creature extraordinare

"I just don't know if it ever meant anything to him": Mikey's psyche and his relationships

On its face, 5x00 Gary is a character study to tell us more about the nature of Mikey and Richie's relationship and, to give us insights into Mikey that could be applied to his relationships with other folks in the show. One of those characters is Sydney.

Lots of people here have theorised about the similarities between Syd and Mikey. As many parallels as there are, there is at least one crucial difference between the two of them that 5x00 Gary really brought to the fore: where "nothing fucking matters" for Michael, everything matters for Syd because she puts everything she has into everything that she can (as she tells her father in 2x09 Omelette).

Or put another way:

For Mikey, everything is pointless, while for Sydney, (and indeed the thesis of the entire show) every second counts.

Above left: Mikey and Sherri contemplating life's futility in 5x00 Gary next to a toilet that thankfully, doesn't explode. Above right: Sydney in 2x09 Omelette embodying the completely opposite ethos and imbuing meaning across her life, however she can.

This is another point in the The Bear where Harold Ramis' (yes, the Harold that Richie gives props to while admiring Carmy's homemade Ecto Cooler in 1x04 Dogs) Groundhog Day serves as a touchstone. On top of the mirroring that happens between Sydcarmy and Ritaphil, there are similarities between Phil's struggle during the film with both Carmy and Mikey's inner turmoil. Mikey's refrain during 5x00 Gary of "nothing matters" is echoed in the clip of Groundhog Day shown to us at the start of season 4, in 4x01:

Carmy watches as Phil describes feeling that he was stuck in the same place, doing the same things and that nothing he did matters. Like Mikey, Phil commits suicide - several times - but because Groundhog Day is a fantasy, Phil doesn't remain dead for long. For Phil, the despondency that results in him taking his own life was because he had no control over his environment. No matter what Phil did, he remained stuck in the same day. For almost the entire movie, Phil appears to have no control over his circumstances.

In Mikey's case, growing up surrounded by chaos, there was also a lack of control. As children, we already have so little control over our fates, which can be terrifying enough. We're dependent on caregivers for our survival, we don't have the ability to vote etc. One of the keys to good parenting is the creation of safe spaces so that children feel comfortable enough to test the world around them - to try and fail and sometimes succeed, but regardless, be given the opportunity to assert some level of control over the creation of their worlds. I've talked here about how The Bear spotlights the quiet work that good caregivers do to create those spaces.

By all accounts in the show, the Berzatto kids did not experience this safety. They were not afforded the space to test their world and have a soft place to land when things didn't work out. Sugar was mocked relentlessly by her mother for stuffing up a gravy recipe. Donna made no bones about how personally affronted she was by Carmy's slow birth into the world (which I'm almost certain she used against him as a child). In 5x00 Gary, Mikey recounts how scared he was as a child when subjected to Donna's erratic mood swings:

One of the most striking things to me about 5x00 Gary, was that we finally see the vulnerable child behind Mikey's bombastic alpha-male facade. We've gotten glimpses of him in 2x06 Fishes (recall Mikey's despair in the pantry after talking to Carmy about opening the restaurant or the hurt in his eyes during Lee's vitriolic tirade) but in this episode, we finally hear about the impact of a life of abuse on the eldest Berzatto child. The fear Mikey felt as a child was palpable in that bathroom stall. It was evident in the fidgeting of his fingers, the vulnerability in his voice and the stutter of his words; the latter, a tell that his younger brother also carries.

This vulnerability from Mikey is on display only one other time in 5x00 Gary (and it was played so quietly by Bernthal that you'd be forgiven for missing it): when Richie tries to convince Mikey to go day drinking with him. After yelling at Richie for even suggesting the idea, Mikey's response starts to soften when he says,

Why are you pressuring me?

This shift in the tone of the conversation struck me. Previously, Mikey was pushing back aggressively with his focus on Richie and what a bad idea going into the bar was. But once Mikey asks Richie not to pressure him, the focus shifts. Its no longer about Richie; it centers Mikey's discomfort at being asked to go into the bar.

I think at this point in the episode, Mikey has become triggered by Richie's behaviour because of what he says to Richie later in the conversation after Richie asks Mikey how he looks:

You look like a fucking barbarian. You look like my father.

