#musical loop

Is the key to everything. The Groundhog Day curse of the wizard-ess is OVER.

I might as well delete all my meta and just leave this one in my #Gingerpovs folder.

Let me explain:

She placed a curse, just like in the movie Groundhog Day. Storer steals ideas from his favorite screenwriters, sneaky lil sadist.

Later on, I will go over why that´s great Sydcarmy news, but first, hear me out:

The curse created a time loop that opened up in S2 when he threw his phone:

That´s when Carmy himself "activated", for lack of a better word, the curse, when he heard the words "I-I really love you," because not only is love a curse in Carmy´s life, but also because he had already decided by then that there was no place in his life for love, or -amusement or enjoyment-, and he was A-OK with that.

And this curse and time loop ended in S3, AKA: the "anticlimactic and very underwhelming" season.

Ofc C is the catalyst of it all. In the movie the "ex GF" is a tacit character and that subplot was never shot to begin with, it was just in one of the drafts of the original script for the studio executives only, who demanded an explanation to why Phil was stuck in a time loop (I´m sure Storer was aware of this trivia bc he´s a movie nerd, especially of movies from this era, in which he finds lots of inspo). On the show, she was unfortunately NOT TACIT at all.

C is the catalyst of it all because she said the cursed words.

A curse takes a wizard to place it (the accurate term for female wizard is "wizardess" or "witch"), and Michael described her as such in S2:

A few weeks ago, I pointed out that the basic concept of the show was that it was a circle. I have already talked about the many analogies of the show´s main plot with the circle of life (AKA the wheel) and the endless cycles, as in the consecutive seasons of a year (they are still in 2023 on the show for a reason and that should change in S4, which Sugar´s baby´s head already foreshadows in the trailer) that are the different phases of the series, being the next one: THE SPRINGTIME, because it´s what comes after Carmy´s Blue period, etc.

I had already noticed that the time had been RESET in 03x10, it was pretty obviously depicted HERE, actually.

But what I hadn´t noticed till now is that 2 circles form a LOOP:

We are talking about 2 seasons here. Seasons 2 and 3 were the loop, and now S4 is the springtime, the season of love. Clearly S3 was the winter metaphorically speaking. So S4 can´t be anything other than the next season.

Storer´s writing tends to be a full-circle kind of writing.

In S1, he started with a bad dream, and then by 01x08 he wrapped it in a pretty bow, with a dream-like vision. A good dream.

Each season is a circle for Storer

Seasons 2 & 3 overlapped, and none of those seasons went full circle, so a loop was created in storytelling terms. Not all cliffhangers are open endings per se. S1, for instance, ended in a way in which, if there had been no S2, that ending could have worked by itself just fine, and it was open enough to continue on in a next season if the show was renewed, which he didn´t know at the time of writing that season, so he gave S1 a full circle kind of season finale, a finale that could have worked on its own as a series finale, if need be. Although he obviously did it in a semi-open ending way, which gave him the chance to reopen the circle and resume the storytelling, if needed.

He reset the timer in S2,

He did that to start telling a whole new story, not the story of Carmy, Michael´s brother, who is this Carmy:

but the story of Carmy, the man, that is why all the flashbacks that gave us a glimpse of what Carmy´s past looked like were included in S2. We saw a lot of Michael and the whole Berzatto family dynamic from Carmy´s perspective, specifically.

There´s a reason why S2 opened with this other monologue where he talked about his family life:

So, S2, more precisely S2´s season finale, was the beginning of THE LOOP, which went on all throughout S3, till it finally closed in 03x10.

So this loop Carmy "walked into" began when he heard the L word in the walk-in

and ended when he said the T word.

Those words came from a very vulnerable place Carmy was at that night, he was raw, after this:

I always called S3 the Loop Season, the symbolism of the L opening and closing it made it quite obvious for me but technically that loop started when this song/score started playing in 02x10  and it continued playing all throughout 03x01 → APPENDIX META (read all of it because it´s more than just about the music). *can´t post another vid here, so I included an appendix for audio purposes.

