3: "Next" (S3E2) + Chicken Piccata

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to our podcast. I'm Lucy and I'm Peter and this is Let It Rip The Bear Cast Episode 3. This episode we're covering the bear season 3 episode 2 next. How are you doing? I'm well, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. Long time no see. You

[00:00:35] know this is probably really healthy for us as a couple just to ask each other how we're doing at the you know once a week over the table. What was the best thing

[00:00:42] you ate this week? Oh come on it was the chicken piccata. It was the chicken piccata. That was so good. It was so good. Where has it been all my life? We're still flying high

[00:00:50] off the chicken piccata which listeners you are going to get a chance to replicate having listened to our podcast and watched the video we're going to send your way of Matty Matheson and Coco Story making the same recipe. So yeah, chicken

[00:01:03] piccata great hit. Yeah, real treat. I really I want to I want to try using the the shallot like Karmie does in the show to see if it makes a difference. Next time my dear next time. Well we're here to talk about season 3 episode 2 next. In

[00:01:19] general what did you think of the episode? I just think it's neat. Yeah yeah I thought it was neat it was another I would argue fairly high concept episode and I'd like to get back to that at some point but despite that I whether

[00:01:38] consciously or unconsciously it felt like they tried to do a lot of just really core bear things in this episode. So everybody was arguing it was shouty and sweary and they were in a kitchen so all those things you know

[00:01:56] if you were trying to describe to someone in two or three bullet points what happens and happens in an episode of the bear it's kind of mostly in there. How many times do you think they use the word fuck? Lots according to IMDB it was

[00:02:07] used 68 times in the 22 minute runtime excluding titles and theme music. How many times did they use fucking the titles and theme music? The fucking bearer man. The word chef is used 24 times in the 22 minute runtime

[00:02:23] that's more than one chef per minute. Wow but yeah how many fucks per minute then? That is 3.09 fucks per minute. I enjoyed it too. Yeah thanks for asking yeah it felt like a return to form.

[00:02:38] I always think with the bear you can have these quite lofty symbolic things happening but then it will all get dragged back down to earth and I kind of felt that was coming with the non-negotiables and what we saw last

[00:02:49] week with Karmie and I was not disappointed. Yeah yeah I think it was a short stressy talky episode. Yeah that's that is legit that is legit so I'm gonna pass you for your first point. Well this is probably 80% of the point

[00:03:04] I want to talk about in general this episode so apologies for really getting hung up on one thing here but I imagine other people have been other people have been trying to work this out as well and it's the question

[00:03:15] is this a bottle episode? Is it? Is it? Well I've been doing some research and the result is that I don't know but I do know a bit more about bottle episode. Hit me! Alright okay so what do we all think of when we think of a

[00:03:28] bottle episode? We think it's probably a bottle? Yes yes and that bottle played chi chi no I didn't. We typically start by thinking okay it's happening in one set or very nearly one set. Interestingly when you try to drill down into

[00:03:47] that a bit more it's a little bit more complicated than that so most of the articles I read tended to go back to the Merriam-Webster definition. Merriam-Webster really says that it comes down to two things really yes it's happening in

[00:04:01] a single confined space with a small cast and probably a few guest stars so pretty pretty uncontroversial so far we're fitting reasonably well but it also goes on to talk about the purpose it's not just the form it's

[00:04:12] also the function of the episode okay and the function of the episode is it's cheap they're supposed to be cheap to make and to give some history to that most people seem to favor one or the other sources as the origin of the

[00:04:28] bottle episode. Okay so to all of you Trekkies out there one of the competing theories and I have no bias about this is that these are these are first taking form in the original series of Star Trek and the phrase

[00:04:44] bottle episode refers to a ship in a bottle and it's an episode that's taking place solely on the Enterprise undoubtedly to save money in those seasons of Star Trek where they had very limited effects budgets that's

[00:04:56] theory number one. Okay competing theories also in the 60s there's a show called The Outer Limits I think this was an anthology show and the showrunner the showrunner sorry is reported in a book written in 1986 speaking about being asked to pull together some kind of episode within

[00:05:15] four days and he at that point calls it a bottle show and in that context he's using it to describe how being asked to pull out of bottle like a genie so these are the two scenarios but what's going on in both of them is

[00:05:27] small very confined format to save money to get us through the season okay now they're not all they're not all bad a lot of people really love bottle episodes one I came across time and time again is one of my

[00:05:38] favorites as well as there's an ex-fils episode ice like the thing like the thing which is one of your favorite films yeah fact and it is it cited as a complicated example because it was designed to be a classic bottle episode

[00:05:54] but then ended up being really really expensive yeah there I'm trying to remember that episode of the room ahead we should really do an ex-fils rewatch at some point. Yeah love the ex-fils yeah it was quite high

[00:06:04] concept in a lot of ways but I remember it was one that got the Mulder and Scully shippers really like riled up it's they're checking each other for Oh tics well worms worms the sexier parasite. The sexier parasite yeah

[00:06:18] alright so bringing it back to the bear yeah is this a bottle episode? Well that that's what I wanted to ask you because we have this history the bottle episode is traditionally a bit of a bit of a cynical thing but it's

[00:06:36] expanded and it's become an art form in and of itself rather than just a way to save on a production budget but the prevailing definition still says it's both about purpose and form and I think the form of this episode is pretty

[00:06:50] bodily we've got a scene happening with Sydney at the start with her dad that's clearly not happening in the one kitchen set we've got a scene happening with Marcus and Karmie at the end it's not quite in the same area that 90% of

[00:07:05] the action takes place but 90% of the episode is in a very confined space mm-hmm with if quite a confined cast very talky so all all quite bodily mm-hmm but that's only half of the definition and the other half is the

[00:07:19] purpose why are you making this this confined episode okay and I'd love to know your thoughts about that because I think that's the really interesting thing really interesting place that this takes you and I is why

[00:07:31] me can episode like this now in this season before I answer that I want to ask do you think the episode review in season one that's primarily shot in one shot without edits or cuts is a bottle episode no no I think it's

[00:07:47] hard this is this is what makes it kind of kind of fun to think about because you're right it's when you get down to the really the really technical stuff and I don't want to spend too much time just telling people

[00:07:57] stuff I've read mm-hmm because you can just you can just go and read it the internet does exist yeah it does it does and I did not work very hard so you know stick to page one of Google guys what you're what you're typically

[00:08:09] given as one of the examples of how you know it's about bottle episode is that the is that the producers have used one existing standing part of the set that they use all the time because they don't want to build a new set they

[00:08:25] don't want to go in location they don't want to do any of those things which this episode really did do yeah you know you could you know I'm sure I'm sure the bear isn't isn't filmed like friends with you know two or

[00:08:35] three walls and a camera sitting there but you could have done that because they're there you know they're very there's very little movement in the camera for a lot of the episode as well so within within that context you know when you talk about review they're they're rushing

[00:08:49] through the restaurant the entire time in a very pacey way with a camera which is hard and complicated maybe it's expensive I don't know but that that runs counter a little bit to that intuition but this is this is