We know that Mikey does not think highly of Paper Berzatto. In fact he goes so far as to tell Carmy that their father was an asshole, in 4x01 Groundhogs:

We know that Papa Berzatto had substance abuse issues based on a convo that Cicero has with Carmy in season 1. During 1x04 Dogs, Cicero tells Carmy that the last time he spoke to Papa Berzatto they had a gnarly fight over the latter's drug and alcohol abuse and gambling:

Its also likely that Papa Berzatto took Mikey to pubs as a child where he would have witnessed his father's alcohol addiction firsthand. During 4x01 Groundhogs, Carmy remembers an "Irish place" that his father liked. Mikey quickly tells Carmy that the place was a "shithole" that "smelled like a dumpster" and was "fucking hell." While neither Carmy or Michael confirm that "Irish place" was a pub or a bar, a quick search on Tripadvisor tells me that 4 of the top 5 Irish restaurants in Chicago are classified as pubs, that is: drinking establishments.

Again, its played very subtly in the episode but I reckon seeing a version of his father in Richie - particularly right before Richie is about to become a father himself - triggered Mikey. His discomfort would have also been compounded by his mother's alcoholism too.

Given that both Mikey's parents had identified alcohol issues, I was surprised at Richie's insistence on day drinking, particularly after Mikey asks "why are you pressuring me?". Having grown up in the Berzatto house, Richie would have seen Donna's alcohol-fuelled rages. We know he saw at least one as an adult in 2x06 Fishes. We know that Richie shares Michael's disdain for Papa Berzatto, referring to him as a "deadbeat" in 1x01 System. So why did he not make the connection that Mikey's refusal to go drinking might have been associated with his family's history, and back off accordingly?

Soon after Richie heads into the bar, the camera cuts to Michael. His eyes are glassy and he looks incredibly sad. Its clear he's experiencing a "low" (given how he later describes his moods to Sherri as either being a "groove" that he can share and take people on, or feeling weighed down in his sadness, so much so that his jaw feels like a million pounds).

But Richie doesn't pick up on any of these cues from Michael. Despite telling Carmy in 4x10 Goodbye that he tried to figure out what was wrong with Mikey, the tragedy of Richie and Mikey's relationship is that while they were close, they still weren't attentive to each other. They fronted so hard all the fucking time that Richie didn’t realise how cooked it might be to drag the son of two alcoholics/addicts to a bar in the middle of the day.

To be fair, men are often not socialised to be attentive their own emotions let alone the emotional needs of those around them, which I think is part of what 5x00 Gary was calling out: one of the ironies of toxic masculinity is that it destroys men - preventing them from recognising their whole selves and the wholeness of others - before its reach extends outwards.

Which brings us to the final explosive 15 minutes of the episode. A lot of folks have said Mikey's outburst at Richie comes from nowhere. But truthfully, it appeared to me to be building up slowly throughout the episode. When Mikey turns on Richie, the most cutting shit he says relates to Richie's ability to parent. This is clearly tied to Mikey's own feelings about how his alcoholic and drug addicted father parented him. And his words do cut. By the time the episode ends, Richie and Mikey aren't speaking. Richie even tosses his "Tunes 4 Gary" out of the window. In effect, Mikey pushes Richie away and I suspect that this was intention the entire time.

For Mikey, raised by one chaotic, inconsistent and abusive parent and abandoned by another, detachment and having nothing matter, were coping mechanisms. They allowed him to keep his closest relationships at a distance to avoid being hurt by those he loved the most because he had already been hurt by the people who were meant to love him the most - his parents. Mikey couldn’t depend on the one caregiver who stuck around so he chose to depend on no one. Some might say that Mikey has a stereotypical disorganised attachment style and that this shows up in his adult relationships: where he has the ability to connect with others easily (see his conversation with Tina in 3x06 Napkins) and craves closeness but can be abrupt and aloof, pushing people away without warning (see his treatment of his younger brother as described by Carmy in 1x08 Braciole, and of Richie in 5x00 Gary) because he's terrified that at any moment those relationships can turn against him without warning, just like his parents did.

The Bear nods to this fear in season 4 during a blink-and-you'd-miss-it moment at the end of Richie's panic attack in 4x05 Replicants.