S4 The Love Season

This season of love or springtime that will blossom in S4 is, like I said, metaphorical and symbolic, not literal, of course, because it will take place in the fall and the winter in the beginning. There is a chance that by 04x10, the TL has progressed enough to put the characters in the spring season of the following year (2024), but that´s not even that important. What´s important is the philosophical meaning of that season, which is the season that symbolically all the characters are going to go through in S4 and thus, complete the full cycle of nature, of the 4 seasons.

The springtime is CRUCIAL because JAW mentioned this movie:

*Correction: It wasn´t cut out of the film; it wasn´t even ever shot in the first place.

I also explained this in the appendix because I wanna loop back into this concept over and over, LOL! Read both pls.

Moving on:

The Groundhug day tradition is all about the winter (blue period/S3)

And the springtime is all about love and starting over (rosé period/S4). In other words, since the Groundhog Day ended on the show, as JAW confirmed, what follows is the springtime, the season of love.

Carmy´s shadow

Carmy´s shadow can´t be seen in the walk.in because the lighting is casting it exactly where the camera is, so we can´t see if he saw his shadow, making winter longer, meaning stepping into the wintertime that his blue period was, but what we can safely say is that symbolically Carmy did have a close encounter with his own shadow in that walk-in that night. He fought his own shadow and lost that round. That is why the man got stuck in that walk-in, and the one that walked out was the beast, The Bear, the name of that very episode, btw.

Of course, this was a whole process. The last glimpse of humanity we saw in Carmy was when he smoked his last cigarette in the back alley.

Groundhog Day is not a celebration, but a time loop in the cult movie. A curse, even. Plus Rita Syd, also has her own loopy behavior that needed to be overcome in S3.

Such a time loop ends when Phil Connors delivers his sincere monologue on the beauty of Groundhog Day, and his curse is lifted.

Phil was excellent at what he did as a weatherman, and that EXCELLENCE is what made him vulnerable to this curse in the first place.

Once stuck in the time loop of the curse, the ex GF, THE WIZARD/witch, placed on him, he symbolically relived the same second over and over in the middle of what he was doing

The point is that Phil only escapes once he begins using his powers/talents, for good instead of evil. Meaning: Once he realizes what his real purpose as a chef is.

The final act of winning Rita's heart—not through scheming, screaming

but through goodness—is what broke the cycle, as I also mentioned in the appendix bc why not?

My point is that now that Groundhog Day is over for Carmy and for "Ayo" as JAW said in the interview, we, Sydcarmy truthers should have NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, because we already know what´s next and how it will end, whether that´s in S4, as I predict or in 5. I´m pretty sure S4 will be the Sydcarmy endgame going canon season finale and S5, if it exists, will be actual Sydcarmy established relationship that may or may not include a break up and subsequent reconciliation because, let´s face it, working together at a Michelin star restaurant and making a relationship work, and all the baggage, etc, can´t be easy.

Bonus track 1: DUH! Even Clairmy stands admit the show is about this:

Bonus track 2: The Star Dish, as I predicted LAST YEAR. The S4 poster either hides the star dish in plain sight as I predicted HERE (which is what I think is the most accurate prediction), OR the Plan B could be even better, because what if that is the Sydcarmy canon catalyst dish? Meaning: What if they lose the star the first time around, with that dish, Will Guidara EMP style, as I mentioned in the APPENDIX but since, as I explained in that meta about that sketching scene of S3, Carmy was thinking about the menu/Syd when he created it and made a sketch of it, as per usual when he thinks about THEIR MENU, and eventually in S4 he confesses SHE WAS HIS MUSE to create that dish and she goes: AWWWW and the transition to canon goes from there and that is why Storer put it on the poster of the season when that´s gonna happen? Wouldn´t that be 1000 times better? Probably... IDC how it happens, but this could be a cool and very Storer-friendly way if you ask me. I still believe they will win the star with a dish they create TOGETHER, either that one when they tweak it together, or the Coca Cola braised ribs with risotto that, with his help, will finally get the right amount of acid and be well balanced.

