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The 7 Best Needle Drops in ‘The Bear’

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A middling third season aside, Hulu/FX’s The Bear has been one of the best American TV shows of the past few years. The show follows the trials and tribulations of Carmy Berzato (Jeremy Allen White), a hot-shot chef, who leaves New York City to run his family’s sandwich shop The Beef after the passing of his brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal). In Season 2 and 3, he opens his own restaurant called The Bear with the help of the staff of The Beef. The Bear features strong performances from a deep ensemble cast, a powerful sense of narrative momentum that matches the stressfulness of the culinary world, and isn’t afraid to experiment like an hour-long flashback episode in Season Two called “The Fishes” set around the Feast of the Seven Fishes featuring guest appearances from Jamie Lee Curtis (As Carmy’s mother), Bob Odenkirk, John Mulaney, and Sarah Paulson.

It also has some pretty damn great music choices of mainly the alternative rock variety that enhance the characters’ arcs or just remind the audience that Chicago is a cool city with tasty food. (I miss it, but am never driving there again.) Without further ado, here are the seven best needle drops across The Bear‘s three seasons in chronological order.

1. “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens (From Season 1, Episode 7 “Review”)

The tensest episode of The Bear Season 1 starts with a breezy little ditty from Sufjan Stevens from his concept album Illinois. (He was supposed to make concept albums about all 50 states, but only did Illinois and Michigan.) It’s diegetic music with the radio DJ from Chicago’s adult album alternative station bantering about Stevens dressing up as a unicorn at the Metro before the more vulnerable demo version of “Chicago” plays in one of The Bear‘s mini montage. With historical, black and white flashbacks, archival footage of Barack Obama and Michael Jordan, and of course, loving tracking shots of many of Chicagoland’s beloved restaurants, it places Carmy, Manny (Richard Esteras), and Sydney’s (Ayo Edebiri) commute in context before shit hits the fan.

2. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” by Wilco (From Season 1, Episode 7 “Review”)

Wilco is one of the great Chicago bands, and their 2004 11 minute track “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” is the backbeat of The Beef being utterly torn apart when Sydney leaves the preorder option on for their to-go orders, and the receipts keep printing out orders before the restaurant has even open. Christopher Storer’s single take/single song approach to direction keeps the stress levels increasing with Carmy throwing a fit and Marcus (Lionel Boyce) and Sydney walking out after Carmy verbally abuses them. The creativity they’ve shown with their donut and risotto dishes respectively is thrown out the window to the whine of distorted guitars and Jeff Tweedy’s barely-heard vocals in-sync with the receipt machine.

3. “Can’t Hardly Wait” by The Replacements (From Season 2, Episode 5 “Pop”)

Even though Carmy is busy trying to open his new restaurant The Bear, there’s a little time for romance in Season 2. He reconnects with an old friend named Claire (Molly Gordon), who is a resident physician, and understands working in a hectic profession where everything is literally life and death. He initially gives her the wrong number, but Neil Fak (Matty Mattheson) plays matchmaker and gives her Carmy’s real number. There’s some flirtations and a long car ride to get a liquor license, but they finally kiss at the end of a long, stressful day setting up The Bear’s kitchen. (Of course, Fak interrupts them at first.) And what better song to soundtrack a first kiss than “Can’t Hardly Wait” by The Replacements with Paul Westerberg’s emotive vocals matching the yearning in Gordon’s face, and that lovely chorus with the strings and horns kicking in as they start making out. Also, the lyric “Ashtray floors, dirty clothes, and filthy jokes” definitely defines The Bear’s back of house area. Pairing one of the brightest moments of The Bear with one of the best college rock songs of all time is a genius move from director Joanna Calo.

4. “Love Story” by Taylor Swift (From Season 2, Episode 7 “Forks”)

My favorite episode of The Bear Season Two is “Forks” where Carmy sends his brother’s best friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to stage at a fine dining restaurant called Ever even though he doesn’t have any culinary skill. He begins the episode by resenting having to clean forks to a spit-shine, but eventually, bonds with his colleagues, buys into their philosophy, and provides speedy, attentive service. Richie falling in love with his front of house role, suit jacket and all, is set to “Love Story” by Taylor Swift with Moss-Bachrach doing emotionally charged car karaoke vocals on the way to work. This song is emblematic of his Richie’s character development in Season 2, and Taylor Swift is his daughter’s favorite artist so there’s also a personal touch too.

5. “Save It for Later” by Eddie Vedder (From Season 3, Episode 2 “Next”)

The Bear loves its opening montage needle drops, and Season 3 is no exception with a cover of The English Beat’s “Save It for Later” by Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. It kicks off episode two and looks at a hustling, bustling Chicago starting its day and finds humanity in every corner from the diner waitress pouring coffee to the zamboni driver on the ice and even the guys who literally make the sausage. It’s how society should function before going into the chaotic world of The Bear. Vedder’s take on the iconic song is soulful, and there’s a feeling of basically everything be okay in the end. It put me in a calm state of mind before an episode full of arguing.