In that scene, we get a shot from 5x00 Gary - sometime before the bar because Mikey still has his hat - where the two friends are looking out over a field (perhaps the same field that appears burnt at various points in 5x00). We can faintly hear Mikey saying,

He fucking says that to Bill Murray because he's afraid...

Obviously the audio here is from the convo in 1x06 Ceres when Mikey is recounting the story of how he and Richie met Bill Murray at a bar in Chicago. In that story, Bill Murray impersonates Richie on Richie’s voicemail message. So if Bill Murray is Richie, then this faint bit of audio over this footage from the events of Gary - both of which close out Richie’s panic attack in S4 - could very well be a confession from Mikey. I believe in that moment during his panic attack, Richie realises that Mikey's spray at the end of 5x00 Gary was driven by his fear - his fear of his best friend turning into his father, fear at the way their relationship was about to change with the arrival of Richie's child and Mikey's fear of his own mental state and the profound sadness he felt.

@freedelusionshere has also pointed out here that 5x00 Gary shows us that Mikey may have been more introverted than Carmy which was a revelation because this ep is the first time we see him interacting with a group of strangers.

For me, all of this drove home Mikey's King of Cups identification under the Tarot which the folks behind The Bear have introduced through the S5 cast and crew wrap gift: a playing card deck that features the main characters as court cards where Mikey is the King of Hearts - the equivalent to the King of Cups in the Tarot. For more info about this and the other cards, see my meta here.

"You're so woke": the insidiousness of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy

Another aspect about 5x00 Gary that I found interesting was its interrogation of Richie and Mikey's whiteness.

At various times in the show, Richie and Mikey both advocate for the "working man": Richie famously does so in his speech to Sydney at the start of 1x07 Review while Mikey rails against Go-Gos for punishing the customer by making their payment system debit only in 5x00 Gary. I don't doubt that these flashes of righteousness have endeared Mikey and Richie to a certain subset of the The Bear's fandom. For others, myself included, they've rung hollow because of how Richie and Mikey have behaved in other scenarios - often where women are involved. Recall Richie's fucked treatment of Sydney throughout S1 or Mikey and Richie's gross tag-team hype-man routine re: Claire in 2x06 Fishes.

In 5x00 Gary we see more of this side of Riche and Mikey, particularly when it comes to race. And no, Richie and Mikey aren't wearing hoods or performing an Elon-Mux-wave, but over the course of the episode, they spew so much racist shit - that they were likely not even aware of (thats how ingrained and commonplace some of this stuff is) - that it got uncomfortable to watch, much like Donna's racist shenanigans in 3x08 Ice Chips.

Before I get into the episode's dialogue, here's some important context about Gary, Indiana that Richie left out of his commentary at the start of the episode which @sublimepeachtriumph generously shared on this post:

Gary, Indiana is emblematic of American deindustrialization which was accelerated by NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] in the 1990s. That fits with the Bear's historical tracking of prosperity where the Berzattos' seem stuck (decor-wise) in the late 1980s-early 90s. The city's decline was also propelled by a process that one historian, Kevin Kruse, has called "white flight," where wealthier, white residents flee and tax revenues shrink. Similar things happened in places like Atlanta. By 2013, almost a third of Gary's residences were abandoned and you can see an almost eerie dystopian glimpse of these McMansions covered with weeds, forty miles from the bustling urban center of Chicago.

I'd add the following:

Gary was founded as a steel town in 1906 and was built on swampland at the southern end of Lake Michigan, due to the location's proximity to shipping routes and train lines. U.S. Steel's Gary Works was the world's largest steel mill at one point. The mill is still Gary's largest employer but it has progressively employed less people as much of its processes have become automated. In its early days, the mill attracted folks from various communities looking for opportunities and a fresh start, including immigrants from Italy, Greece, Poland, and Russia (who would go onto be assimilated into American whiteness as part of an orchestrated national assimilationist project). Black folks from the American South also made their way north to Gary, many as part of The Great Migration.