Credits, Sources & inspo:

Extra TV

Entertainment IE

TV Obsessive

Lady

Loop Lab

Danny Rubin himself

Part 2: Appendix | The genesis of the curse

Part 3: Her Loop

LOVE

02x10 - Notice the musical score? Please do because it´s important.

That´s why I had to do this other post, because I can´t upload 2 vids here, and I wanted you to listen to that score that started playing when her image, almost ghost-like, showed up at "The Bear". Donna was a ghost from the past that came back to haunt him, or so Carmy thought. That's why he was not onboard at first with Donna even being invited to the event, BUT the ghost still loved him, and that´s why she left. It was an act of love in her book.

Donna loves her children, but for Carmy, her love, all love, is... a curse, and it´s all Carmy knows remembers about the L word for now.

02x06

Back to the musical score of 02x10: It began when Donna showed up, as I was saying, and it continued till Carmy threw the phone away after hearing the L word. At that point, this other REM song started playing:

Carmy was gone (half a world away), and so The Bear (name of the episode btw) showed up.

It´s NO COINCIDENCE that Clairmy´s soundtrack is REM (Strange currencies and Half a world away).

I would say that AGAIN, the musical choice is signaling something Storer is hinting all over the place, Clairmy is nothing but a dream, not a reality. (Bad dream, if you ask me...)

The real man, not Logan, loves Syd, but he´s not ready to pursue a real relationship with her, and he knows it, so he refrains from it, he suppresses her feelings for her, as a defense mechanism of his own, but also to protect her from his version of love, from the curse. He also knows that love hurts, and that everything he loves gets fucked by the people who loves him:

As I mentioned in the main post, S3 was the season of the Bear (the beast), I also call it The Loop season, but truth be told, the loop technically began in 02x10 with the same lighting that freed the beast from its cage (the walk-in), and that Storer hid in plain sight on S3’s poster.

The chronological series of unfortunate events went like this:

Then Man gets stuck in a walk-in - 02x10.

The Wizard places a curse on the man pronouncing the damned L word combined with “proud of you”, lethal combo for the man, as shown in Fishes where they (Donna + Mikey) gang up on him using both love and pride as an excuse to emotionally drain/corner him in the kitchen/BOH.

The Beast takes over the man, the man starts checking out in 02x10 (this is a process that starts at that point, in the walk-in but is complete by 03x01, out of the walk-in, after he apologizes to Richie, that was the last we saw the humanity in him till later in the season of The Bear, when Marcus briefly brought him back - the “you look nice” moment-). The trick to make it last longer was, which the man explained to Marcus, was one of the lessons the man learned and was passing along, when the woman he is going to do that with (probably in S4), showed up looking all nice. That was a man looking at a woman, not The Bear, but "The guy".

The Bear walks out of that freezer, freed by a blue lightning (the blue period begins).

Carmy was by then starting to drift half a world away - from Syd too-

5. The Bear runs the show for a whole season till he hears these words in 03x10:

Which put him in this headspace:

And that was his rebirth.

This new Carmy was born:

THOSE 2 WORDS undid the curse and closed the loop.

Shortly after, another blue lightning happened (sorta) to signal that the LOOP indeed had already closed.

Because the story Storer is telling us, goes like this at this point: When you can look back and thank the good and the bad because you got to learn from both and both took you to where you are now and that present moment is all you have and that is where your full potential lies and from there you can go anywhere, you can choose and change and LIVE, which is the lesson Andrea, who is way ahead of the curve compared to Carmy, already learned:

And that we do not make it alone:

Only THEN you really succeeded. That is the right definition of success (according to Storer). It´s the definition of healing, actually, if you ask me, but yeah... I get what he means.

