Controversial take but if you wrote a novel about two women falling in love and you changed one of them into a man you would have the most enormous smash hit of a romance book on your hands
Maybe because I met like 15 butch lesbians who are the real life equivalent of the ideal male romance lead and I have yet to meet a man who fits the archetype.
Ladies do you want a man who reads you classical novels when you can’t sleep? Bakes cakes, knits sweaters and is able to remodel your bathroom? Good with animals, kids and has a career they’re passionate about? Handsome but not vain? Sweet, sensitive but charmingly rough around the edges? A good conversationalist? Well that’s not a man, that’s my friend Jennifer
Idk man there’s just something about both Sydney and Carmen hating the toxic work culture in fine dining, loving to cook but being a little traumatized by it for their own reasons, and then finding that love for the culinary arts again, together. Like, say what you want about the nature of their relationship but The Bear is still very much a story about learning how to love (again) and how to let the people around you in.
This was one of my favorite moments between Carmy and Sydney.
Sydney is working expo. She is struggling. If you watch the beginning of episode 10, she is staying calm, but her voice is quaky. She does not sound 100% confident or in the moment. We have seen her command the kitchen before and run the pass but the energy from her feels different this time. Things start to heat up and she is feeling the pressure.
She tells Carmy, “I’m feeling a little, uh, swamped here. Do you want to switch with me?”
It’s quick but if you watch closely, Carmy looks up at her face and into her eyes, twice. He looks at her deeply and makes an assessment before responding. It’s as if he’s checking her and thinking, wait is she actually ok? She’s not sweating, she’s not shaking, she doesn’t look like she’s going to be sick. It is only after he makes this assessment and he knows that she’s ok that he responds. She’s alright and that means he can encourage her to keep going.
He speaks in a calm, low, gently encouraging voice and tells her, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re good. You’re good. No, no, you’re fine. Let’s go though. Keep going.”
In this moment, despite how he might feel about the way she’s running the line, if he had given in and switched with her, this would have meant letting her fail. He promised her earlier he wouldn’t let that happen—“I won’t let you.”
He tries to get Tina to help but she can’t. His voice rises in concern when he tries to get Marcus to help her. In this moment I really felt like he understood how much she needed help but he will not pull her off the line or trade spots with her because he wants to keep his promise to her and he wants her to prevail.
It’s a small scene, a quick look that could have gone unnoticed, but there was so much behind the way he looked at her to check her well being, and the way he spoke to her, gently and encouragingly, in this moment that it really sticks out to me in a beautiful way.
You can feel how he cares for her, and wants to protect her but also how much he believes in her and truly wants her to succeed.
