot Contessa dream sequence, a nod to the use of such microphones on an actual cooking show.^[8] The sound for Sydney's one-shot monologue was recorded on a Sennheiser MKH415 microphone on a Fisher Model 2 boom, along with a body microphone placed on Edebiri, two microphones "rigged above the table," and another microphone "hidden in the tabletop."^[7] According to Scott D. Smith, head of The Bear sound recording department, "Somehow, the post sound crew was able to extract something usable from all these sources, without resorting to ADR."^[7]

After the Ina Garten sequence, the sound of a Lux-brand "long-ring minute minder" buzzes Sydney from the cooking show into another setting, equally distressing. She finds herself standing alone and exposed on the stage of either the Music Box Theatre,^[9][10] or the Chicago Theatre.^[11] The soundtrack leaves behind Ina's classical-music theme song for "instrumental music that transforms Sydney's culinary fantasy into a confused and anxiety-ridden experience."^[12]

• Marcus (Lionel Boyce) arrived at Lou Mitchell's, a landmark diner on Jackson Boulevard, for a planned meeting with his dad but ultimately he does not go inside the restaurant to meet him.^[13] An exterior shot of Lou Mitchell's had previously appeared in the "Next" opening-credits montage in season three.^[13]
• The scenes at Donna's house were filmed in Evanston, Illinois.^[14]

• During her Ina Garten nightmare, Sydney is wearing a Ralph Lauren half-zip cashmere sweater.^[15]
• Sydney turns down Shapiro's job offer while wearing a vintage 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics baseball cap.^[16]
• Sugar is costumed in a Proenza Schouler White Label Natalee maxi dress for her scenes in "Green," "Tonnato," and "Goodbye."^[17]
• Beginning when she arrives for work at the restaurant in "Green" and continuing through "Goodbye," all of which take place on the same day, Sydney wears the same Musa-brand bandanna she wore on her first day working at the Beef and when she presented her cola-braised short ribs and risotto dish to Carmy in "Ceres" in season one.^[18][19]

The songs used in this episode are "Song of the Barefoot Contessa" by Hugo Winterhalter and his orchestra, "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher, "Baby, I Love You" by the Ronettes, "Square One" by Tom Petty, "Long Ride Home" by Patty Griffin, "Strange Currencies" by R.E.M., and "Western Ford Getaway" by Elton John.^[20]

• "I Got You Babe" is reprised from "Groundhogs," but here it plays "over a montage of beautifully plated dishes, stamped 'paid' invoices, ingredient order lists, clock countdowns, and crisp produce being expertly prepped. The sequence is bright and buoyant, perfectly matching the song's playful optimism."^[21]
• "Strange Currencies" reprises after Carmy promises to find Claire's sweatshirt and while Jess and Richie talk about how "honesty is sanity" and that Richie was glad that Carmy came back ("I thought that he was mad at me"), and then as Richie ever so graciously adjusts Jess' tie. The song "Strange Currencies" has been described as "the show's emotional Rosetta Stone."^[22]
• "Western Ford Gateway" is "vintage and rarely heard—a deep cut for deep introspection."^[22]

The Bear sommelier, Gary Woods, appears to have mastered wine pairings. One wine website described them as "perfect,"^[23] another called them "spot on."^[24] According to Molly Harris of the website TastingTable.com, on the last day of service before Computer's doomsday clock runs out:^[23]

"...the show's wine list includes one white wine, one rosé, and two robust reds...Starting with the lightest wines on the menu, Sweeps mentions two, the white and rosé, by the Napa, California-based winery, Hourglass. These include their sauvignon blanc, a blend of sauvignon blanc and Sémillon, and their rosé, which is not currently available as it's a limited release. Next up is a cerrati Barolo, also called cerrati Nebbiolo, by Tenuta Cucco, a winery in the Piedmont region of Italy. Both Sydney and Sweeps call this a 'heavy' wine, while the resident sommelier explains that it's a 'beautiful' wine as well. Last mentioned is the Pastourelle de Clerc Milon bottle, a Pauillac Bordeaux that blends cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot, and carmenère. These wines are so perfect because of their range. In his prep rundown with Sydney, he names the white and rosé wines with the caviar component, topped with lilacs, that the chef mentions. These wines are light enough to work well with lighter dishes like fish, Sydney's popular scallop dish, and the delicate caviar and lilac ingredients. Meanwhile, the red wines are heavier options that can stand up to dishes like steak and lamb."^[23]

