From Forks to Taylor Swift: Here’s What Everything Means in The Bear S2

** WARNING: SPOILERS **

The Bear S2 brings us back to The Beef, Carmen Berzatto’s (Jeremy Allen White) downtown Chicago sandwich shop - except this time they’re tearing it down and re-opening as ‘The Bear’. In a race against the clock, they have three months to bring in new business, otherwise Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) will collect on his now $500k+ loan. As the gang try to turn the place into a fine-dining establishment – Michelin star included – each of them undergoes a personal transformation as pronounced as the building itself.

But what’s the deal with all the clocks? Or forks? And why do you feel like Taylor Swift keeps coming up? Well, here’s The Bear season 2, explained.

Forks in the Road

Forks are everywhere this season. From the outset we hear that the restaurant doesn’t have enough forks and Carmen won’t order any more. In ‘Forks’, Richie is sent to a highly exclusive restaurant to stage after Carmen pulls in a favour. At first, he couldn’t be less interested. He’s assigned to polishing forks for days.

Then in the season finale, the restaurant runs out of forks on opening night, setting off a chain of events that sees Carmen getting locked in the walk-in fridge and Sydney and Richie having to run the entire kitchen, showcasing the transformation of the characters, especially Richie, who becomes the antithesis of what he once was.

Forks also play a role in the star-studded Christmas-themed flashback special ‘Fishes’. Mikey (Jon Bernthal) grows increasingly annoyed at Uncle Lee (Bob Odenkirk) after Lee calls him out for telling the same stories repeatedly. The exchange causes friction – alongside the other equally chaotic narrative with the Berzatto mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) – and Mikey begins throwing forks at Lee across the dinner table. The underlying story is one of a much deeper resentment and frustration between the two, which erupts in an explosive confrontation. The rest of the table (and by extension the audience) sit in uncomfortable silence as Mikey holds the final fork up, ready to throw, after Lee warns him one final time. You can literally cut the tension with a fork.

In general, the forks are symbolic of the characters being at ‘a fork in the road’ - an expression which denotes a moment in time when a person must make a choice about what they want to do or where they want to go. For Carmen it represents many things: choosing to stay haunted by his family’s generational trauma or letting it go, remaining affected by the abuse of his ex-Chef de Partie (Joe McHale), and figuring out whether he truly has the time to focus on his new love interest Claire (Molly Gordon) or whether he needs to put his all into the restaurant. For Richie we see his choice play out in the episode ‘Forks’ where he chooses his new path as a FOH manager. Even with minor characters, like Ebra, we see that he is deciding whether to be in the kitchen at all, after disappearing for a few episodes.

The Importance of Clocks and Every Second Counts

Clocks are also a key motif this season. They are seen in the culinary school Tina attends and in Copenhagen where Marcus is staging with Luca (Will Poulter). Usually alongside it is the phrase ‘every second counts’ which takes on multiple meanings throughout. Obviously, it refers to the fact that every second counts when trying to open the new restaurant in time, which much of the season is concerned with: taking down walls, hiring new staff, completing all the city's regulatory checks and bureaucratic red tape.

But it also refers to life-altering affirmation many of the characters have. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) spends the season caring for his mother. Sydney (Ayo Edibiri) reconnects with her dad and Carmen wrestles with a romantic relationship with newcomer Claire. But Richie’s realisation and subsequent character development is the most uplifting of the season. In ‘Forks’ he speaks with Chef Terry (Olivia Coleman), who ignites within him a new lease of life, talking about the importance of making every second count. He asks her, “time well spent - that’s what it's all about?” to which she replies, “yeah I think so”. He apologises to Natalie for imposing himself on the Berzatto family all these years, becoming a better person and a team player.

In ‘Fishes’, where we see a flashback to a chaotic Berzatto family Christmas, the clock timers are frantically going off throughout. The home kitchen – managed by Carmen’s mother Donna – echoes that of The Bear kitchen, with pots, pans, food splashes and smoke everywhere. Curtis’s brilliant performance as a mentally ill and increasingly drunk mother, lashing out at Carmen and Natalie is exacerbated by the constant dings of the clocks, representing the decline of her mental state and the eruption of chaos that occurs at the end of the episode.