[00:09:03] what makes it interesting so here's what I'll say one of the things I like about the bear and I was thinking about it a lot this episode not in relation to the bottle episode for all but actually in relation to

[00:09:12] the intro is that Christopher story who I believe directed this episode and is the show kind of showrunner and creator there's an indulgence to the way he does things that I quite like that I can imagine someone

[00:09:25] coming in and saying like this is too experiment not too experimental but this is like very I don't know he takes not even risks but he does different things like the show doesn't have opening credits the show will sometimes have a credit scene or a kind of character

[00:09:43] actor names will come up over music or shots of Chicago but there's no regularity to that the episodes are all disparate lengths and it's one of the beauties of streaming I guess is your episodes don't have to be

[00:09:54] uniform and there is an element of playing around with surrealism and style and heightened reality while also being very grounded that I think there's a kind of laid backness and a light touch to a lot of the

[00:10:08] stylistic things that Chris story does and I thought about it a lot last week in relation to the montage because one of the things that I found myself worrying about was seeing shots from things like fishes.

[00:10:19] I didn't I almost didn't want to see bits of fishes again because I wanted it to live as this like one artistic triumph and I sort of didn't want him to go back to the well. It's like if we had I don't know John Berndtall in every episode

[00:10:30] it would lose its shine. So part of me was like, oh, keep taking risks. Don't don't keep going back to the well of things that you know where hits, keep taking risks and making it interesting. And I thought that was quite funny because the opening to this

[00:10:41] episode is all shots of people who as the Vulture review this episode pointed out to me are part of Chicago's food service industry or general services because we see, you know, there's firemen. There is people working in food production lines.

[00:10:55] There's people working in places where you can go to eat. There's people working in high end restaurants. And I really loved that. But it sort of took me out of a tiny bit because I was like, who's are we seeing this through?

[00:11:06] They is this Chris Story standing with a camera. These people smiling because they know they're going to be on the beef. Like it took me out of it just a tiny bit. So when you're asking about is this a bottle episode or not?

[00:11:16] I think it's like 80 percent about episode. But I think things like having Sydney talk to her dad in the first four minutes or one minute forty as Peter timed, because later we want to figure out how long the music bit was.

[00:11:32] That takes it out of being a full bottle episode. But one of the things I like is that in some shows they would have ditched Sydney and her dad for the sake of having it be a bottle episode, whereas I think the bear has always been OK

[00:11:44] with adding a little bit here and there. Like in review, there's this massive one shot episode that's this huge triumph of artistic vision. But there's still a minute and a half at the start that's that's not that. And there's it's not it's almost like a curated sloppiness

[00:11:59] that I really appreciate. And I don't mean that I think that Chris Story is not a good director or showrunner because I think he's fantastic. But I like that he allows for that because it seems to me to speak very much to the the nature of the show.

[00:12:11] In terms of why this episode should be 80 percent bottle episode, I think last week was so meditative and taking us into lots of liminal up. I said it liminal. We've a running joke that all lit students are wankers who say liminal.

[00:12:29] I was a lit student and I was a wanker and I did say liminal. Anyway, it's not so much all lit students are wankers and use liminal, but only lit students. Yeah. And wankers. The Venn diagram is like. But it was it was liminal.

[00:12:44] It was neither in time nor space. It was very fluid. I think this was about grounding us in the story again and bringing us back to what's happening with everyone. It's about having everyone in the one place setting the stakes. Karmie wants to do a thing.

[00:12:55] Nobody understands what he wants to do the thing. Everyone's angry at Karmie for different reasons. Nobody knows what's happening with Claire. It got us all a reset into the space of the restaurant and refocused us on that because there is this question

[00:13:07] we had going into the season of like, well, what will this season be about? Because they've done it. They've opened the restaurant. So how will maintaining the restaurant become a satisfying storyline going forward? And I think this showed us that the stakes are still there.

[00:13:20] The tensions are still there. There has been no victory yet in Karmie's eyes and he's still fighting for that. Yeah, I think I agree with you because one of the one of the things that I was I think I had at the back

[00:13:33] of my head was they all kind of love each other right now. So they're not going to they're not going to fight or fall out in the same ways. You know, I was completely wrong about that. I think you're right. I like that phrase curated sloppiness.

[00:13:45] I hope you think I have a curated sloppiness. Oh, it's very curated. Yeah. I think her aesthetic in our house is curated sloppiness. But I think it is interesting to have an episode that does have a very defined concept, whether whether that concept is deliberately we're going

[00:14:04] to make a bottle episode or whether it's just I want to do an episode that's heavily focused on one scene. And you know, it's almost like a play the way people come on, come on stage. So yeah, I love that. Yeah. One of the lasting memories I have

[00:14:16] of being a liminal wanker, let's do is learning about in Shakespeare plays when one of the things Shakespeare would do would be the big examples Macbeth where I think Macbeth says to Lady Macbeth. No, Macbeth says to some I think he's even a monologue.

[00:14:29] God, you can tell I really did well on my Shakespeare module. He says something about needing a spur to prick the sides of his intent and Lady Macbeth walks in and often Shakespeare would set up that someone's entrance would kind of indicate to the audience

[00:14:42] that this was the person who was going to do the thing. And in this episode, I just like that it kept layering all the chaos on and people bringing different energy in. People bringing different curiosity and different kind of moods and energy

[00:14:54] signatures to the scene was really satisfying. But I think you could describe most of the episode as just Karmie's friends and colleagues make fun of him for his list. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's pissed at Karmie for different reasons.

[00:15:07] If Claire had walked in, it would have been a full house. Do you have any other thoughts about bottle episodes or lack thereof? I think that's probably covered all the all the most interesting parts of it.

[00:15:18] I think what I would say, just just dealing with that part on its own is I imagine I imagine this episode could be divisive for having that format because, you know, sometimes you just you want to you want to go out and see new things

[00:15:33] and get all that stimulation. But I would say from a podcasting point of view, yeah, it's a gift. It's great. You know, really gives us something to get our teeth into and talk about. So, you know, I really appreciate it from that point of view.

[00:15:45] Well, I'm going to swoop in with my first prediction of the season. Oh, OK. I think we're gearing up to a Karmie mental health diagnosis. Because he's not well. He's not well. I said in the car yesterday, I was like, I think the reveal is going

[00:15:57] to be that Karmie's like mentally ill and Peter just looked at me. He's like, yes, Karmie's mentally ill. I'm like, oh, but I feel that Richie in particular is on the lookout for this because he drops a couple of phrases in this episode

[00:16:07] that make me think he is registering Karmie's behavior in a much different way. I mean, he talks about him being a baby replicant who's not self-actualised, which is just funny. But he also talks about textbook sublimation in Karmie's behavior. Thanks to Wikipedia. I look this up in psychology.

[00:16:24] Sublimation is a mature type of defense mechanism in which socially unacceptable impulses or idealisations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behaviour, possibly resulting in a long term conversion of the initial impulse. And this is maybe about Karmie's anger in the way that he expresses it to people.