The episode shows Sweeps shelving two bottles of Serego Alighieri 'Vaio Armaron' Amarone della Valpolicella on the shelf, one dated 1988 and the other 2001.^[24] Sweeps is also working, with encouragement from Ted and Neil Fak, on distinguishing aged wines, which "aren't generally on a beginning sommelier's radar."^[24] Wine Enthusiast criticized the "blind" tasting as a gaffe, because examining a wine's color is often key to determining vintage.^[24]

Pamela Vachon of Wine Enthusiast posited that this is a relatively new sommelier's imposter syndrome showing:^[24]

"Imposter syndrome is a recurring theme all season. Carmy realizes that he's being outshined by his prodigal sous and pastry chefs. Tina struggles to break the three-minute pasta barrier. Richie searches for some elegant monologue to motivate his front-of-house team. ('On my signal, unleash hell!') Or, as comic relief goon Neil Fak puts it in a rare moment of introspection: 'This place is fancy. The people that come in here are fancy. I’m not fancy.'...Imposter syndrome may be at play for Sweeps and other characters in this season's The Bear, but so is over-delivery—like a great value $50 wine—all of them punching above their weight class in the quest to protect a restaurant that they believe is worth fighting for."^[24]

In this episode Computer tells Natalie that alcohol sales are a highlight of the restaurant's current financial situation. Profit margins on restaurant food are often only four to five percent, which means that a restaurant's higher-margin beverage program contributes a great deal to any potential profits above gross revenue.^[25]

The A.V. Club gave "Green" a B grade, noting "The Bear has one more night of service before the doomsday clock ticks down to zero. But no one's acting like it's an ending—and not because they're in denial. It's because after all the hell they've been through, the Bears are finally seeing things with clear eyes."^[11] Vulture rated it four out of five stars, saluting Syd's decision to reject Shapiro as a key moment, especially because her choice triggers Shapiro to criticize her for "'choosing to stay on a ship that's literally sinking,' and while the latter might technically be true, he can fuck right off with that noise. Syd made the decision that was right in her heart and she made it without knowing whatever other sexier, extenuating terms might be in that Docusign. That's how you know she's a ride-or-die Bear, period."^[26]

Decider.com declared Richie "toast" in regard to his feelings for Chef Jess, marveled that Sydney has not had more nightmares considering her emotional investment in the Bear, and wondered "Why did I enjoy this episode?" speculating that it was a lower-key relief after the spectacle of the wedding.^[6]

Hello Beautiful columnist Keyaira Boone found the Sydney–Shapiro scene pivotal, writing, "Shapiro promised Sydney autonomy, but his actions prove he isn't capable of seeing her as his professional equal. His performative allyship shadows his every good intention...Shapiro pretended to value Sydney more than he did...Sometimes, a well-meaning white person can be more dangerous than an outwardly hateful one. That said, the Berzattos are broke, and it is truly awful that Sydney has to choose between sustainable income and emotional security."^[27]

Washington Post's Sonia Rao commented "The Barefoot Contessa theme music sets off some sort of Pavlovian response in me. I'm actually also listening to the audiobook of Ina Garten's memoir right now, so that might have been my favorite moment of the entire season. It reminded me of how funny Edebiri can be, too, given her actual background in comedy. Let Sydney be happy!"^[28]

In 2025, Vulture ranked "Green" as 25th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear.^[29]

• List of The Bear episodes
• The Bear season four
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