The white flight that @sublimepeachtriumph references above is argued by many Gary residents to be the main reason that the city has fallen into its current state. In 1930, white folks made up 78.7% of the population. By 2000, that number had dwindled down to just under 12% while the African American population of the city had increased to 84% (see: here for more demographic info). What fuelled this demographic shift? According to Gary residents interviewed for The Guardian's series "Pride and poverty in America":

Racism killed Gary. The whites left Gary, and the blacks couldn’t. Simple as that. Print that because it is true.

and

Segregation did this to Gary. When the jobs left, the whites could move, and they did. But we blacks didn’t have a choice. They wouldn’t let us into their new neighborhoods with the good jobs, or if they let us, we sure as hell couldn’t afford it. Then to make it worse, when we looked at the nice houses they left behind, we couldn’t buy them because the banks wouldn’t lend us money.

Following the loss of jobs, cuts to education and successive failures to invest in the city, crime rates in Gary skyrocketed and it became known as the murder and drug capital of America.

5x00 nods to this perception of Gary with Richie's approach to the entire exercise of delivering a taped box. Richie packs a gun for the delivery and insists that the trip is a "mission". Sure, much of this bravado and anticipation of violence is likely tied up with everyone's perception of Jimmy as a mafioso but I can't help but wonder if some of it might also be because of what Richie has read about Gary (we know Richie has done some research about the city because he regales Mikey with facts about Gary en route). In fact, at one point in the ep, we hear Richie tell Mikey to lock the doors of the truck, no doubt because of his perception of the city, despite the fact that we are shown no open violence, theft or drug dealing in the episode.

As discussed above, Gary was also abandoned by many of its (mostly white) residents and that abandonment is visible in the houses and buildings around the city in various states of deterioration and overgrowth.

Above: Gary's abandoned City Methodist Church. Source: Abandoned America

The environmental impact of over a century of industrialisation has also long been an issue for residents of Gary, who have lived in the shadow of the hugely polluting steel industry for generations.

Above: smoke billowing out from the Gary Works steel plant over the city. Source: Chicago Sun-Times.

You can forgive Richie - who in 5x00 sounds like he has literally never left Chicago (Carmy might have been right about this) - for being shocked at the difference in how Gary looks compared to Chicago, despite the former being only 35 minutes away from the latter by car.

Subverting stereotypes and nailing the punchline

Yet despite how Gary has been portrayed in mainstream media, there is more happening under the surface that subverts what are often, lazy racist stereotypes of a majority-Black city that has been subject to an engineered decline. And its this tension between stereotype and reality that - in my view - was played so well in 5x00 Gary, resulting in some of the most grimly funny moments of the show.

The first subversion I was surprised by relates to how Gary has historically voted.

The Guardian piece above notes that while many American cities and towns that have gone through deindustrialisation voted for Drumpf in 2016, Gary overwhelmingly voted Democrat. This was also the case in 2024 where despite Drumpf winning Indiana, votes in Gary overwhelmingly went to the Democrats. Unlike the majority white folks who opted for naked fascism in both of those elections, residents of Gary - who had more reason than most to buy into Drumpf's promises that he'd bring manufacturing jobs back to America given how many such jobs had left Gary - chose not to sell their country out to soft 'n' nazis. Like another Gary resident astutely says in the article:

Trump can’t bring jobs back because the jobs are gone to automation. We used to have 10 men doing cleanup in my job. Now one man operates a machine. We used to have 10 men running the furnaces. Now robots run them.

Of the above, The Guardian writer observes,

That view is a marked difference from what you hear from people in working-class white towns that voted for Trump, who are quick to assign blame to immigration and jobs moving overseas.

To my mind, the reasoned, thoughtful approach of residents in Gary to reckoning with the root cause of their circumstances (i.e. automation as a result of late stage capitalism) speaks to the resilience and strength of folks who refuse to go low. Contrast this with other deindustrialised communities as identified in The Guardian article that insist on intellectually disingenuous racist scapegoating - i.e. soft shitty bitch behaviour - and Mikey's trash talking about Gary during that pick up basketball game sounds even more ridiculous (and racist). We'll get into this in a bit - back to Gary:

While the city may have once been known as the murder capital of America, it now has its lowest homicide rate since 1970. Additionally, its reputation for drugs cannot be separated from deindustrialisation, years of underdevelopment by successive governments and its location as a transportation hub. In fact, much of Gary's drug industry is facilitated by its proximity to Chicago.