The great news is that The BEAR is gone now, and the MAN (or "The Guy" as Cicero calls him) got out of the loop in 03x10, as I anticipated HERE. Of course, this is going to be a process. Just like when Carmy was withering away in S3 since the loop open when Donna showed up and the curse was then placed when he listened to C´s message, and he basically turned into a guest star on his own show/life, because throughout the whole season of the beast, The Bear ran the show, with only on and off brief appearances here and there of The Man or "The Guy".

i.e.: When he taught Marcus what Legerdemain was (the now sacred "you look nice" moment), or when he peeled grapefruits with Syd and both sealed with blood the little talk they had at that point, and last but certainly not least: "The table scene" when he invited her to Ever´s Funeral (the now iconic "you should come" moment). Those little Sydcarmy gems/crumbs were the few times when The Man that was mentally still trapped in the freezer under his ex GF´s curse, just like Phil in the movie, was given a breather. However, all these little moments of humanity he showed intermittently, never lasted. But now the curse ended, again, just like in the movie, that is just about to change, and the story will finally move forward again, it will flow again in S4, as opposed to continuing to be stuck in that loop that S3 was.

Carmy will TAKE THE L:

And that is gonna signal the arrival of a BRAND NEW DAY (Buongiorno tutti is Italian for "Good morning, everybody!").

And this is also the result of The Loop closing, because the old Carmy, the one trapped in the loop, wouldn´t have been able to accept defeat; that was definitely not an option for him. Remember him?

So, I´m thinking this new man that was able to drag his own ass out of the loop and free himself from the curse his ex placed on him is a man that will accept the slap in the face the bad review represented for him, his ego, and his team, dust himself up and keep going, but this time WISER. Moving on, like Will did.

BTW: Will lost the first star he chased at EMP. But he regrouped later and the next year he went on to win 3. Meaning that the journey Richie began in S2, as per Carmy´s request and with his blessing and encouragement, will finally pay off in S4. This may also look like S4 will cover the time span of more than a year. They may first lose the star and the next year win all 3 of them, when they are no longer chasing the star, they will be just doing it for the people, like Andrea said, just like Will did. AND YES, YOU GUESSED IT, LIKE PHIL DID IN THE MOVIE AT THE END, WHEN HE BEAT THE CURSE AND GOT OUT OF THE TIME LOOP, AS WELL.

Fun fact: The guy at the end of the clip (comic relief bc IT´S A COMEDY) is Sugar AKA: Abby Elliot´s dad IRL, Chris Elliot.

So after the curse, there comes the Season of love, or Rosé period, or what JAW said.

S4 - The Season of Love - Prediction time!

S4 is gonna be about the man (and the woman he loves) who got out of the loop and learns remembers how to love, just like in the movie Groundhog Day, where Phil learns the lesson by the end, and that inspired the woman to give him a chance. In other words: "She stayed."

In Carmy’s case, he will learn the lesson (or remember it bc deep down he already knows how to love, he’s not incapable of it).

But back to the musical score (Yeah, IK, I digressed A LOT, but hey! now I´m looping back to it ;), 03x01 sustained that musical score throughout the entire episode, signaling the trance he was in when he got out of the walk-in and walked into THE LOOP and stayed there that whole season. 03x01 tried to explain why the L word was a curse for him that made him loop into Bear mode. All that history, which picked up where Fishes left off, was the reason why the L word is a curse for Carmy, and when C told him that, he regressed to his New York years, 03x01 showed us so well, while that score was playing, in a “loop”, because the Loop season, the season of The Bear, was beginning. In the movie, the loopy tune is Cher's´s I Got You, Babe. Same musical resource, different song. Storer is not being slick; he´s getting sloppy.

But that´s not the last note, this is:

There´s another musical loop linked to the curse and the time loop itself, and that is this.