[00:16:40] He also mentions later on in the episode when they're kind of joking about Karmie being crazy, but actually perhaps he has, in fact, made a good point talking about behavioural dysregulation. And I think everything we saw in the episode before is about Karmie over

[00:16:59] correcting and when he feels he's lost control, he takes it to an absolute extreme in the other direction. And I'm wondering if we're looking at Karmie getting a similar diagnosis to whatever his mum is afflicted with, but expressed in perhaps different ways.

[00:17:13] Well, you've spoken about this before that you find it interesting that Karmie doesn't doesn't have the kind of substance abuse problem that his his mum does and that Mikey clearly had. When you're talking about that with Donna, do you mean the drinking? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:33] Because, you know, clearly he's, you know, he's he's addicted to smoking so that there's something I'm sure it would be very easily to come up with a case that he's addicted to work. But there's not much indication that he's someone who uses drugs.

[00:17:49] No, no, I think it would be cheap and not good storytelling for Karmie to go down the route of a straightforward substance addiction like his brother had. But I think there is something really interesting in the dysfunction that he's inherited from his family and how that expresses itself

[00:18:08] through his behaviour. You know, some of the things he says in previous seasons about not really understanding joy or being able to just sort of do things for pleasure. Yeah, it's partly because he's a clinical little bitch,

[00:18:19] but also I do think there is stuff in there about personality disorders that I think will become more prevalent as the season goes on. That's my prediction anyway. No, I think that makes complete sense because Richie will be highly vigilant because he's not only seen Mikey

[00:18:34] go down the path of addiction, but he's grown up with the Berzato family. So he's going to know what he's looking for in terms of how Donna behaves and how her children behave. Yeah, I think that would be I think that would be a satisfying

[00:18:44] path for this to go down. Bouncing the table back to you, Chef. So thank you, Chef. I'd like to chat a little bit about about the non-negotiables list. Oh my gosh, because I think firstly, before we get distracted,

[00:18:59] I really appreciated the fact that the episode validated you about Kami's bad spelling. I'm just saying sugar was right. But you also a gel pen person, would you say? I'm a period. You've seen my stationery. I love gel pens. I love particular Japanese stationary brands

[00:19:19] that are only available in certain parts of North America. Your standard lined paper. Love that we print out like a bullet journal. I've got some really good highlighters that I've been using recently. So yeah, no, I like a gel pen. Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:33] As much as the next girl, as much as the next girl, perhaps more. But yeah, the list, it's kind of dumb, isn't it? It's so dumb in Sid's words. What is it? Not sarcasm snark contempt even. It is it is dumb. It is very dumb. It is him.

[00:19:50] I think what makes me maddest about it is that he has come in having not given a shit and is now trying to over correct by giving too much of a shit. And that is a recipe for disaster.

[00:20:00] I was really, I was very pleased in a way that they did come in and pick up on his list in that way. Because in episode one in tomorrow, they weren't it wasn't played for jokes in any way.

[00:20:14] The I don't think the show was inviting you to see it as dumb, but it felt dumb, which made me made me nervous. But no, I think you're right. And it does tie into that point about Karmie's maybe not in a perfect place.

[00:20:26] No, this episode burst Karmie's bubble. Yeah, he was in his little hyper focused bubble last week, remembering all his hoech training and his culinary prowess. And this week he's got everyone coming in going, what the fuck? And what I thought was interesting is that like two or three

[00:20:41] different people ask him, what is this for? What is this about? And he's unable to really answer them. Yeah, because it's it's quite quite vague and incoherent and maybe maybe a little bit repetitive in places as well. Is not focused.

[00:20:56] I also loved that there was these really high falutin things like innovative or vibrant collaboration, but also like break the fucking boxes down. Do it probably that would be my list would be stuff like break the boxes down. It just takes up more space. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:11] So I was interested by how they how they approached that because it didn't go the way I was expecting it to. Mm hmm. I liked that it got really back to the fundamentals of the show. In a lot of ways. Although did we see any cooking happening?

[00:21:25] I don't know. I don't know. No, we didn't actually know. We saw cooking had happened. A green smoothie was handed to sugar. Yes. From Jimmy. Yeah. In fairness to Karmie, although the list was done, the food looked awesome. It did. It did.

[00:21:39] How do you feel about Sid's position in this episode? I think I was heavily influenced by the show summary that I could see in Disney Plus that said Karmie sets a new standard. And that and I think that heavily influenced me to come in thinking,

[00:21:56] right, this is going to be a show by everybody being really impressed by Karmie. Oh, you sweet child of summer. How wrong I was. And yes, coming back to your question. So I went into this thinking, right, Sid's going to be really impressed by Karmie's cooking

[00:22:10] because Sid is impressed by Karmie's cooking. And no, she was kind of annoyed that he'd messed with it without talking to her, which is I think probably a lesson that he should already have learned because I think they've

[00:22:21] they certainly spoke in season two a lot about Karmie not consulting her before doing things. And, you know, this was the same pattern again. Yeah, she says she still changed all my shit like the stuff that she'd worked hard on. I really felt for Sid in this episode

[00:22:34] because she's being undermined hugely on the one hand in terms of her food and menu choices being ripped up and taken away. But she's also being handed a docu sign saying that she's going to own a percentage of the business. And Peter is smiling because I believe

[00:22:50] without divulging too much personal information, docu sign is part of your day to day life. Yeah, I didn't expect to be seguing into this, but I quite like docu sign. Quite enjoy using it. You actually told me that like out of nowhere the other day

[00:23:03] and no relation to the bear, you're like, do you think docu sign is quite good? And I'm like, where is this coming from? Do you think they'd sponsor the pod? I'd be so proud. I'd be honoured. How do you feel about the fact Pete's a lawyer?

[00:23:15] It feels inevitable. It really feels inevitable. What is the most annoying job? Yeah, I don't know why that line made me laugh so much, but yeah, it really did feel earned that he would be that.

[00:23:26] I noticed that Sid also made a bit of snark about of the place. She says, is that what you think mise en place means? But we never got a satisfactory answer to that. OK, so I believe it's back to you. Back to me. OK, OK.

[00:23:39] I thought that the anger between Karmie and Richie was just highly entertaining. And I like that we were back to people just yelling fuck at each other and everyone else around them being subject to that. I thought Sid spoke for herself throughout it.

[00:23:56] I thought it was a shame that actually Richie is contributing here. He's making valid points like his point about tipping is actually pretty solid. And then Karmie comes out with the theory that you're Richard. And I'm like, he's actually making a really good point about the service industry.

[00:24:10] So a little, a little justice for Richie there. However, when he when he says, ask Claire if she's crazy and ask Claire if he's crazy and everyone goes silent. He says, yeah, that was a little low. Yeah, should have read the room there. Should have read the room.

[00:24:25] But I like that Richie came in with his suit on looking for his iron. I was kind of worried that after Karmie's outburst, he was going to give up on all the progress he made. But it doesn't look like that's the case.

