As the ramshackle Original Beef is painstakingly transformed during this episode, so is Richie. But like anyone/anything undergoing great change (e.g., caterpillar, pubescent boy, middle-aged man), Richie has no clue what is happening.
Richie polishes forks at a 3-star Michelin restaurant. He’s been banished from the remodeling work at The Original Beef for being argumentative and generally unhelpful--or ancillary, as he puts it. He thinks this is a humiliating punishment designed to make him quit, but this is just Richie’s persecution complex at work; Carmen sent him to the best restaurant in the world to learn about hospitality at the highest level and to unlock the potential deep--almost completely buried--within Richie. While Richie is good with people and a natural leader, he embraces chaotic energy like Heath Ledger’s Joker. As shown throughout the first season, he’s better suited for a job at Patrick Swayze’s roadhouse rather than a high-end restaurant. (I consider this a timeless reference. Fight me.)
Immediately, Richie’s assigned to forks, polishing them for 9+ hours a day. The monotony makes him beg for other work, even washing dishes, but the restaurant apparently has the best dishwashers in the world, and he would only slow them down. I would love to see these dishwashing maestros at work. Do they have doctorates in dishwashing? Or are they more like practitioners of some transcendental Eastern philosophy, like dishwashing yoga masters?
Why does Richie’s purgatory feature forks? Because in the previous episode, Fishes, Michael lobbed forks at a wonderfully furious Bob Odenkirk. Like Michael seated at the Thanksgiving table, Richie’s at a crossroads. He can assume his place in the new restaurant rising from the ashes of The Original Beef, or he can throw the fork and blow it all up.
As his professional life (yes, making sandwiches constitutes a professional life, you snob) is shaken up, his personal life is solidifying into a permanent, intolerable state because his ex-wife (Gillian Jacobs!) is marrying another man. Richie is on the precipice of losing everything. He can’t continue on the path of the abrasive asshole because it leads to the dissolution of everything important to him. He needs a major, mid-life course correction. He needs to polish forks--every fucking fork--and master his emotions, or he will destroy himself as Michael did.
Our anti-hero needs guidance from a master, a spiritual sherpa, and he gets Garrett, a sassy member of the back wait staff who turns out to be a bonafide Richie whisperer. Early on, Garrett takes Richie outside for a verbal throwdown, dressing him down for his poor attitude and for leaving streaks on the forks. He explains the restaurant and the forks in a language Richie understands: it’s about respect. Eating at this unnamed restaurant, considered to be the best in the world with a waitlist 5,000 deep, is a big deal to the guests, as Garrett explains:
Every day here is the freaking Super Bowl. You don’t have to drink the Kool-Aid, Richie. I just need you to respect me. I need you to respect the staff. I need you to respect the diners. And I need you to respect yourself.
Later on, Richie sees Garrett’s words in practice. Respect for the diners fuels the insane level of service at the restaurant. A mere smudge on a plate causing a delay of 47 seconds is cause for an inquisition. This level of service isn’t reserved for celebrities either; it’s intended for all diners, especially the unsung heroes of the COVID age. On a night Bo Burnham is dining, the real PONs (persons of note) are two teachers who had been saving up to eat there. They--and not Bo, who finally made it outside--are getting the champagne kitchen tour and caviar supplements, and the restaurant is picking up the check.
Once Richie has mastered forks and himself, he’s promoted to shadowing Garrett. Servers eavesdrop on guests and pass notes to communicate with the expediter, Chef Jess, who hungrily eyes Richie like the snack that he is. Some guests are slow eaters, others fast. Some are chatty, others are assholes. The restaurant adapts its style of service to each guest. When a server overhears that a visiting family is somehow leaving Chicago without experiencing the unredeemable stew that is deep dish pizza, they spring into action. Richie sprints to Pequods to pick up a pizza with the urgency one transports a donated organ, and sadly, the family does not escape Chicago without sampling the densest, most pointless food known to man.
Garrett dispenses the capstone lesson on service. While polishing wine glasses with Richie (and this shows how far Richie has come from forks, which are 1000x less streak-prone), the wise Asian guy tells him that taking care of people at the highest level is like working at a hospital, that it’s no coincidence “hospitality” shares the same root word. Garrett also touches on the paradox of service: helping others somehow sustains the helper. Usually, I hate Asians who dispense wisdom because they perpetuate a tired stereotype, and this is why I don’t give anyone advice. (“Dad! Why do I keep falling off the bike?” “No.”), but it’s different with Garrett since he’s such a normal guy. He’s a recovering alcoholic who addresses people as “dude,” and he razzes others and gets razzed back. (“Fuck you, Garrett,” says an intense chef. “Yes, fuck me, chef,” Garrett responds.)
On his last day, Richie finds the elusive but omniscient Chef Terry, who, in a reverse Wizard of Oz, is everything the chef of the world’s greatest restaurant should be. She chats with Richie about failure and the second chances that come later in life. Richie needs this talk since he’s been a failure most of his life. We learned in the previous episode that Uncle Jimmy gave him a job, which he subsequently lost off camera. We don’t need the details; we know Richie fucked it up. The same goes for his marriage.
Richie desperately needs something to be a part of, and he finds it by the end of the week. He’s playing blind-tasting games with the staff after hours and guessing apple cider gastrique while Chef Jess, who has never met a creature as exquisite as Richie, eye fucks him mercilessly. (I’m shipping those two for season three.) Although he’s losing these relationships and his place at the three-star Michelin restaurant, he’s figured out his role at The Bear. Before this week, he didn’t see a place for himself at the resurrected restaurant and worried about being ancillary. However, true to nature, Richie doesn’t know what ancillary means. To be ancillary means to provide necessary support. The week as a stage taught him the value of being ancillary, which is now the core of Richie’s being.
It’s hard to miss Taylor Swift’s Love Story in this episode since it appears twice. It plays at the end of the sequence where Richie delivers the deep dish pizza and discovers the joy of service, and it closes out the episode, with the song’s plucking intro falling into place as Richie realizes Chef Terry’s dad was right: every second counts. Unlike the show’s music editor, I’m not an out-of-control Swiftie (twice in one episode?!), but I agree this is the perfect song for an episode about starting over. Richie now approaches his changing role at The Bear with the joy and optimism of a young person in love rather than the panic, rage, and resentment of a middle-aged man who finds himself on shifting ground. In this episode, Richie is reborn.
Amazing write-up, even if you're completely wrong about the perfect pie that is a Chicago deep-dish. My favorite episode of the season.