Taking place the day after the family and friends soft open at the show’s titular restaurant, The Bear’s Season 3 premiere “Tomorrow” is a taking stock episode of sorts with Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) trying to mend fences with his sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) as well as his “cousin”/manager Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon). Co-writer/director/show creator Christopher Storer also seeds in flashbacks to his past chef gigs featuring the show’s star studded guest cast along with fragments of interactions while Carmy writes his non-negotiables to create an ambient/ASMR-y collage effect ending on a beautiful grace note about the ability of food to be art and inspire people.

Storer and co-writer Matty Matheson (He plays Fak on the show and is a chef in his own right.) create continuity and an air of pondering and mindfulness by setting the entire episode to a Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross track. We go from the Chicago skyline to the kitchen at the Bear to past work stops for Carmy in New York and Copenhagen that pass almost like a twinkle in the viewer’s eye. There’s the peacefulness of shelling peas and cutting flowers to make the dining experience that little bit better for guests contrasted with Carmy’s old boss David (Joel McHale) denigrating him and abusing him at every turn as well as flare-up’s of family arguments and drama set against Carmy’s burnt hands from working in kitchens. This is contrasted with the constructive feedback that Carmy gets from Andrea Terry (Olivia Colman) as well as her seeing his drawings of different dishes that later become menu items at The Bear.

However, “Tomorrow” isn’t just montages, ambience, and flashbacks. There are several real phone conversations sandwiched between the prep work like Sydney calling pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce), and Carmy apologizing to Richie and Claire as well as Sydney herself for his actions in the season two finale. That episode and much of season two (Especially the all-flashback episode “Fishes”) was utter chaos, and Carmy hopes to have a cooler head as he launches the restaurant even though this isn’t realistic in the high-stakes, low margin of error world of fine dining. A recurring visual that Christopher Storer uses in this episode is shots of Carmy’s notebooks at different stops (“New York”, “Copenhagen”) to show how he uses writing and drawing to process his feelings as well as craft ideas for his restaurant culminating in the non-negotiables list that he pens in this episode.

“Tomorrow” might not be the most exciting episode of The Bear and definitely is a palate cleanser after the toxic thrill ride that was the previous season’s finale. However, Christopher Storer, Matty Matheson, and Jeremy Allen White provide a big picture view of Carmy’s psyche through things that were, things that are, and some things that haven’t come to pass. He has put his blood, sweat, and tears into his career as a chef, but this has also led to alienation from his family and friends. For example, we learn in this episode that he didn’t attend his brother’s funeral and sat in a car outside watching Richie and the staff members of Original Beef. However, he has a fresh-ish start with The Bear and is working hard to rebuild his relationships with his family/friends/colleagues (They’re basically interchangeable.), but we’ll see how long that lasts in the new season.

Overall Verdict: 8.1