'The Bear' Season 5 Episode 4 Recap: Does Syd Manage To Pull The Menu Together? 

The 4th episode of The Bear season 5 is titled “ribs,” based on Syd’s delicacy. The dish that brings the family together. A Last Supper of sorts, but one that has everyone at the meal hoping for a future together still. The meal itself includes a little bit of everyone, Syd, Marcus, and Tina in the Brussels sprouts. Maybe Carmy is in the ribs, the fish sauce was his idea, after all. Plus, he’s the main dish, or at least, he was. The episode has a sense of doom to it for sure. It feels like nothing is going right, but they still want to keep going for the last time. The season so far has been very sentimental, and this episode has two sad moments, one with Sugar finally seeing her mum healed, and one with Richie’s speech.

Spoiler Alert

How Is Sugar Handling The Donna Situation?

Right from the start of the season, Sugar’s been a bundle of nerves, because she’s dropped off her baby with her mother, Donna. Having the grandmother babysit a child should not be this stressful, but Donna’s not had the best track record, though she promises she’s changed. And Sugar does want to trust her, so here she is, half trusting her, half listening in on every word she says with an earphone sticking out of one ear. But she’s still business-oriented, and when Carmy comes into her office, she gives her brother a very precise rundown of exactly how much trouble they’re in financially, to the point where it’s actually a good thing 3 of their servers have quit. Carmy clearly notices how much trouble she’s going through, so he offers to listen in on Donna on her behalf, giving her some much needed room to focus on the restaurant. This is all thanks to the speech Richie gave him earlier about not being a team player. Finally, someone has actually told him, and it’s Richie, cousin. 

When she comes back, Carmy hands her the earphone back, tells her Donna’s being surprisingly normal, and then starts talking with her about which of them had a tougher time growing up with a mother like her. They both ultimately agree that Mikey was the favorite child, and that makes them both a little bit sad again. Sugar takes her feelings and puts them into her work, whipping the staff into shape. They may not have serving staff anymore, but they don’t need to work the sandwich stand, so the sandwich boys are clearing tables and Rene and Garrett are serving. There’s no clean uniforms after the water pipe burst, but everyone’s in matching blue merch t-shirts. The ones that say “The Berf” on them. They don’t have enough food for all the reservations, so she needs to get Richie to cancel some. Whatever happens, she’s on top of it. At one point, she sits down and listens to Donna reading a story to her baby, and it makes her cry genuine tears, perhaps because this is a maternal side of Donna she herself never had the privilege of experiencing, and it really gets to her. Donna has genuinely grown, and she cares about her grandchild. Both kids finally process the “loss” of a mother, but they have regained her now. 

How Does Syd Start To Assert Herself?

Everyone knows Carmy’s leaving now, and nobody’s taking it too well, but the Faks are perhaps handling it worst of all, followed closely by Syd. Syd needs to take control of this restaurant somehow, but even with Carmy in a technically subservient role, he keeps poking his nose into her business when he’s trying to be “helpful,” essentially undermining her authority. Even Richie calls Carmy selfish this episode, but he still tells him he’s doing the right thing, though he calls it kinda sad he’d prefer not to be thinking about anything. But Syd really speaks up when Sugar’s trying to get Richie to cancel tables and Carmy comes in and supports Richie. She makes it clear to Richie that the tables have got to go, and Carmy lowers his head and backs down, clearly apologetic for overstepping.

All things considered, she’s doing a good job keeping her head above the water, especially given Ted fell through the damn roof and let a cascade of rainwater in before he was rescued. Another point of contention is the coke-cooked ribs, where Carmy suggests Syd put some fish sauce in to thicken the gravy, but she ignores his suggestion, until later in the episode where she decides to listen to him and put it in anyway. When she tells him she added the sauce and asks him to taste it, he simply tells her she didn’t need the sauce, except he does it in a way that’s meant to make her confident in sticking with her gut. Later, though, he can’t stop coming back for seconds, and the ribs are a hit with the staff at their pre-dinner dinner, maybe a sign that Syd should have faith in herself but also know when to listen to other people. She does this by asking the dishwashing boys if they need anything too, surprising them because nobody’s ever asked them what they need before.

Though Carmy becomes hesitant about suggesting new things and overstepping boundaries, Syd knows by now that she should trust his instincts. So when he suggests stretching out their protein by cooking the lamb in a tuna gravy, i.e. a lamb tonnato, she puts him to work collaborating with Luca, and the end result is immediately placed on the menu after Syd has a taste. Also, throughout this, Syd is leaning heavily on Tina, and when she brings up the idea of Tina maybe wanting to leave after Carmy’s gone, Tina tells her with a smile on her face “I’ll always be your Jeff.” Tina’s always been someone Syd can really count on, I mean, we’ve seen what they’ve been through together from the start. 

Does Richie Pull Himself Together?

Richie keeps trying to pretend the car crash in the morning was no big deal, but then he goes around and tells everyone about it anyway, almost as if it’s something to keep their minds off the hell they’re going through. Richie calling Carmy selfish comes from the heart, but he does genuinely want his cousin to be happy, so he’s okay seeing him go, more so than Marcus is. When the reservation app comes back online and he sees they’re booked way too heavy, he’s the happiest of the lot, before Sugar and Syd talk him into cancelling 15 bookings, given they literally haven’t got the food for everyone. This is too big an ask for him, as every person he calls gives him a story about how special tonight is meant to be, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell them they can’t come.

In the ending of episode 4, Richie has to deliver his hype speech to the staff, but it falls apart when he sees the looks on everybody’s faces. Instead, he tells them that everything feels wrong, and then he apologizes to Syd before going on a tirade about how messed up everything is. Using all the cussing he wants before the actual service. But he concludes by saying he wants to light a fire under everyone’s butts, because if tonight’s the final night, there’s no pressure, meaning they should get out there and do their best. At the end of the episode, they get a change of reservation from a 4 person booking to a 2 person booking, and when everyone hears the name “Dearborn,” they know it’s the Michelin guy, or as Richie calls him, the Star Man. Maybe they have some hope of survival still.

What’s Happening With The Bear’s Air Rights?

Meanwhile, while the crisis has been unfolding in the Bear, Cicero’s been scrambling around with Computer and Cheese (definitely fun to say) and trying desperately to get a fix for his financial situation. Currently, they have two options: franchising or selling their air rights. Franchising’s out of the question for Cicero, since that would require him to put even more of his own money into a business that he thinks is going to be the death of him. Nobody’s buying the business either, not as it stands at least. But the idea of selling the air rights is an interesting one, because it would let them keep “The Bear” open, but also let someone else build on top of it, bringing in income. Sadly, when they go to the property records office and try to get an idea of who owns the air rights, after a very frustrating wait, they find out they’re under the name of Mary “Crazy Mary” Heyman, and they know they’re out of luck. Next episode will see them trying to wrangle these air rights out of Mary’s hands, I’m sure, but it doesn’t look too good for Cicero.

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