[00:24:35] And I would be furious if someone came in and rearranged my tables. I'm just going to put that out there, especially if someone then intimated it was because I had never left my home city, I would probably throw a table at them. So yeah, that would rearrange them.

[00:24:48] That would rearrange them. That'd be a way of doing it. No, I think you're right. Richie, they maintained the core dynamic between Richie and Karmie that they're quite feisty and quite annoyed with each other. While also demonstrating the growths in season one,

[00:25:05] that they're collaborating and there's an element of respect that they've developed between them. And you know, Richie's had a ton of growth. Has Karmie grown? Remains to be seen. We're not turning into a show that's mean about Karmie here, are we? We might be. We might be.

[00:25:24] I don't know. I think it's good to have someone in kind of the lead role who is flawed. I think it's interesting. It'd be annoying if he was just brilliant all the time. If you're just Superman. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There'd be no drama in that.

[00:25:36] I did laugh. We watched a couple of weekends ago. We watched The Iron Claw. We did. We watched The Iron Claw and we saw Jeremy Allen White playing one of the Von Erichs. Is it Kerry Von Erich? Yes, well remembered. I did laugh because he's so short.

[00:25:51] He's so short. He was great in that role. Like, it's actually quite a good film. But I did laugh. I wondered if the Von Erich, the one that's left, the one that supervised the film had signed off on his

[00:26:02] famously quite tall brother being played by little bitch Karmie. Yeah, that was an interesting watch, wasn't it? It was a very good film in the sense that it was a very good film about making me feel sad about muscular dudes.

[00:26:15] Oh, I mean, I thought it's so sad about so many muscular dudes. Zach Efron, man. Yeah, but you're you're right. Because Jeremy Allen White apparently not that tall or if he is tall, apparently the producers of that film were trying to make fun of him

[00:26:27] by casting him next to very tall people. Yeah, just get just higher regular height dude and then just surround him with very tall people so that everyone thinks he sure. So yeah, but no, I think in the bear Karmie's meant to be not very tall either.

[00:26:41] And then you have Zach Efron, who apparently I thought was just average height. But again, Luke's tiny. Yeah, they're these weirds. There's the odd scene in the iron claw where there's these tiny muscular men fighting regular sized or very big muscular men,

[00:26:56] which convinced me that the Von Erichs were all really short. Yeah, and then you look them up and they're actually all now they're tall wrestling dudes. Yeah, they're exactly the size you would expect famous professional wrestlers to be.

[00:27:06] Yeah, it did. It just made me to me a minute when we started watching the bear again. I was like, oh, yeah. I think it's funny as well that when you put him next to Richie, because Ebon Mossbacker, I think is pretty tall. He looks tall.

[00:27:17] Yeah, maybe everyone does next to him. Maybe everyone. Ebon Mossbacker, it's only five feet two. It's actually it's actually like the whole bit. You know, Ian McKelvin isn't enormous. They're doing it all with forced perspective. Karmie, Karmie, Karmie. No, I think we're allowed to.

[00:27:36] I think we're allowed to rinse Karmie a little bit. Yeah. I mean, what's the what's the point if not? It's in the spirit of the show. It's in the spirit of the show. It's what people would want, you know? Yeah. Yeah. How about you? What's your next point?

[00:27:50] I honestly think I might have run out of points unless you want unless you want me to talk about my feelings about queuing for the toilet. Oh, please do. Please do. I mean, it's a huge plot point in the opening minute and 40 seconds of this episode.

[00:28:03] It is. Yes. So really, this episode's about two things. One, all of the emotional build up of the last two seasons, which is 80 to 90 percent of the episode. And then there's a little five to 10 percent. It's just about doesn't it suck queuing up for the toilet

[00:28:20] when there's only one? And it does. We've all been there. We've all been Sydney's dad standing outside there thinking this is the most important situation that has ever occurred and time is moving slower than I can possibly imagine.

[00:28:34] And yet simultaneously, we have both also been on the inside thinking, why are you making such a fuss? I'm just brushing my teeth. It doesn't take that long stop being such a drama queen or king. So in a way, I think in that minute and 40 seconds,

[00:28:49] they captured the essential duality of man. Wouldn't you agree? Sure. It just made me think that sometimes my dad's real annoying. I was just like, this is just so the kind of thing my dad would do. He's probably doing that right now. He probably is. He probably is.

[00:29:07] I will say we recently we moved house in April. How long have we been here? Three months? Yeah. And we now have two bathrooms because we're so fancy and yeah, it's been a game changer. Yeah. Bathroom per person. Bathroom per person.

[00:29:21] Living the dream. Sometimes sometimes we, you know, we can we can do a double deck because above each other I can sit down there thinking, oh, Lucy's above me doing her thing. Oh, that's the sound of the flush.

[00:29:31] She's a bit ahead of me here. I need to keep up here. I think we have to cut this. I don't think people want to hear this. This is the best part. Everything else. This is why we edit and not Jason. Oh boy.

[00:29:43] All right. So that was my point. That was your point. Other things. I have a few more things. OK. Sugar is worried about being a mum. Yep. That's very cute and very understandable. I love the line, vibrant collaboration that can get fucked.

[00:29:57] That's the kind of thing that I would say myself. We check in with Gary, the facts are there. The facts took Richie's iron and they've brought it back. Many people have quit the kitchen because it is dysfunctional, which everyone is quite offended by, but it's not untrue.

[00:30:12] Gary's going to go to wine school. One of the things I said at the start of the season but didn't record on the podcast was that I really hoped we were going to get some Francie fact resolution. So I am so pumped to see who the cast is.

[00:30:26] Francie fact, if she does come in for her reservation, my money's on Melissa McCarthy. That would be a great cast. I'd be a great casting for Francie fact. You're going to be so pleased with yourself. That's right. If I'm right. Yeah. Lovely moment with Karmie and Marcus,

[00:30:40] where Karmie is trying to talk about Marcus not bottling up his grief. I found it really touching when Marcus was talking about him being there when she died, meaning it is a good thing. I think that's how it was supposed to be.

[00:30:51] They do say, and I don't know if it's true or not, that everyone dies alone and you do hear stories of people who have been holding on for a very long time with loved ones at their bedside

[00:31:01] and it's only when the loved ones leave that they feel able to go. And I wonder a little bit if that's maybe what they're getting at with Marcus's mum is that's what that's what she was doing. She was saving him from the pain by having him be somewhere

[00:31:11] that doing something like he loved. And I'm glad that we're going down that road rather than the endless guilt and I'll never make another donut again. Oh, God, yeah, that would have been so depressing. Yeah, yeah. A renewed sense of purpose is much more satisfying.

