“The Bear” has been a kind of conquering hero since it premiered two years ago. It swept the Emmys, and it became that rare thing in the binge era, a water-cooler hit — especially the second season, with the explosive “Fishes” episode, wherein Jamie Lee Curtis’s Donna made the phrase “broken home” literal.
Now, with the arrival of season 3, whose 10 episodes are all currently available on Hulu, “The Bear” is just a TV show. It’s a very good TV show, still, with first-rate portraiture, a spiky backstory that continues to unfold, some of the best acting on TV right now, and scripts that manage both light banter and heavy confrontation beautifully — the banter being particularly amusing this season, as the Fak brothers become the show’s kooky chorus.
The exchanges between the two Faks are what help make this drama, at times searing, into a bit of a comedy, the category in which the show has been pegged for the Emmys. The pair worry about being “haunted” by enemies who’ve gotten inside your head, and, while it may sound absurd, their oblique dialogue made me wonder what Samuel Beckett might have sounded like as a sitcom writer. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) also get into some fast-talking face-offs in this season’s second episode that, despite the rancor between the pair, and despite the curses and accusations they feverishly bat back and forth, winds up being funny.
But yeah, “The Bear” is just a good TV show now, without that revelatory feeling that came with its crowded-kitchen realism and, in season 2, with its pitch-perfect snapshots of each character’s life in the buildup to the opening of the new restaurant. Creator-writer Christopher Storer doesn’t strain to outdo himself this time out so much as maintain the intensity of last year’s tone and expose the reverberations from what happened then. The results are consistent, eye-opening in terms of restaurant culture, and at times moving, if not next level.
Basically, the third season is a long reaction to the second, when we saw Carmy, trapped in the walk-in refrigerator, just as he’s trapped in his depression, alienate both his girlfriend, Claire (Molly Gordon), and Richie. I’m not going to spoil anything significant here, but the Berzatto family history that we learned about in season 2 continues to rear its head, as most traumatic histories do, while Carmy and his pregnant sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott), cope with the opening of the restaurant and pressures from Oliver Platt’s Jimmy to start making money. Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), meanwhile, remains the sane ying to Carmy’s emotionally chaotic yang. She is the calm center of the Berzatto storm, which, she understands more than ever this season, can be exhausting.
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One of the best things about “The Bear” remains fully intact. We continue to learn the specific reasons that the folks working at the Bear are in the restaurant business in the first place. We see how they got there, and why they stay — what parts of their pasts have led them to embrace the art of cooking and serving. We see their restaurant work as part of their broader life projects. Watching Carmy obsess over plating, trying to get every single element to work together flavor-wise and visually, makes perfect sense when you compare it to his family life, where silverware can be thrown as much as invective. He’s exerting control where he can — on the plate — and, in a way, he has devoted himself to creating a world where “Fishes” won’t swim.
Throughout the season, we waft around in Carmy’s consciousness, going back and forth in time to show us what’s at stake for him with the Bear. There are montages aplenty, providing a sense of both time passing and a sense of all the things at play in any given moment. And, as in season 2, we do see some guest stars, both in the present and past tenses, none of whom I will reveal here. The bottom line is that the characters haven’t been magically healed between seasons, as they are on some shows; these folks are still wrestling with the same decisions, with old wounds, with one another, and, when all is said and done, with creating a perfect dining experience.
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THE BEAR
Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colon-Zayas, Abby Elliott, Oliver Platt
On Hulu
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him @MatthewGilbert.