6. “Morning Fog” by Kate Bush (From Season 3, Episode 6 “Napkins”)

“Napkins” is easily the best episode of The Bear Season 3 with its laser focus on Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas), and how she navigated economic insecurity and the job market as a middle-aged Puerto Rican woman before finally finding a home at The Beef after a heart to heart with Mikey, who spots her crying at the restaurant. In the episode, Tina talks about liking having routine through working consistently, and “Morning Fog” by Kate Bush, which plays throughout “Napkins”, reinforces this character’s trait. It helps the transitional moments in the episode like Tina taking the bus all across Chicago to hand out her resume or go to job interviews that get cancelled pass pleasantly. It’s just sad that “Morning Fog” sadly won’t get an airplay boost like its more famous Hounds of Love sister “Running Up That Hill”.

7. “In the Garage” by Weezer (From Season 3, Episode 10 “Forever”)

The Bear weirdly has a lot of Weezer songs with a track from their Christmas album wrapping up “The Fishes” and “Getchoo” from Pinkerton showing up earlier this season. However, “In the Garage” kicks off The Bear Season 3 finale with a slideshow type of montage of different influential chefs who will be attending the funeral dinner for Ever, including Carmy himself, who stands off and looks at the pictures instead of interacting with anyone. The lyrics of the song are basically about Rivers Cuomo being happier to hang out in his garage with his comics, action figures, and guitars than interacting with people and having relationships, which if you substitute the nerdy stuff for the foodie stuff, that’s Carmy to a tee. (I’m kind of ticked that they didn’t leave in the verse about Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler.) He loves tinkering with food and changing the menu every night even though this affects his colleagues and the restaurant’s bottom line. The “In the Garage” needle drop playfully creates a parallel between its lyrics and Carmy’s psyche. He just wants to be left alone cooking food.

Cats Zooms Past So Bad it’s Good Territory

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Cats

Look, Cats was always going to be a disaster. There’s simply no way you could take the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and turn it into a coherent film because Cats is and always has been nonsensical garbage dolled up with amazing costumes, dancing, and setpieces. Notice I didn’t say music, because Cats has exactly one great song, “Memory,” and the rest is more ridiculous garbage.

Imagine the amount of cocaine that was ingested in the writing, conception, production design and staging of Cats beginning with TS Elliot’s poetry to the 1981 musical to every production of the musical since then to this film. Every bit of celluloid screams “WE ARE ON DRUGS” up to and including the way the cats’ CGI animated ears and tails WON’T STOP MOVING. Yes, cats can and do move like that, but apparently “Jellicle” cats can and do EVERY 2 SECONDS.

One way the film does improve on the play is its attempts to actually convey some sort of plot: every year on a special night, our band of jellicle cats meet and their matriarch (played by Maggie Smith) chooses one to go up to kitty cat heaven and be reborn. So the cats put on a series of elaborate song and dance numbers to compete for that honor, like you do. Except one of the bad cats (played by Idris Elba) is trying to rig the competition in his favor by kidnapping other top kitties. It is not a plot-forward movie.

Instead, you basically get a dozen little vignettes each devoted to introducing one cat or another and there’s singing and dancing. Ok, the dancing is pretty great. Francesca Hayward plays Victoria, our audience surrogate cat, who is new to the junkyard and this band of jellicles, so we learn through her eyes. She is an amazing dancer. There is no way to oversell how great she is. It’s just such a shame she isn’t in a better film, especially one that doesn’t weirdly sexualize her so much.

What do I mean by weirdly sexualize? Well, you come away from the film with a weird feeling like. . . maybe director Tom Hooper has a cat fetish? If you are a cat furry and love the Cats musical, then this movie is 100% for you. Everyone else? Ehhhhhh. . .

Is it so bad it’s good? Like a cult classic sort of way, like a sneak in some edibles and enjoy it way? No. It zooms past so bad it’s good territory that it’s so bad it’s bad again. I pity anyone who goes to this movie high on drugs. It’s going to be a bad trip.

Cat Meow GIF by Cats Movie - Find & Share on GIPHY

This film has such an amazing cast and they are all wasted here. I have no idea what Idris Elba is doing in this movie. I have no idea what Judi Dench is doing in this movie. I have no idea what Ian McKellan is doing in this movie. I have no idea what Jennifer Hudson is doing in this movie. Ok, I sort of know what James Corden, Jason Derullo, and Rebel Wilson are doing in this movie and that is hamming it up as much as possible. I have no idea what Taylor Swift is doing in this movie.

And speaking of Taylor, she has a new song she co-wrote with Andrew Lloyd Webber and it is exactly the unholy abomination a combination of those two would be. Meanwhile, Jennifer Hudson seems determined to make “Memory” hers as much as possible, full-on ugly-crying under the weight of all that makeup and CGI as if to say, “Remember when Anne Hathaway ugly-cried in Les Mes and you all ate it up? Well here’s THIS.” When she finally lets loose and belts as hard as she can, it’s actually pretty good for a few seconds. But it can in no way redeem the rest of this thoroughly inexplicable movie.

Cats will have a fanbase. There will be people who love this. I’m glad they’ll find what they like. And I will say this for it: between this and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, one of these two movies took a big audacious swing. And there’s something to be said for that. Yes, it’s still a giant festering garbage fire, but at least they were thinking big enough to ask, “What if Cats, but with CGI ear and tail twitching and more like humans and sexier?”

1 out of 5 stars