On Tuesday, a new episode of The Bear suddenly showed up on Hulu, in advance of its fifth and final season. (For each of the past four years, the FX series has dropped a full season on the platform in late June.) Not a single scene takes place inside the Beef-slash-Bear. The only main cast member who appears in the hourlong “Gary” is Moss-Bachrach. And guess what? It’s one of the increasingly uneven hit’s best episodes in ages, a standalone that fleshes out a crucial relationship and suggests how much better the show could be with Carmy on the sidelines.
Set several years before the most recent season, “Gary” is mostly a two-hander between Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, who plays Mikey Berzatto, the older brother and former Beef proprietor whose death sent Carmy down a psychological spiral. (Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach, who are currently co-starring in Dog Day Afternoon on Broadway, also scripted the episode.) The pseudo-cousins have been sent on an errand by Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt, who doesn’t appear in the episode). All they have to do is drive across state lines to nearby Gary, Indiana and drop off a sealed cardboard box with unknown contents. It sounds minor, but Richie has decided this possibly illicit cargo means Jimmy is trusting them with more responsibility. “This is a potentially transformative day,” he tells Mikey, who looks like he’d rather spend the day in bed.
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