5x00 Gary brings this directly into frame with Mikey using the trip to Gary from Chicago to buy cocaine. We literally see white folks returning to Gary not to build the city back up, but to support an illicit and destructive drug trade.

I also doubt that the location of Mikey's drug deal was an accident; the house is directly opposite the actual Jackson 5 house in Gary:

Whatever your views on the Jacksons, the importance of the Jackson 5 in American history is undeniable. Relevantly to 5x00 Gary, theirs was a story - among many other stories - of a Black family from Gary that made it; a story of economic and cultural success. This is unfortunately the exception rather than the rule and 5x00 highlights that disconnect in the very fact that while the Jackson 5 house has been preserved and tended to, other homes on the same street are boarded up and abandoned, with some dealing drugs to earn an income.

Now...to that basketball game.

First, the way Mikey and Richie approached the pick-up game, I swore they were about to harass some girls - not women - girls. The language used here was very similar to language used by guys when describing women in terms of conquest: "These little fuckers are about to get it"/ "Whats up girls?"/"You ready to get some?". Immediate red flags for me.

This continues with Mikey referring to his player pick as "daffodil" which is a pejorative used to describe men deemed "effeminate" or gay. Next we had Mikey calling Black boys "bucks" which is racist. "Buck" as a racist slur has its roots in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and was used to dehumanise Black men. To top it all off, Mikey attempting to dip into AAVE to deliver these lines came across as patronising and offensive.

Mikey repeats this behaviour later in a convenience store when he and Richie reenact a scene from Menace 2 Society featuring Black and Korean characters. To his credit, Richie tells Mikey to shut the fuck up during this scene, likely due to the fact that the two of them have an audience in the cashier.

But back to the basketball game: Mikey makes references to the Gary kids "crying" and being "afraid of contact" while getting unnecessarily physical with the players.

The kids push back and tell him to "grow up" and crucially that,

This ain't the 80s.

In one line, this kid lays bare so much of what motivates disgruntled white folks (including liberals) who yearn for the "good old days":

This ain't the 80s where you can casually use racist and homophobic slurs, where you can use violence just cos you feel like it, where you can come into a community that you are contributing to making inherently unsafe (in this case via drugs) and feel entitled enough to barge in and take over a space that no one invited you to join.

Finally, Mikey pushes it too far by calling the guys "garbage". They, justifiably, tell him to shut his bitch-ass up.

Richie proceeds to tell the kids that he doesn't like their attitude and that they're "negative" which frankly, sounds like a lot of liberal white folks' responses when they get pulled up on anything but here in particular, on issues of race and gender.

And then if all that wasn't enough, Richie takes another racist dig at the kids by telling one of them that their "Nikes look like fucking moccasins" which appears to be meant as an insult...because of how Indigenous footwear associated with First Nations in the Americas looks? It could just be my neurodivergence but I'm still confused about this one because moccasins look great imo lol.

One of the punch lines in 5x00 Gary is that while Richie and Mikey mock the kids they're playing basketball with for being "soft" and "wearing diapers", by the end of the episode, Mikey and Richie have variously:

poured their heart out to a rando in the romantic setting of *checks notes* a literal toilet;

been drawn on with lipstick to look like "Ronald McDonald" in a members' only jacket while their pregnant wife is heading into active labour at home;

been used as gophers to break a strike action and deliver a box of very ordinary, not-transformative, plastic doohickeys.

Very hard. Very adult.

Another punch line? Richie heads to Gary packing heat because he thinks he's going to need it. And yet, every person he and Mikey meets in Gary is lovely and accomodating (at least until these two wear out their welcomes with racist bravado on the basketball court).

Gary has survived some of the most trying conditions imaginable as a result of late stage capitalism. Honestly, if researching this meta has done anything, its given me a huge amount of respect to the folks of this city that have endured generations of systemic racism, government inaction and the effects of intergenerational environmental damage and are still here, living and fighting for their community.

So when Mikey says...

I'll tell you what, they breed 'em soft out here in Indiana, huh?

...the joke is intentionally on him and other white folks who aren't vigilant about the lazy ways they might perpetuate white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Because he couldn't be further from the truth.

