The Unconditionality of Love
a comparative essay on the paralleling arguments of Carmy with Claire, and Sydney from Season 4 of ‘The Bear’
Weeks away from The Bear’s series finale season release, I found myself rewatching multiple scenes of the show to jog up my memory on what happened. As per usual when I find myself rewatching media, I gain new insights and often notice elements that I didn’t chance upon an initial or previous watch. What has my mind fixated on, however, were two scenes from two different episodes in Season 4: Carmy’s arguments with Claire, and Sydney, to be more specific.
I am operating under the assumption that most of this essay’s readers are fans of the show who are completely aware of what scenes I’m referring to. But for the courtesy of those who have forgotten, the causal viewers of The Bear, or are merely passing by, these arguments are from the fourth season’s third and final episodes which are Scallop, and Goodbye. It is Carmy’s argument with Syd that is more memorable to viewers—or at least that’s what my social media algorithms tell me—but both of these arguments are important as tools to the show’s narrative because they directly affect Carmy’s development. More than that, there’s a lot of interesting parallels between the two despite having different causes.
But what exactly was so fixating about these arguments?
I argue that it’s the essence with love as a grounding point. Carmy’s arguments with Claire, and Sydney are both hinged on love, but are differentiated by selfishness and unconditionality, respectively.
When the conversations begin, Claire and Sydney refuse to talk to Carmy. It’s been months since Claire last spoke to him because of their bad breakup. Meanwhile, Sydney had just spent an entire service being verbally avoidant to him in part of his self-removal from The Bear’s partnership agreement. As unlikely the nature of the relationships are, they both struggle with miscommunication. Both women are frustrated, angry, disappointed, and hurt by Carmy. Still, they eventually get around to a conversation where they express how wronged they felt by his actions. They also allowed him to hare his side. But once Carmy said his piece, the gap between the parallels started becoming apparent—firstly, on identifying a victim.
Both of the women’s feelings are valid, and it’s completely understandable if they only want to focus on their own grievances. This is why I personally find Sydney being able to look past herself and how Carmy aggrieved her moving, because the situation with Claire is the exact opposite.
The phone works both ways, especially when the issue at hand is miscommunication. In Sydney apologizing to Carmy for keeping Adam Shapiro’s job offer a secret from him, we are being shown that the burden of fixing the issue does not fall on Carmy alone. She sees that while Carmy’s actions were not preferable and perhaps more weighted, she doesn’t victimize herself. Whereas with Claire, she centers the blame on Carmy without taking into account that the avoidance for months post-breakup also stemmed from her own words to stay away from her. Immediately, this comparison shows how Sydney took a kinder and more humble response, because as much as Claire is valid for reacting the way that she did, it doesn’t preclude her from accountability, no matter how less hurtful her actions are compared to Carmy’s.
As the conversation goes on, Claire questions if she must’ve done something wrong to make Carmy run away from her, which is a good start on the offset but actually isn’t. For one, she ends up turning her supposed moment of accountability to Carmy. But on a more important note, Claire never really held herself accountable to begin with. Rather, she focuses on her responsibility—which is fine, but meaningless when you don’t own up to it.
Where accountability lies
Enter the second point. Now looking into and setting Carmy’s accountability, we are shown that Claire and Sydney go about it differently. A glimpse of this can be found if we rewind to the beginning: Claire tells Carmy that she won’t help him find the answer to make things right, while Sydney scathingly asks for an improved reasoning. It’s a moment that can easily fly over one’s head, but it’s significant, especially after the raise of voices.
Sydney expands the list of who Carmy has wronged, citing how badly he’s been treating their restaurant. She’s expressed her feelings, and acknowledged her own mistakes, but she doesn’t stop at that. Instead she goes into an active dialogue with Carmy. She calls him out, he reacts. She asks, he answers. Sydney makes no excuses. In spite of the uncomfortableness, she goes out of her way to make sense of their issue, and look for a concrete way to address it. For her, it’s not only a matter to tell off Carmy and ask him to take action, but also a way to set clear expectations and keep their relationship in check.
Differentiating with Claire, we are not handed her expectations, nor an active dialogue of understanding. There was a sequence of overlapping dialogue where claims how she tried very hard to keep Carmy close to her. Then there was a turn around back to Carmy, which was a mere lament of how he can’t just run away from Claire. So much words were said, but so little substance was acquired. In this argument, Carmy’s behavior isn’t addressed, but is cycled through scold-appease-repeat.
Validating an overstaying elephant in the room
We move on the final point and the most striking difference: only Sydney validated Carmy’s trauma.
I won’t delve into the specifics of it, but it must be established. As an audience, we have been aware of how Carmy’s family life has deeply affected him. We know that he often feels suffocated, even if his family means well. Carmy is never really given an opportunity to confront his family about their behavior. And like most experiences with familial trauma, Carmy is forced to live with it. What’s even worse is how everyone around him—even longtime family friends—is protective and defensive about the Berzattos. With an environment like this, Carmy is not afforded the validation he needs about how awful his situation is.
For someone like Carmy, who’s been through too much and so much, this validation is important. In his argument with Claire, she mentions that she wanted to understand him and see ‘all of him.’ She even hinges on knowing him her whole life as a reason as to why it should be easy to understand him, and for him to open up to her. But still, this knowing did not give her the advantage in hitting the mark, as opposed to Sydney who’s known Carmy for a shorter amount of time.
Sydney doesn't have qualms in trying to put two and two about why Carmy is the way that he is. She simply observed and listened to him, and by doing so, she achieved an understanding that wasn’t superficial. The way the argument with Sydney went about is already more empathetic in comparison, but what brings it home is her doubling down to the kindness she’s shown. Even when Carmy was pleading and deflecting that his trauma is not what their argument was about, Syd stood ground. She doesn’t apologize for addressing the overstaying elephant in the room, but she does it with such unshakable kindness. She tells him that his experience is awful, all without letting go of kindness for herself and their staff at The Bear.
This is what Claire couldn’t do. Perhaps it’s because she’s one of the longtime family friends of the Berzattos? But when we consider that Sydney had already formed a tight attachment, and was even ‘adopted’ by Carmy’s family already at the time the Season 4 finale was set, a clouded judgment by familial ties cannot be taken as a good excuse. For no matter how much Carmy is at fault, it doesn’t mean that his feelings are insignificant or that he is less deserving of kindness.
To conclude, Carmy’s arguments with Claire, and Sydney are similar and paralleled arguments rooted in love. There are, however, significant and differing traits such as that the argument with Claire is representative of selfish love, while the argument with Sydney is representative of unconditional love. Not one is necessarily better than the other, but both reveal a layered understanding between these three characters and the deepness of their relationships with one another.