[00:31:25] Yeah, I did think he said take a care bear at the end. Well, I had to go back and see what he said. Take us there, bear. Take us there, bear. Yeah. The other thing I would like to bring up

[00:31:37] is a cameo at the start of the episode. Go on. Well, we looked this up. The guy that comes to deliver the radishes. We were certain we'd seen him before and we think he was in season one, episode one. And it turns out that it is Chris Zuccaro,

[00:31:54] who is a friend of Christopher Store. But not only that, he is Joe Zuccaro's son. Joe Zuccaro is or was because he actually passed away last year. The restaurant tour behind Mr. Beef in Chicago. Mr. Beef is the inspiration for the Bear Storefront.

[00:32:10] And since the show has been on, they have gone from selling 300 sandwiches a day to over 800. And the restaurant will stay open despite Joe Zuccaro's death. So I liked that Chris Zuccaro, probably the real Karmie, was delivering radishes to the show Karmie.

[00:32:27] And my goodness, I want to go and get one of those sandwiches. Well, if we can, if we don't get taken off of the air for our toilet based content, eventually we're going to try our hands at making one. That is true. That is very true.

[00:32:40] The only other thing I thought we could talk about was the music. The music, yeah. Go ahead. Over the opening segment with the montage of Chicago and the people who work there, we hear a version of Save It For Later

[00:32:55] covered by Eddie Vedder, who was in Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder is from Evanston, which is just north of Chicago. In fact, you and I have been to Evanston. For pancakes? Yes. And another time we were there and we ate five guys.

[00:33:09] I think it was actually the first time we'd had five guys. I could believe that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice part of the world. Evanston Northwestern's up there. And then at the end, I recognized the music and it is of course, Radiohead's Nice Dream,

[00:33:21] which is a cracking tune, as they would say in Scotland. That's an official endorsement, Radiohead. Yeah, cracking tune. Any other notes? No. No. All right. We're going to take a break now and come back with a recording of our culinary endeavor this week,

[00:33:37] which was making the famous chicken piccata. All right, we are live. It's a Tuesday evening in the Peter Lucy household. And Peter has been making preparations for what are we cooking this week? We are learning how to make chicken piccata. Chicken piccata.

[00:33:59] Have either of us ever even eaten this before? We have not. We we are unfamiliar. So in preparation, we watched Matty Matheson and Coco's stories video on YouTube on how to make the Barrow Chicken Piccata. We've got our ingredients lined up. We're feeling relatively confident.

[00:34:17] So, Peter, before you get stuck in, what are your first impressions of this recipe? What does it seem like? What recipes are you drawing on and making it? What are your thoughts? Well, I think you and I have a weird perspective on this

[00:34:28] because the closest we came was an Ali Slagle recipe that's very close to chicken piccata, but not quite the same thing. But we're eating that thinking that was really good. Yeah, it was a similar kind of flavour profile.

[00:34:41] It had similar ingredients, but it was cooked in a different way. I think it was a sheet pan recipe or a skillet recipe. Maybe it was a sheet pan one. We'll need to look it up. So what stage are we at now? What's about to happen?

[00:34:52] So to make us look relatively organised, we've arranged a lot of our ingredients already, but we felt like this would be one of our few opportunities to have a recording of us whacking some chicken breasts. So we're going to start with that. We've got chicken breast looked out.

[00:35:12] We didn't have any really big ziplock bags, which is what Matty and Coco use. So instead we are going to create a little sandwich with some cling film or... Suran wrap. We lived in North America once. We know what's up.

[00:35:34] We were so proud of ourselves for knowing that there. Yeah, I know where you are. Excuse me, where's your cling film? OK, we're about to start hitting. Right, let's get some audio. We're fond of a Veiner Schnitzel in this house,

[00:35:52] and I'm sort of getting Veiner Schnitzel vibes from this bit. Yeah. Or... Mila Nasi. Yeah. Are you ready for more whacking? Absolutely. All right. In terms of ingredients for a pecata, I'm thinking this is quite a green dish in that we've got parsley, we've got capers,

[00:36:15] we've got garlic, and we've got lemon to kind of lift it all a bit. You had some concerns about butter. Yeah, so Matty and Coco's recipe says... A pound. A pound, so half a pound of butter between two. Now, that looks like a lot of butter right now.

[00:36:35] And I mean, great for taste, but it does seem like a frightening amount of butter. It really does seem like quite a lot of butter, yeah. Now, admittedly, when we watched their video, they used a much smaller amount. I think there's some melts into the initial sauce,

[00:36:51] and then you add more knobs towards the end. Yes. We've got all the lingo in this one, knobs whacking. What I like is how grudging we are being about the end-to-end. Yeah, we're not doing any end-to-end, really, are we? Oh. It's ha... Hubs going on.

[00:37:06] I'm just trying to pretend it's not... So what's going into the pan? I'm seeing some olive oil. So we're gonna get the pan heated up, and the first thing we're going to do is we're going to fry the chicken. Just in plain olive oil?

[00:37:22] Is there any other seasoning at this stage? Well, there is seasoning in the flour. Excellent, OK. So we're gonna do some dredging. Are we having an accompaniment to our pecata tonight? Notably in the show, there is no accompaniment. It's just pecata. Yeah, yeah.

[00:37:36] So because we have no frame of reference for any of this, we did a bit of Googling. There seemed to be... It seemed to me you could have it with whatever you liked, which meant brown rice in our case. I like a bit of brown rice.

[00:37:46] You love brown rice. Cracked out the rice cooker. That's my top kitchen tip, is get a rice cooker. It's the best. They are good. Yeah, we had overnight porridge slash oatmeal in it this morning, and it was fantastic. Anyway, the pan is heating.

[00:38:00] I can see that light little kind of ripple rising from the olive oil. A little bit of a shimmer. Is there a fuse out? Yeah. Oh, fab. Yep, there we go. It's back. So listeners, we had a slight panic there when our cooker refused to work,

[00:38:15] but it turns out it had just fused. And I'm just trying to figure out how to turn it back on now. Oh, God, Peter, I think I've broken it. I think I've set a timer. You've set a lot of things. OK. Let's just put it off.

[00:38:29] We've got an eight-minute timer running. I don't want an eight-minute timer. Go away. So we're about to put... We're dredging the chicken. Yep. We're dredging the chicken in... What we would call plain flour. So for those of you in North America... All purpose.

[00:38:49] All purpose flour doesn't really exist here. For some reason, British people refuse to accept that there's one kind of flour that can do everything. We call it plain. Peter, can you fetch the plain flour? So plain flour is typically what you would use

[00:39:02] for making a cake or most kinds of cooking if you're making a bechamel. For example, you'd probably be using plain flour. Whereas strong flour is what you would use for making bread. There you go. I learned something. During the course of our technical difficulties,

[00:39:19] I have got this pan quite hot. Right. Do you want me to take the heat down a bit? Yeah, I'd love that. OK. OK, the heat's down a little. Thank you. All right, here we go. Let's do this. So this is supposed to be a medium-high heat. OK.