"You're generating force with the big fucking muscles": what 5x00 Gary tells us about S5 of The Bear:

Richie's "Tunes 4 Gary" contains at least two songs (Scotty's "Draw Your Brakes", The Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad") from the soundtrack of the film, The Harder They Come - a movie credited with bringing Jamaican film and reggae to international audiences. The movie tracks Jimmy Cliff's character, Ivanhoe ('Ivan') Martin, as he tries to pursue a reggae career in postcolonial Jamaica (the movie was released in 1972, just 10 years after Jamaica shook off the United Kingdom). I suspect Richie circa-2019 (when 5x00 is set, according to Mikey’s car radio) included these songs on his mix CD because Richie is a movie buff (recall all the movie posters in his apartment throughout 2x07 and the books about film on his bookshelf in 4x02) and was likely drawn to the crime thriller and anti-authoritarian (in the film, Ivan takes on the music industry, the police, and predatory Christian preachers) aspects of The Harder They Come. But I think the inclusion of these songs in 5x00 is significant for another reason: this movie may speak to Chris Storer's own experiences in trying to bring us The Bear.

The Harder They Come is a movie about a man trying to do what he’s passionate about but being stifled by circumstance. Specifically, the main character Ivan is trying to build a career in the arts - music, to be exact - but is driven into a life of crime because of the unscrupulous dealings of a studio executive who threatens Ivan and also sabotages him behind his back. The executive does this by paying Ivan a flat $20 for his original song and prevents him from selling the song directly to radio stations or clubs. In the clip below, the executive is also seen telling his staff not to promote the song ("Don't push it. Tell the DJs I just want to make back my money.") When his staff member tells him the song is good, the executive then says of Ivan,

"I know. I know but he's a troublemaker. I don't want anything to do with him. I don't want to build him up."

Source: The Harder They Come, dir, Perry Henzell (1972)

If we recall the fan theory (shout out to the GOATs @currymanganese and @thoughtfulchaos773) that Richie is Chris Storer’s director-avatar, then Storer's use of Richie to bring these songs to The Bear likely have a purpose.

I know a number of us have found the lack of promo for S5 to be concerning. The little scraps we've gotten have mostly come less than a month before the show's final season is set to premiere. I wonder if studio/network executives (mouse house, I'm looking at you) have nixed promo of the The Bear because of the trajectory its taken after S2, that is where it began focusing on the story of a white-main-character being a fucking mess: both perpetrator and victim of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy + have that same character make amends as @freedelusionshere said here, by getting out of their own way and lifting others up. It’s also a trajectory that has clearly identified an unambiguously Black woman - Sydney - as the real hero of this story. I wonder if Storer, Calo and the folks who make this show are considered "troublemakers" in a context where networks and streaming platforms are falling into line and complying in advance with a corrupt American regime that openly touts its white supremacism like a badge of honour.

There are other hints in 5x00 Gary that point to this message too, specifically when Richie asserts that he's not a dog, he's a donkey/mule. Stay with me...

Storer is a mule, not a dog, and he's gonna hit us with the back kick

Soon after they commence their road trip, Mikey calls Richie a donkey and a mule (lol) for not caring about what it is they're delivering on behalf of Jimmy. Richie embraces his donkey identity.

Later Richie insists that he's not a dog and that Mikey can't just tell him where to go and when to do it (what "it" is, is not clear on the face of this convo but we'll come back to this).

I reckon there's very significant subtext to these two parts of the car ride which gives us some insight into how S5 is going to play out.

If we continue with the Richie-as-Chris-Storer's-director-avatar theory and given what we've already discussed about the parallels between The Bear and The Harder They Come, then we could interpret the convo about donkeys and mules to be about Richie/Chris Storer identifying as a pack mule/donkey that is just meant to unquestioningly deliver a box his show for a dodgy boss/studio exec without asking questions.

However, Richie/Chris Storer is not a dog and so cannot be told where to go with his story or when to do [something] in relation to it. I'd like to suggest here that the "it" that Chris cannot be told when to do is Sydcarmy. Yes? Yes.

But we're not done with this mule yet. Because later in the episode, Richie/Chris Storer and Mikey start having a seemingly asinine convo about crescent kicks, snap kicks and side kicks.

