In season two of Hulu’s The Bear, the eponymous restaurant workers tackle the handbook labor of changing their divey-yet-delicious Italian beef sandwich store right into a Michelin restaurant. As if that job wasn’t arduous sufficient, they have to additionally grapple with Chicago’s stifling and labyrinthine metropolis forms.
Constructing codes, hearth suppression exams, mildew remediation, IRS paperwork, and varied licenses threaten to drown the challenge earlier than it launches. Cascading purple tape needs to be cleared on a good deadline or the enterprise will fail. One character explains that the town has to “ship a rep and that rep will log out on one other rep who will come and have a look at stuff after which log out on a distinct rep.” A liquor software have to be pushed an hour away and dropped within the required slot. All of that will get in the best way of letting the store’s homeowners and workers do what they do finest: meals service and hospitality.
The Bear‘s gripping plot comes from characters who should study to cease getting in their very own method. The behemoth Chicago forms does them no favors.
