“The Bear” begins streaming its third season on Hulu. The Emmy-winning series sees Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) pushing his team ever harder to up the culinary game at the restaurant that gives the show its name.
Having assumed the mantle of running his family’s Chicago beef sandwich joint after the death of his brother, Carmy has infused his culinary genius into the restaurant and turned it into an acclaimed eatery.
Much of the action takes place in the kitchen, where the staff is under incredible pressure to keep up with demand and maintain Carmy’s impossibly high standards. In a teaser for season three, he’s seen saddling his associates with “non-negotiable” demands.
Having never worked as a professional chef, I have to take others’ words that the action here represents an accurate depiction of a restaurant’s pressure-cooker atmosphere. And I’ve read Anthony Bourdain books that pretty much describe kitchens as pirate ships filled with intense, feral characters who could not work anywhere else and who often suffer and self-destruct from the results of constant stress.
But is this entertainment?
I have never been a police officer or a surgeon, but I understand police and hospital dramas. The stakes are often life and death. “The Bear” treats its characters as if they are in some foxhole under enemy bombardment when they are, in fact, cooking dinner for customers that might include (gasp!) a critic or reviewer who could award, or withhold, a “star.” This ain’t brain surgery.
Puffed up with a stupendous sense of self-importance, both Carmy and “The Bear” trade in some preposterous dialogue. And, according to Emmy, this is supposed to be a comedy.
Having been made a star by “The Bear,” White has appeared in Calvin Klein commercials for men’s underpants. That’s somewhat fitting, because there’s more than a little “Emperor’s New Clothes” about “The Bear.”
— Max streams a renovation series with a twist. The six-episode series “Breaking New Ground” follows Broadway performer Robert Hartwell as he seeks to renovate a home from 1820 that had been empty and on the market for some time. As a Black, gay actor, Hartwell is well aware that this is more than a fixer-upper. A former plantation house, it had been home to slave owners and a place where enslaved Black people had worked as domestics and field workers for antebellum families in the South who had purchased them.
Hartwell’s efforts to endow these episodes with florid asides about self-empowerment and history lessons run up against the nitty-gritty of carpentry work on a 200-year-old home and the fact that building and renovation lay far removed from his skill set.
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— U.S. Olympic Trials (8 p.m., NBC) feature track and field.
— “Copa Tonight” (8 p.m., Fox) discusses the action in an international soccer tournament.
— “ABC News Special: Race for the White House” (8 p.m., ABC).
— Seen previously on TNT, the AFI Life Achievement Award (8 p.m., TCM) celebrates the films and career of actress Nicole Kidman. Her portrayal of novelist Virginia Woolf is at the center of the 2002 drama “The Hours” (9:30 p.m.) co-starring Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep and featuring a soundtrack by Philip Glass.
— President Biden and former President Trump meet in the first presidential debate. Hosted by CNN (9 p.m., CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, PBS, CNN).
— A plucky designer convinces a haughty publisher to put plus-sized models in his glamour magazine in the 2022 rom-com “Romance in Style” (9 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G).
CULT CHOICE
The 1990s were big on movies with twist endings that begged not to be revealed. The gimmick even inspired a joke on “The Simpsons” when Mayor Quimby blurted out the secret at the end of “The Crying Game” (1992). Director M. Night Shyamalan burst on the scene with his 1999 suspense thriller “The Sixth Sense” (10:30 p.m., BBC), starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment, featuring an ending that not everybody saw coming.
SERIES NOTES
German back roads on “Young Sheldon” (8 p.m., CBS, r, TV-PG) … Trevor’s brother goes bargain-hunting on “Ghosts” (8:30 p.m., CBS, r, TV-PG).
LATE NIGHT
Cory Booker and Billie Eilish are booked on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” (11:35 p.m., CBS) … Jimmy Fallon welcomes Camila Cabello and Questlove on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Martin Short, Melissa McCarthy, Nick Kroll and The Warning appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (11:35 p.m., ABC).
Lupita Nyong’o and Ebon Moss-Bachrach visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC) … Taylor Tomlinson hosts Andy Richter, Penn Jillette and Aasif Mandvi on “After Midnight” (12:37 a.m., CBS).