Mikey - the dude that has been haunting the The Bear's narrative since 1x01 System - tells Richie/Chris Storer what the move really is:

The fucking back kick.

He then proceeds to tell Richie/Chris Storer that performing a back kick is,

[I]ts like a fucking mule. Like think about a mule. [...] You're actually generating force with like the big fucking muscles. You know what I'm saying? Its cause you're already going in this direction and then you come in that direction. [...] Even like the sight of it, you know what I mean?

The subtext of all of this is that if Richie/Chris Storer is a donkey/mule just meant to deliver what the boss/studio execs want then he can also be a mule that surprises them, hits them with a back kick and does what no one expects with his show.

This surprise could be Sydcarmy (the revelation that they romantically love each other OR that they’ve been a couple for some time now) or it could be something else…maybe a surprise in how the restaurant continues into the future. Maybe it’s both?

I have my suspicions that the catastrophic storm that hits Chicago in the show is a metaphor for something else. Others here have said it’s related to Syd emotions given her nightmare from 4x08 which I agree it could be.

I also think if The Beef/The Bear is a metaphor for America (which I suggest it could be here and here), the storm could also be a stand in for the latest Drumpf regime, and perhaps specifically its ICE attacks on Chicago. This is a wild guess but I’m keen to see how the storm plays out in the show.

I suspect it will involve a lot of mobilising The Bear’s community to come out of. I suspect the old ways of doing things are not what’s gonna save them (capitalism, do you hear me?). This is what’s hinted at in the trailers we’ve seen. It’s likely related to why they’re all wearing Original BERF of Chicagoland shirts. It might even be hinted at by using songs from The Harder They Come in 5x00 Gary (i.e. working under corrupt bosses like Jimmy is not going to lead to anything good). What if Syd gets everyone to buy into The Bear to keep it going? What if The Bear becomes a worker-owned enterprise, a co-operative? This would be consistent with the messaging and visuals of the S5 trailer, particularly with Nat insisting to Donna that "everybody did this."

That’d be a back kick on many levels lol. And honestly, I’d be willing to forgo physical confirmation of Sydcarmy for it (I know thats blasphemous. No, I won't give my Sydcarmy membership card back.)

Back to the kick convo though - Richie/Chris Storer tells us that he was getting to the back kick/surprise after crescent and side kicking his way there (read: clearing the space with S1 of The Bear and then coming at this whole thing from the sides - perhaps via subtext?!). And then Mikey tells us the power's out.

This might be Storer telling us that the payoff he's been working towards will be unambiguous and will happen when the lights are out (meow!). My subtexted-out little heart can only hope.

@freedelusionshere and I have chatted about the symbolism in that final scene of 5x00 Gary where Richie drives out into traffic and gets hit by a car. @freedelusionshere made the really keen observation that this mirrored the final scenes of The Red Shoes - a film which features heavily in S3 and is referenced in Syd's nightmare in 4x08 - where ballerina Veronica Page throws herself, and her professional ambition, in front of a train to get to her love, the artist/composer Boris Lemontov. Here though, we might have Richie/Chris Storer throwing himself and his professional ambitions in front of a moving car. To my mind, this was symbolic of Storer telling us that he's not going to end The Bear (and that's in reference to both the restaurant and the tv show) in the way that's expected of someone who's defined as "successful" in either of those fields. But what does that look like?

I mean ideally (for me lol) it means that the crew finally puts the Michelin star to bed. IMHO, killing yourself to get kudos from a system that has only recently been dragged kicking and screaming into the present day from its imperial and racist past is not worth BIPOC folks' time. It means Syd's worth is no longer defined by what she can show for her parents' love and care in raising her. It means Carmy's worth is no longer tied up in proving others wrong but in doing what feels right to him.

For Chris Storer, I reckon it might mean being resigned to the fact that like William Friedkin, his work and the incredible mirror its held up to the white majority of America - at a time when white supremacy has its tentacles in so much of the West's business - may not be recognised for the brilliant storytelling that it is, until years after the fact.

Personally though, I hope this guy and all of his cast and crew get their flowers in their lifetimes because this show has really been such a special gift to behold.

If you've made it here, thanks for reading this long-ass post. Let me know if you wanna discuss! I'm not the best at replying in a timely way but I'll try!