So, that music, both the score and the REM songs, symbolize the altered state of mind or of events, it´s like that altered state of consciousness that THE CURSE produces, the curse is Love, or more like the old meaning of love that Carmy HAS TO RE-SIGNIFY to get out of the loop and grow as a man. To stop being The Bear and become The guy, the man. Just like Phil in the movie, who learned his lesson through falling in love with Rita and stopping chasing his selfish goals. Also, and no less important, REM is the Clairmy soundtrack because she´s his DREAM GIRL, as opposed to REAL GIRL. Or, make-believe GF, as opposed to true love. We all know who represents the real woman, who deals with the real man, not Logan, the real day-to-day BS, and sometimes even POS that Carmy represents, and who he REALLY loves. Reality is Syd´s realm, C is Dreamland material, that´s why REM musicalizes her relationship with The Bear. That´s why "The man and the Real woman" in his life, not the dream girl, have a different love song, no REM.

Moving away from the music a lil bit and focusing on the character:

In Carmy´s case, there´s nothing selfish about his goal of getting a bullshit star, but how he plans to achieve that star, his non-negotiables are indeed selfish, or as Richie put it: demented. Another thing, Phil in the movie is called a lot, BTW. Carmy´s motive behind those non-negotiables is to PROVE SYD he can do it, the non-negotiables that in S4 WILL HAVE TO BE re-negotiated, and by the end of the season, will get them the star, but only once he changes his way to go about it, like Phil did. I call it: "redefine success to succeed."

Prediction 2.0

In S4 Carmy is no longer stuck in the Loop of the trap he fell in when he got stuck in the freezer and The Bear got out, remember?

Now, I want to point out something that I picked up on this AMAZING interview, that kinda proves everything I have been saying, both above and in the main post:

These are the details we can expect to see in 4:

That is an excerpt from Groundhog Day´s script. JAW said Groundhog Day ended, so this is how it ended in the movie.

As this great article explains, and I have already elaborated in the main post, this is what causes Carmy to get stuck in the Loop, a curse.

C is the ex, the L word is the curse, Donna and Michael are the origins of such a curse, and the time loop is S3 itself, but also the loop is finally closed in the cliffhanger, so S4 is all about what comes next, and those would be the details, which in the movie are all the little things Phil started caring about and that made Rita choose him. He had already chosen her, a long time ago, time and time again, but she kept not being sure about him bc he was a POS. When he changed and started focusing on the details, the people, the little day-to-day things, and finding joy in them, in making people happy without an agenda, just to do good, he healed and ...

And according to the S4 official trailer, Carmy is already there in S4, he learned the lesson, that is a product of him getting out of the loop and breaking the curse:

There are a bunch of more parallels between Groundhog Day and The Bear, including fashion, plot, but most importantly, STORYTELLING STRUCTURE. I will be posting those soon. But my point is that all of it foreshadows a similar resolution, not the same plot, of course, but definitely a similar closure, and in Sydcarmy terms, that is absolutely CHEF´S KISS.

Bonus track: "Bear" didn´t have a love of his life.

Carmy, the man, does, just like in the movie.

Remember to follow my tag #Gingerpovs 💋 & #Gingerpredictions

6/13/2026 Update Part 4: So, let's recap: Donna opened the loop with her presence even when she didn't even get into the building, she did show up and that was enough, as I explained in Part 1. In this 2nd part, the Appendix, I elaborated above on how the C person put a curse on Carmy with the "L word" and got in stick in the walk-in and in her mud till he got out of the loop he was trapped in and broke the curse by being grateful (eventually in S3), all of it in alignment with the Groundhog Day movie aesthetic, that also fits a larger template, which is Back to the Future III, which will make sense in S5 when the storm hits and the lighting strikes. Cool.

But it was Richie the one that put Carmy in a trance, back in S2, when he was stuck in the walk-in. that lowered his defenses and made him susceptible to get cursed in the first place, that's why the curse worked, in a sense. He's the Hypnos, The INDUCTOR. The Sandman.