[00:39:40] So what's happening in the pan is just a lovely kind of caramelising reaction. I can see the chicken's cooking most of the way through. It's smelling good. But the bottom is still quite pale, so we're going to wait for it to turn a little bit more golden

[00:39:56] before we turn it over. I think the background noise here of the pan sputtering is probably quite distracting. So the point of this is we're going to cook the chicken and then the chicken juices will become part of the sauce. Yeah. Yeah, so what's called deglazing the pan

[00:40:19] is going to happen in a little bit. Amazing. And that's what we see Karmie doing in season one, episode five. Sheridan. I like that Karmie was using shallots. That seemed like a good idea. But I think one of the things we spoke about

[00:40:31] was we really wanted to cook Matthew and Coco's recipe because we've actually watched a lot of their videos preparing for this. And it seemed kind of cool to do one of them. Yeah, and Coco's story is really interesting. It was actually, I hadn't realised, she and Chris's story.

[00:40:46] Her brother kind of came up with the bearer together, which is really awesome. So I don't know, it feels authentic to be looking at the recipe that way. And I think she is a chef producer on Chef Consultant or consultant producer on the show. Chef Consultant. Chef Consultant.

[00:41:04] This chicken is looking delicious, I might say. Butter. We've missed the butter. Oh, no, that's funny. Yeah, no, she added some when the chicken was being cooked. Oh, she did it this week. Yeah, she did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're a bit of a debate about that.

[00:41:17] Yeah, because they put some in at the start as well. Holy moly, Peter's just come in strong with a massive bit of butter. So I apologise to many of our listeners. I'm going to have to use imperial measurements because I...

[00:41:30] No, I'm going to have to use metric measurements because I don't understand imperial ones. So we're starting with, in theory, 250 grams of butter going into this. That's half a pound. I'd say you've put in about 50 there. Almost exactly 40. We are big butter fans in this house.

[00:41:48] Butter had a really bad press. I think everywhere, but specifically in the UK when we were kids to young teens, when everyone's mum and dad became obsessed with having margarine instead. A lot of it, I can't believe it's not butter and things like that.

[00:42:01] I will say, however, your grandmother, if you don't mind me saying this, is 100 years old and seems to exist entirely on butter, full fat jersey milk, which is the stuff that's essentially cream and one roast chicken a week that she cooks in her air fryer. So like...

[00:42:16] What's an air fryer? Don't knock it. Don't knock it. So that's cutlet number one. Yep. So we're working on cutlet number two now. The difficult second season. I'd be tempted to put the heat up. Oh my God, that is the catchphrase for when I'm backseat cooking you is.

[00:42:32] I'd be tempted to put the heat up. I got called out by a listener. Well, a listener we know very well. One of our friends who pointed out that in our first cook-along, I suggested that you put the heat down and then two minutes later was like,

[00:42:44] why are you so scared of putting the heat up? And I was like, do you know what? That is a fair critique because I made you afraid. Small side note, the brown rice is done. Our little rice cooker is just clicking away happily. I really love capers.

[00:42:58] So anything that's briny and lemony I'm pretty happy with. Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with capers. I will eat them if they're in stuff, but sometimes I find them a bit overwhelming. Yeah, it's a really strong flavor, isn't it? And your medium on parsley as well,

[00:43:15] which we're going to see in a bit. Yeah, I am medium on parsley. You know what I was thinking though? A little hack you could do if you weren't keen on capers. You could chuck a couple of chopped anchovies in this. Oh yeah.

[00:43:25] That would do a similar thing, right? Yeah. Or green olives might work maybe? Ooh, it's olives in the Alice Lego one, is it not? Well, maybe it is. Yeah. Dude, that's where we're getting it from. We will share a link to that recipe as well

[00:43:39] in the show notes because it is good. And I feel like less fussy that one. I feel like it's an oven-based one rather than a stove-top-based one. I feel like that was no trouble. Yeah, although to be fair, this is coming together dead quick. Yeah, this is the...

[00:43:52] Apparently this isn't hard. I don't know why Karmie was showing off by making this. It's funny how much of a difference the butter has made. Like when we were frying just in oil, it was quite a simple quick fry, but the butter is kind of...

[00:44:05] I don't know, enriched it. It's much more frothy and kind of bubbly. Yeah. I don't know if it sounds different. Thought I would get some background noise there. Would you say that in the UK, we have a slightly different relationship with Italian food to North America?

[00:44:22] You know, I think we probably have more in common than we admit because we are... I think what's interesting about cooking this for us is that this appears to be an Italian-American dish. Yeah. So we know about it through American television.

[00:44:40] And I think there's a whole Italian-American culture that's quite well-defined, and you see it portrayed in the media quite a lot. Mom and Pop spaghetti shops. Red... Red... Red sauce. Red sauce. That's the one. Red sauce spaghetti shops.

[00:44:56] And you know, there is a big, vibrant British Italian community. But would we have any concept widely of what's distinctive about British Italian cuisine? Probably not. We just think of it as Italian. Yeah, I think there's some dishes in North America that are absolutely delicious,

[00:45:15] but don't really exist over here. I'm thinking about your Alfredos, your Piccadas, that kind of thing. Chicago-style pizza? Chicago-style pizza. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, it's interesting. I think Italian food for us growing up... Well, a lot of Italian families that came over to Scotland

[00:45:33] in particular tended to run fish and chip shops and ice cream parlours. Huge part of the experience of British people of Italian culture was fish and chips for a long time. But there was a really vibrant Glasgow Italian scene. And there still is?

[00:45:47] There still is. If you've ever heard of the actress Daniela Nardini, her family ran one of the most famous fish and chip shops. Paolo Nuttini, famous singer, his dad runs a fish and chip shop out in Paisley. Peter Kabaldi's family.

[00:45:59] No necessary... No connection to chip shops that we're aware of, but definitely part of that kind of Glasgow Italian scene. So, second cutlet is about to go into the oven. What I'm noticing, although I haven't tasted them yet, is how crispy these are staying.

[00:46:13] OK, so talk to me about what's coming next, Pete. OK, so we now have chicken juices. So we've got a pan of oil, butter and chicken fat. And we're adding the chopped garlic. And we had a little discussion about this. I love to grate garlic.

[00:46:35] We have this tiny little garlic grater and it comes out all kind of mushy and minced. But on this occasion, Peter's chosen to chop it because that is what they did in the video. Yeah, but interestingly, not in the description. The description said minced garlic. Yeah.

[00:46:49] Now, I'm sticking doggedly to chop because I think I feel it is a bit more forgiving. It's so easy to burn garlic and it's extra easy to burn minced garlic. I have to say it smells effing incredible in here. It smells really, really good.

[00:47:08] So what have we got left? We've got lemons, we've got butter and we've got parsley left. Oh, and a very classy can of Pinot Grigio. So this has been our recent discovery, isn't it? It has been the kind of bachelorette party can of wine.

[00:47:22] It's a great thing to have in the kitchen. So good because... So the reasoning behind this is that we are unlikely to drink a full bottle of wine if we open it for cooking something, usually Italian food like a bolognese or a lasagna or something.