In the season finale of ‘The Bear’, the clocks become symbolic of everyone's personal development. After Carmen gets stuck in the walk-in fridge, Sydney enlists Richie to help in the kitchen, expediting orders. She exclaims, “we have five minutes to do this, or we’re f**ked”. In a nail-biting conclusion, they must send out orders for the whole restaurant in five minutes for the opening night to be successful. Afterwards, Marcus puts up a ‘every second counts’ sign in The Bear, representing the staff's transformation from sloppy cooks in a mismanaged kitchen, to an effective team, in a tightly-run, punctual restaurant.

Parent Problems

Undoubtedly the biggest narrative this season is the characters' relationships with their parents and how some have substituted those for familial relationships in the kitchen. Marcus cares for his ailing mother, even from Copenhagen, sending her voice messages. Sydney reconnects with her dad, after he learns to accept her career choice. In a conversation with Chef Terry while staging at another restaurant, Richie bonds with her over their parent’s military background.

The most poignant exploration of this is through Carmen, Mikey and Natalie, with their mum. In ‘Fishes’ we see that there is real generational trauma in the family, with Donna’s mental illness and alcoholism, and in her treatment of her kids, especially Natalie, who she seems to particularly hate. It’s clear why Carmen escaped to live a life as a world-renowned chef as soon as he could. Mikey’s relationship with Uncle Lee is also fractured, and he has some demons of his own, ultimately ending in suicide.

The lack of a true family unit for the Berzattos and those around them like Richie and the Faks, is potentially why many of them develop other familial relationships in the restaurant. Of course, Carmen and Richie refer to each other as ‘cousin’ despite not actually being related. Uncle Jimmy gets called ‘Uncle’ or ‘Unc’ by almost anyone and Natalie and Fak have a maternal relationship of their own, foreshadowing the fact that Natalie is pregnant and due to be a mother soon. She often refers to Fak as ‘sweetie’, ‘honey’ or ‘babe’ and when Fak and Richie have a disagreement about the best way to scrape the kitchen walls, Fak calls Nat for help, to which Richie replies, “you called mom?”

Richie the Swiftie

Everyone’s favourite episode this season is ‘Forks’, where Richie stages at a highly exclusive restaurant, making his way from begrudgingly polishing forks to working front-of-house, learning the processes and becoming really passionate about making the diners' experience special. In the very first episode, ‘Beef’, he compares himself to a character in a book he’s been reading, with “no skills, no personality, nothin’... [...] who’s got this group of friends he’s had since he was a kid and they’re all the sh*t. They’re outgrowing him. They just cut that motherf**ker off.” When Carmen asks why, Richie says, “because he’s got no purpose.”

In ‘Sundae’, we meet Richie’s daughter, Eva. As he drops her off at her mums, he turns and says, ‘I love Taylor Swift too, I just needed a break,” implying that she constantly plays her songs in the car. Here, Swift is a sign of the somewhat fractured relationship between Richie and Eva. In ‘Pop’, Richie asks Uncle Jimmy if “now's a good time to talk about those Taylor Swift tickets?” Then in ‘Fishes’ his ex-wife, Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs) can be seen wearing an 1989 album tour shirt. As the series unfolds, it’s clear that not only is Richie trying to connect with his daughter, but also his ex-wife (when he’s so evidently in love and she’s not). The tickets represent his clawing to keep his family together. In ‘Forks’ he gets three tickets to Swift’s tour and offers Tiffany a chance to join him and Eva - in a sour turn, she reveals she’s become engaged to someone else.

By the end of the episode, Richie experiences the biggest transformation of any of the show’s characters. The final scene is a masterclass in TV’s ability to produce an ungodly amount of serotonin in the viewer, as Richie blasts Swift’s ‘Love Story’ as he rides into the night, finally feeling like he has a place and it’s never too late to start over. Here the song acts as the ultimate crescendo to Richie’s character arc.