OH YES, CHEF! And Why I'm Free-Write Obsessed.

"The Bear" is a storytelling masterpiece, plus devices for writing OFF the internet

Happy Friday! And, if you haven’t watched The Bear yet, you should. Start this weekend. (And not just because Jeremy Allen White, it’s star, is really hot.)

The Bear is already in its second season, and it’s about heavy stuff: A grieving brother, Carmy, goes home to Chicago after his older brother, Mikey, commits suicide, because Mikey left that little brother his hole in the wall sandwich shop. So Carmy takes over the place and all the staff within it, and a cocktail of chaos, sadness, despair, grief, hope and love ensues. The twist? Carmy is one of the most renown young chefs in the world, and he’s just left Manhattan’s most famous three Michelin star restaurant as its head chef for the well, hole-in-the-wall.

But full waring: The Bear is intense. There are moments that are so high stakes and stressful that I need to hit the pause button to breathe. There are even moments during the show that are so stressful I sometimes wonder if I can go on watching.

I always do, though—The Bear is too good not to. The cast is extraordinary, but the writing is out of this world. Season One was fantastic, but Season Two rises to another level, which is what is making me recommend it on a substack for writers.

If you are a writer of novels or memoirs, the second season is a must: it’s a storytelling masterpiece. Check out Chris Vognar’s wonderful New York Times essay, I Thought No One Had Felt Grief Like Mine. Then I Saw ‘The Bear’ for a beautiful unpacking of how The Bear plumbs the depths and expressions of grief—a trait of the show that is both one of my favorites and also one of the reasons I sometimes find it painful to watch. It’s raw and real and special in this way.

But in the second season, the show uses its episodes (like one might use the chapters of a novel) to heighten and develop each character, even the ones on the minor side. It lovingly and closely follows each staff member from the restaurant—Marcus as he worries at his mother’s bedside, then takes off on the pastry trip of a lifetime, Tina as she learns to expertly gut and slice a fish and later does karaoke and shows off a heartbreakingly lovely voice, Ritchie as learns the value of self-respect and in displaying tiny, specific kindnesses to others in one of the best episodes of the entire season (in my opinion, Ritchie steals this season), and Carm as he falls in love in one of the best examples of romance I've seen on television maybe ever.

Altogether, these episodes have the effect of developing the ensemble cast and wider story as a whole, and heightens the stakes to the absolute rafters. I think I laughed, swooned, and cried multiple times during every episode. My plan is to go back this fall and study it, point for point, chapter by chapter, for its narrative genius. The only thing more heartbreaking than the end of this season was not having any more new episodes to watch for who knows how long, until the arrival of Season Three.

Sigh, sigh, sigh.

(Also, Jeremy Allen White who plays Carmy, the lead character and chef on the show, has been spotted shirtless and protesting for the actors/writers strike going on in Hollywood. And I have found myself doing things I don’t normally do, which is typing into the google, “shirtless jeremy allen white.” Photos of him on the picket lines have inspired quite a few YES, CHEF memes.)

Yummy.

I’m jealous of those of you who haven’t seen it yet. You have so much ahead of you.

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This week, an email from Freewrite landed in my inbox and had me salivating (sorry, I couldn’t help myself with the pun). Freewrite is basically an updated version of an electric typewriter, and describes itself as “your place to simply just write.” If you read my earlier article, “Why I Block the Internet When I Write,” then you already know that I don’t have a smartphone, and I struggle deeply to keep myself off the internet in order to write without the ongoing distractions of email and Zillow and use the app Freedom in order to help.

So the Freewrite is meant to go a step further, and offers a laptop that truly functions as a “notebook”—like my first laptops back during the glory days when there was no wifi and computers didn’t have internet. I often miss those distraction-free days.

I am a little obsessed with getting one. And the mailing I got this week seemed to be reaching out directly to me, because now you can get one in lemon yellow and also bright happy green. They’re so pretty.

Definitely check Freewrite out. And if anyone has one, I’d love a report!

Enjoy the weekend everybody!