[00:47:41] But it does help the cooking. So yeah, we've been buying little tins of wine and keeping them. And today's is, yeah, very classy Pinot Grigio, which smells phenomenal. Are you feeling in the mood to taste or are you wanting to add some lemon and stuff first? So we...

[00:47:55] Are you about to swig from that can? How's the Pinot Grigio? I feel like I want to celebrate a female friend's marriage. I should also point out it's room temperature because we didn't put it in the fridge. It's a room temperature can of white wine.

[00:48:09] Welcome to the beer. Excellent, so what happens now? So we're going to reduce this for a little bit. Famously, we're going to cook off a good amount of the alcohol in the process. Once we've done that, we're going to add in the chicken stock and lemon juice.

[00:48:21] And this is one of the funny parts of cooking this for you and I is almost anyone else would be adding the lemon juice until they got something that tasted like chicken patcata. But we don't know what it tastes like.

[00:48:34] So we're just going to add it until it tastes good. Add it until it tastes like something that we want to eat. Now, coming back to some of our conversations about quantities, Matty and Coco's recipe calls for, for us,

[00:48:48] two lemons half, which is quite a lot of lemon. This is looking really good. I'm feeling optimistic. It's smelling fantastic. I wish we could do a multi sensory podcast for you, but it smells really damn good. A bit embarrassed by our chicken stock.

[00:49:00] Our chicken stock is literally a stock cube. I'm sure in the show they use some kind of perfect hot, freshly made chicken stock. Whereas I was like, here's half an ox. So that'll do. It's not even an ox. So I think it's a little own brand.

[00:49:13] It's a little own brand. Yeah. Okay. Well, great. So the stock's going in. Boom. Oh, can you talk to me a little about the pepper because the pepper was smelling fantastic. So yeah, this was another part where we've, you know, because we're working from this video.

[00:49:30] In the video, what they do, very, very normal, is they season the flour with salt and pepper. So sure, we do that. But I noticed in the notes, and these are the same notes that I'm ignoring about the garlic, that it says toasted black pepper.

[00:49:46] And that's something you can do and it's really nice. So yeah, we toasted our pepper corns in advance and then put them through the grinder just to add something. Can I taste a little bit of the sauce? Please do. Right. I'm going in. That's very lemony.

[00:50:02] You don't need more lemon. Right. Okay. So try it. We're going with 50% of the recommended lemon here just for everybody's interest. I just think that, I don't know, it might be the white. No, I agree with you. That does not need to be the white.

[00:50:14] I think the butter will chill it out a little bit. Don't get me wrong. It's delicious. But I think any more lemon than that and we're at risk of making like very chickeny lemonade. I was trying to think of if you were a vegetarian, right?

[00:50:24] Because this is not a very veggie friendly recipe. And I was thinking if you got like a fake meat cutlet of some kind, you probably could still approximate this just by cutting out the bit where you cook the chicken in the pan.

[00:50:35] You would just make the sauce from... Yeah. Yeah, you could make something pretty simple. So what's your plan for the final bits of butter? Are we going to use that whole pat or are we going to be a bit more reserved?

[00:50:44] If we both, if we use the whole pat, we will die. And the heart attacks will get as before the salmonella does. Like I am... Oh no! Oh no, we dropped it. I'm very much a no food shaming. So I'm not shaming the amount of butter

[00:50:57] for anything to do with fat content. It's more just like that's a lot of butter. So... A lot of butter. It's a lot of butter. It sounded very Scottish there. Just getting down our necks. So is the plan once the parsley is in,

[00:51:08] we'll add the chicken back to the pan or do we pour it over? We pour it over. So we're making a sauce that we're going to pour over our chicken. Are the cutlets now? I think so. Why is it cutlet? I don't know. Neither of us do.

[00:51:26] I think in that case, the sauce is just about ready. The chicken cutlets are ready and the rice is ready. So we're gonna plate up and we're gonna report back how this goes. What's your final, what are your hopes before we sign off? I think...

[00:51:40] I am hopeful that this is actually gonna end up looking like quite a pretty plate. All right, stay with us. We will be back with our post meal coverage in just a few moments. All right, we're back. We just ate dinner. Peter, what were your first impressions

[00:51:56] and final impressions of Peter's chicken piccata? I really enjoyed that. I thought it was great. I was really pleased with it. I think that if maybe Matty and Coco's recipe relied on the idea that maybe your lemons are smaller or less strong,

[00:52:11] I think one lemon between us was tons. Yeah, and I say that as a lemon lover. Like, I make no secret. I do love lemons. I loved it. I think it's my favourite of the three things we've cooked so far, actually.

[00:52:24] Yeah, I mean, and that's not even just for the audio. Lucy was saying the same thing while we were eating it. And I was surprised because I know we're both big fans of Sid's omelet. I really... I thought that was gonna be our winner,

[00:52:37] but no, that was great. We should make that more often. Yeah, honestly, I think a few things struck me. One is that like, I'm not a huge parsley or capers person. They're not the first thing I would pick in a dish.

[00:52:48] However, it all just came together so well. Like, the sauce that you made was incredible. And again, we didn't use nearly as much butter as the recipe asked for. No, no, I think we... I think we came much closer to what was in the video

[00:53:04] than what was in the written notes, although even then we had sauce left over. So one of the things that I read up on when we were preparing for making the pecata is that it is... Or has been in the past traditionally an Italian-American holiday dish.

[00:53:21] So that kind of fits in a little bit with what we know about the burzatos. And presumably this is a Dona burzato recipe. Well, I think we know that. I think they tell us that in season one, don't they? The sugar and carme have a conversation

[00:53:36] where in fact, sugar is making mum's chicken pecata. She is! When we get our first glimpse of sugar is really quite domestic home life. Yeah, it looks nice. Our kitchen looks really pleasant. It really does and I always feel for sugar

[00:53:49] because she must have that love for cooking but clearly has a lot of self-confidence issues around it due to her horrible nickname and her terrible mother. Yeah. So we would make it again? In heartbeat, yeah. How did you feel about the brown rice as a side? Fine.

[00:54:05] Didn't get in the way in anyway. It's a ringing endorsement. I would say you need something to kind of soak up the rest of the sauce because it's a very... Oh, God, this is very wet dish. Yeah, well, I mean, we put out lots of sauce

[00:54:17] because I thought the sauce was really nice. I'm going to put tons of it out. We could have used less. You definitely needed... Or you definitely wanted something to get all that sauce because it tasted so great. I think one of the things we poised with was potatoes.

[00:54:32] I think they could have been great. I think potatoes, you know, for the first time in my life, I'm going to say I don't know that pasta is the right choice because one of our spare looked at suggested noodles which I know from North American parlance is pasta.

[00:54:45] And I actually... I don't think... I think the sauce was too fine for pasta. I think it would have... The pasta kind of would have slid off and just wouldn't have had the same effect. But the rice, I think, did a pretty good job

[00:54:54] of making sure we got the most of what we'd made. I would say a nice bread. Yeah, just some crusty bread. Yeah, crusty bread, a garlic bread, anything like that. Yeah, I'm genuinely super impressed, feeling really happy and full right now and really glad we did that.

