Every Season of 'The Bear,' Ranked Worst to Best

Image via FX Networks Published Nov 14, 2026, 5:01 PM EST Sign in to your Collider account I have never wanted to hug a group of fictional people and tell them to shut the hell up quite as badly as I do with the staff of The Bear. These people can turn a perfectly normal conversation into a personal insult in under twenty seconds. Somebody asks for help, somebody else hears criticism, and suddenly three generations of unresolved family trauma are being discussed over a pan of burning food. I adore them. I also find them exhausting. And that's why I'm so particular about this show. I don't need everyone to become emotionally healthy or start speaking politely. I need their mistakes to lead somewhere. I need the affection underneath all that anger to feel earned. Across five seasons, the series has sometimes tested my patience, occasionally broken my heart, and delivered a few hours of television I would defend against practically anything. Christopher Storer made this series for FX on Hulu and clearly let us know from the beginning that the restaurant was an extension of this family's emotional wreckage. Let’s further dig in. 5 Season 4 (2025) Image via FX Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) has spent so long trying to build the perfect restaurant that he's nearly destroyed his relationships with the people helping him. Season 4 finally forces him to confront that contradiction. Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) is considering an opportunity outside the restaurant, Uncle Jimmy's financial pressure is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, and the kitchen desperately needs Carmy to stop treating every imperfect detail like a personal catastrophe. I wanted to love this season more. There are beautiful moments, particularly Sydney's conversations with her father and the uncomfortable honesty of Carmy's decision to leave the restaurant behind. But too much of the storytelling feels hesitant, as though everyone is approaching an important realization without quite getting there. Even the strongest emotional exchanges sometimes arrive after hours of familiar frustration. I respect where Carmy's story goes. I just wish the journey there had been considerably more exciting. 4 Season 3 (2024) Image via FX I'll defend “Napkins” against almost any criticism you throw at this season. Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) loses her job, spends a miserable day searching for another, and eventually wanders into the Beef. There, Mikey (Jon Bernthal) offers her something she's been denied everywhere else that day: a little kindness. Their conversation is painfully ordinary, which is precisely why it hits so hard. Ayo Edebiri directed the episode, and that quiet meeting accomplishes more than some of the season's elaborate restaurant scenes. Then “Ice Chips” puts Natalie (Abby Elliott) in labor with her deeply unreliable mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) beside her. Two women who've spent years hurting and misunderstanding each other suddenly have nowhere to hide. I love these episodes desperately. Unfortunately, Carmy's obsessive pursuit of perfection grows repetitive, while the restaurant's larger story often struggles to move forward. Season 3 can be maddeningly self-indulgent. Yet those two intimate stories remind me just how extraordinary this show can be when it allows somebody other than Carmy to occupy the emotional center. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Netflix Character Would Be Your Best Friend? Dustin · Emily · Wednesday · Gi-hun Some friends drag you out of the house. Some sit with you on the worst night of your life. Netflix has written both, plus the one who tells you the truth you have been avoiding all week. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually do friendship, and find out which of them was always going to end up in your corner. 🧢Dustin(Stranger Things) 🗼Emily(Emily in Paris) 🕷️Wednesday(Wednesday) 🟢Gi-hun(Squid Game) FIND YOUR BEST FRIEND → 01 How do you usually end up making a new friend? The origin story says a lot about the friendship that follows it. AWe got loud about the same obsession and never stopped. BThey invited me somewhere before we had properly met. CWe bonded over disliking exactly the same thing. DThey noticed I was struggling and stayed with me. NEXT QUESTION → 02 What is a perfect Saturday with your best friend? Friendship is mostly built out of very ordinary hours. AA ridiculous plan neither of us should attempt. BSomewhere new, photographed heavily, ending very late. CSomewhere quiet, few people, zero small talk. DSomething simple, and a conversation that actually matters. NEXT QUESTION → 03 You call them at two in the morning. What happens? This is the real test of a friendship, and everybody knows it. AThey are already putting their shoes on. BThey answer instantly and turn it into a plan. CThey answer and say something unflattering and true. DThey listen for an hour and never check the time. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What do you want from them when you are clearly wrong? The best friendships are the ones that survive being corrected. ASupport first. We can review the mistake later. BA relentlessly positive reframe of the entire disaster. CThe blunt version. Do not soften it for me. DPatience, and no judgment about how I got here. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What do your friends actually value about you? The friend you attract says something about the friend you are. AI am all in, always, about everything. BI can turn almost any situation into a good time. CI say the thing nobody else in the room will. DI look after whoever is having the worst day. NEXT QUESTION → 06 You have a falling out. How does it go? How a friendship repairs itself matters more than how it breaks. ALoudly, briefly, then back to normal by Tuesday. BThey apologise first, enthusiastically, with a gift. CCold silence, then one dry joke that fixes everything. DWe talk until we both understand what actually happened. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What do you actually need a best friend for? Everybody is missing something. The right friend fills that gap. ATo make my life bigger than it would be alone. BTo push me out of the house and into my own life. CTo catch me when I start lying to myself. DTo be the person who never gave up on me. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Ten years from now, what keeps the two of you close? