I have never seen the show The Bear on Hulu.
The Bear is about an Irish or Italian line cook who is not Waffle House tough, but maybe Manhattan Deli tough. The show is set in Boston or Pittsburgh.
Jerry “The Bear” McRomano is oily and unkempt from working over a hot fry vat all day and is worn down from the stress of dealing with adding or removing pickles and being yelled at constantly by his boss, a mob guy.
There is a lot of yelling in the show and crime and I would compare it to a combination of The Sopranos and Hell’s Kitchen.
We follow Jerry’s adventures as a drug-addled line cook who wants to get out of the sweaty world of being yelled at and pickle wrangling, so he starts doing crime for his boss (dealing drugs, as he is a line cook) and this gets him into a lot of hot water (hot water is used in the show as a heavy-handed metaphor for Jerry’s drug dealing and usage, because it is conveniently found in the kitchen). When Jerry isn’t at work burning himself he is wearing a greasy hoodie and has the hood pulled up. He shoves his hands in the pockets really suspiciously and wanders into back alleys by dumpsters and such and talks to shady characters who buy his drugs.
The drug customers are mean to him and say things like “You smells like pickles, son!” and “You lost, sandwich pal?”
This is pretty much the entire first season. There is an arc where Jerry has a lot of sex with Laura, one of the hosts at the restaurant where he works as “The Bear.” Laura is from a good family and is working as a host seating people because she is paying for her school or her grandmother’s cancer. She knows that Jerry is a heaping spoonful of greasy bad news but can’t help herself because of his reputation as a bad boy line cook.
At the end of the first season, Jerry sells his alley drugs to what turns out to be a sexy DEA agent with a forgettable name. She’s like “You’re busted, drugs creep!” and hauls him in, and we’re like, “Well, now Jerry’s really done it! I don’t know how he’s getting out of this one!”
But then the second season starts and the sexy DEA agent is like “You work for me now! Got it, Bear?” and he’s like “Ok” and so he starts trying to work his way up the drugs crime ladder so that he can get close to the Big Boss of Boston or Philadelphia, and that guy we find out is like an unexpected sort of character like a finance podcaster or maybe a guy who owns a big restaurant chain of five-star restaurants.
Also this whole time Jerry is still getting yelled at and burning himself.
Laura finds out about the drugs and is like “I’m not having sex with you in your abusive dad’s apartment anymore!” and Jerry is sad and goes on a crazy drugs bender and breaks a bunch of stuff and gets fired from the deli.
But just then, he is approached by the podcaster who owns the popular restaurants and that guy is like “I hear you can cook, son! How would you like to cook for me?” and he is talking about food and not meth, because Jerry is not very good at selling drugs (he got caught) and is definitely too stupid for that kind of chemistry (he burns himself on the waffle iron) so Jerry is like “I hope your restaurant can handle ‘The Bear.'”
Oh, Jerry is called The Bear because he’s kind of sleepy but also kind of an asshole when he gets worked up.
The sexy DEA agent is like “This is good but you’re in way over your head! Now you do exactly what I tell you,” but that quickly turns into a sex thing and now The Bear is having office and car sex with the DEA agent.
It turns out that Jerry is really good at his new job being The Bear at the fancy restaurant and he’s making good money and is happy. But the sexy DEA agent doesn’t like it because he’s horsing around doing normal work and not selling drugs. But then the podcaster/restauranteur approaches him and is like “I see you’re good in the kitchen. Let’s see how good you are at distributing drugs to line cooks all over the city!”
Jerry isn’t happy about this, but he’s over a barrel, so what can he do? So he’s like “Ok, sir” and takes a huge bundle of drugs and gets on a bus because he can’t afford a car despite selling drugs and an undercover police is on the bus and is like “Gotcha!” and slaps handcuffs on him because he knows a duffle bag full of drugs when he sees one.
The DEA agent is like “You’re screwing up my case!” and yells at the cop but the cop is super observant and is like “I think you’re the one … screwing your case,” to imply that he knows about all the oily sex and she’s like “Damn.”
So The Bear goes to jail and then there is a trial (and the judge is secretly a friend of the podcaster, but we don’t find that out yet, so The Bear isn’t going to go to prison but is drawn deeper into the food and drugs web, despite this being a DEA case and not an FDA case) and right as the prosecutor is like “And that’s why this young man should go to prison!” the courtroom doors burst open, and Laura (the deli host, remember?) busts in and goes:
“I choose … The Bear!”
And the audience really likes that because the year before, that was a thing from the internet, and that is the end of Season 2.
I have not seen Season 3.