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who you get. AWe would still drop everything for each other, instantly. BWe still make plans, and we still actually go. CWe still cut through each other's nonsense in one sentence. DThey stood by me once when it cost them something. REVEAL MY BEST FRIEND → The Group Chat Has Spoken Your Best Friend Is…Four Netflix characters, four completely different ways of showing up for somebody. This is the one who fits how you actually do friendship, and what having them in your life would be like. Dustin HendersonYou do not do friendship at half volume, and neither does he. What you want is somebody who says yes to the plan before you have finished describing the plan. Dustin is the friend the entire show runs on: loyal past the point of sense, enthusiastic about everything, and incapable of leaving anybody behind. You have the same instinct. Your friendships are loud, specific and slightly ridiculous, and they last for decades because of it. He is also the one person who would take your strangest interest completely seriously, which is far rarer than it sounds. You would have a group chat. It would never once be quiet. Emily CooperYou are the friend who makes things happen, and so is she. Together you would be mildly exhausting to everyone around you and completely delighted with yourselves. Emily treats an ordinary Tuesday as something that could be turned into an occasion, which is either the best or the worst quality in a friend depending on your energy levels. You share her refusal to sit still. Neither of you has ever accepted a night in when something was happening somewhere else. She is far more loyal than people give her credit for. She defends her friends loudly, publicly, and occasionally before checking the facts. She would post the photo without asking. You would forgive her, because it is a very good photo. Wednesday AddamsYou have no patience for pleasant lies, and she has no ability to tell them. What looks like coldness from the outside is the most reliable friendship on this list. Wednesday never says a kind thing she does not mean, which makes the rare ones count for an enormous amount. You would rather be told the truth than be made comfortable. She is constitutionally incapable of offering you anything else. Underneath all of it she is ferociously protective. She simply refuses to make a performance out of caring. Do not expect a birthday message. Do expect her to ruin anyone who wrongs you. Seong Gi-hunYou look after whoever is having the worst day. So does he. It is the least strategic way to move through the world and the best possible quality in a friend. Gi-hun is not the strongest player in Squid Game, or the cleverest. He is the one who keeps choosing to protect somebody else, over and over, at genuine cost to himself. You have the same instinct. You notice who is struggling and you stay with them, long after anybody would blame you for leaving. He is a flawed friend, and that is part of why it lands. He lets people down, then comes back and tries again, which is more than most manage. He would give you his last chance and never once mention that he had done it. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 Season 5 (2026) Image via FX An enormous storm, a booking disaster, dwindling supplies, and an overloaded dining room. Oh, and the chef who helped build the restaurant has announced he's leaving. Season 5 gives Sydney, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and the remaining team one monstrous service to prove they can manage without Carmy. I love that premise. After spending years watching these people discuss the possibility of becoming better, we finally get to see whether they've actually learned anything. The pressure is magnificent, particularly when improvisation replaces Carmy's obsession with absolute control. Tina gets opportunities to demonstrate her confidence, Sydney starts trusting her own leadership, and Richie increasingly resembles somebody who genuinely belongs in hospitality. There's a wonderful sense that this restaurant has become larger than the man who created it. The season's final gathering is affectionate enough to make me forgive some of its more sentimental impulses. And Carmy's last message to Mikey, simply saying “All good,” is devastating in its simplicity. Five seasons of grief, anger, and impossible expectations, reduced to two words that finally sound like peace. 2 Season 1 (2022) Image via FX The Original Beef of Chicagoland is a disaster. The kitchen is filthy, the accounts are a nightmare, the employees refuse to cooperate, and Carmen has inherited the entire operation following his brother's suicide. He knows how to cook at an extraordinary level. Unfortunately, knowing how to run a prestigious kitchen doesn't prepare him for managing people who loved Mikey and resent practically everything Carmy represents. I'll never forget “Review.” Online orders keep pouring from the printer, Sydney's attempts to improve the operation collapse into chaos, and Carmy finally loses control. It's an agonizing episode because everybody is contributing to the disaster, yet nobody has enough perspective to stop it. And underneath all that shouting is a grieving younger brother desperately trying to understand why Mikey left him behind. When Carmy eventually finds Mikey's note and the money hidden inside those tomato cans, I feel relief every single time. For a brief moment, these exhausted people have something worth celebrating together. 1 Season 2 (2023) Image via FX Finally, my favorite. Richie is assigned to polish forks at an elite restaurant, and I genuinely believe the resulting episode, “Forks,” belongs among the greatest hours of television in recent memory. Here's a man who's spent years defending his own importance through arguments, resentment, and sheer stubbornness. Then somebody teaches him that taking care of other people can be an extraordinary profession. Ebon Moss-Bachrach makes Richie's growing pride almost unbearably touching. That moment when he drives through Chicago singing along to Taylor Swift? I could watch it a hundred times. And that's only one part of an astonishing season. The old sandwich shop is being transformed into a fine-dining restaurant, with Sydney, Marcus (Lionel Boyce), and the others pursuing skills they never imagined possessing. “Fishes” takes us into a Berzatto family Christmas dinner so hostile that Donna eventually drives her car into the house. Watching it makes every argument in the present more understandable. Then the restaurant finally opens, and Carmy ends up trapped inside the walk-in refrigerator, unable to participate in the success he's sacrificed everything to achieve. That contradiction breaks my heart. Everybody else is discovering what they can become, while Carmy still cannot imagine happiness without finding a way to punish himself. Season 2 understands these people completely. I wouldn't trade a single one of its extraordinary emotional highs for a tidier, more comfortable story. The Bear Release Date 2022 - 2026-00-00 Network Hulu Cast Richard 'Richie' Jerimovich Showrunner Christopher Storer