[00:55:08] So thank you for cooking, Chef. All right, we're back with some listener feedback for the Bear season three, episode two. Next. First up, we have Erica Price, who says, Lucy and Peter, you're doing a fantastic job of podcasting on the Bear. I'm loving this season so far

[00:55:31] and will follow along, watching one a week, too. Your kitchen shenanigans are hilarious. I think Jason should definitely approve the purchase of an omelette maker, you know, for science. I think Jason should. I think he should. We're seeing him tomorrow. I mean, truly he's listening right now.

[00:55:46] Let's just hit him with the receipt. Yeah, yeah, we'll treat it as pre-approved. Yep, yep. Next up, we have Chandra Wright. Chandra says, first of all, I loved Richie's line. Those flowers are elegant as fucking shit. It made me think of all the online coverage

[00:56:04] of Jeremy Allen White a few months ago with his bouquet of flowers. So much of the Bear's success revolves around the car out of control feeling it brings to its viewers. It is very much like being present during a heated argument between two people where all you want

[00:56:17] is to find a way out of the room or for them to stop. But with this show, we get to have that experience from the safety of our own homes. What a blessing. I'm kind of thinking of sugar a little bit. Oh, 100% and said. And said, yeah, absolutely.

[00:56:31] I think Carmen is running away from dealing with what happened on Friends and Family Night by setting up artificial boundaries that feel safe with these non-negotiables. Ooh, I like that, yeah. He's a guy that likes structure. He loves the structure.

[00:56:45] He's doing the same thing by reverting back to dishes he feels he has perfected over his career. Yes. This leaves very little room for Sydney. He makes a unilateral decision about implementing the case menu without her, even though it was her original suggestion. And now he's making decisions

[00:57:02] about a daily rotating menu with none of her influence. He's steamrolling her. 100% yeah, I couldn't agree more. As far as hoping characters end up together, I do not think Karmie and Sid would make a nice couple. I want more for Sydney than that.

[00:57:16] Carmen is definitely not good boyfriend material. Oh, 100%. If a relationship is going to happen, I would hope for Sydney and Richie. Oh! Interesting. Ooh, that's field, I like it. I think it would be refreshing, however, not to have a romance blossom at all.

[00:57:30] It's cool to explore interpersonal relationships that don't have that dynamic. Speaking of relationships, I think Chef Sydney was caught off guard when Marcus Lowell asked her out. She's technically his boss, and I think she panicked and started spinning out. That's an interesting perspective, Chandra.

[00:57:46] I think that makes more sense than... Oh yeah, the authority lines. Kind of both of the ways we were going with that. She blurred the lines with Marcus by allowing him to be a friend, only to then realize he kind of wants more. I think she overcorrected,

[00:57:59] but I trust she will get things back on track with him. Chandra? Yeah. All of that's good takes. Golden, I love it. All right, we've got a call from our friend, Steve Brown. Hello, Peter and Lucy. This is Steve, and this is gonna be for

[00:58:12] when I get to the Bear season three, episode two. I just started listening to episode one, and I can't believe I went through two seasons of The Bear not realizing that David, the asshole jerk chef with the glasses, is Joel McHale. How did I not realize this?

[00:58:29] Oh my goodness. I'm a huge fan of Joel McHale from The Soup and everything else. I can't believe I didn't know this. Ugh. Bathroom time is serious when you have roommates. I'm enjoying these opening credits. I wonder if these are real restaurants they're showing us.

[00:58:45] Arm wants to run a major restaurant that gets stars, and people just want to serve food. This childish Richie and Karm talking through Sid is just crazy. It doesn't seem practical to change the menu every day, but okay, it's not negotiable. And Claire's good with everybody except Karm.

[00:59:06] Okay, I'm regretting not having rewatched the first couple of seasons. I'm just not caught up with everything that's going on here. Okay, take us there Bear. I guess that's where we're at. And again, I guess I'm kind of regretting not having rewatched the first couple of seasons

[00:59:20] because I'm still not sure some of the relationships and some of the connections I'm not making, but I'm sure you guys will help out with a podcast. Talk to you later. Oh, thanks Steve. Thanks Steve. Always so good to hear from you.

[00:59:31] And finally, I have a nice long message from Karen Shee. So Karen Shee says, Hey, Lucy and Peter, I'm loving the podcast. You've inspired me to try my hand at the Bursal and Cheese omelette someday, even though I detest eggs. Wow. Karen, report back.

[00:59:45] I didn't get the chance to send feedback last week, so if you'll indulge me, I really dug episode one's non-linearity. To me, we were witnessing a tone poem of Karmie's life and all the moments that made him both brilliant and broken. Oh, that should be in the show.

[01:00:02] Oh, that's really catchy. I used this as a metaphor in a recent Zedhead show, but this episode was like an impressionist painting where brushstrokes are broken into dabs and traditional forms of composition are abandoned. Despite the fragments, the viewer derives a mood or vibration from it.

[01:00:17] That or the episode can be likened to a Jackson Pollock creation in its chaotic cohesion. What I love is that Karmie is all of these experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly, the little moments at the periphery, all the wounds that go deeper than that on his hand.

[01:00:33] I teared up to see that it was Sydney who received the no-fennel grapefruit sub dish. To see her origins as a chef and to know that even in his brokenness, Karmie was able to inspire another person. It's fun to have Poulter, Mulaney, Coleman and Burnthal make an appearance,

[01:00:47] though I truly geeked out at Chef Bouloud's cameo. He's a legend. I also smiled to see Karmie walking through the gardens at the French Laundry as my friends and I did in 2021. We were lucky to book an experience Chef Thomas Keller's Bounty of Goods.

[01:01:01] So sidebar, yes, it was the French Laundry. You're quite right, Karen. I thought it was Nomad, but no, it's the French Laundry. And Karen sent me some of these pictures that she took when she was there. Stunning. We're adding it to the holiday bucket list here.

[01:01:14] Oh yeah, yeah. As for episode two, well, I'm hoping that you can illuminate its merits because I thought it was a reversion to season one. It felt like 30 minutes of yelling and cussing with no movement of the plot. I felt like Richie would have been more mature.

[01:01:28] Then again, this is a true representation of the cycles we go through in a friend slash relationships. And despite all the cleaning of the restaurant, the wiping of the counters, the mise en place prep and the list making, Karmie is still not in control of anything.

[01:01:41] Maybe I missed something. You know what, Karen? I think you've actually got the point right there. He can try only once. He's just not, he can't control the chaos. Anyway, Karen says, and we thanks again for your coverage. Can't wait to hear what you two cook up next.

[01:01:54] Well, Karen, I hope the Paccata was acceptable. And that's it for listener feedback this week. Thanks everyone. All right, that is our show. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you want to write in or leave some message and we hope you do,

[01:02:10] you can find all our contact information at podcastica.com. While you're there, be sure to check out our other shows. Cobra Kai with Rich, Rima and Jason. Still slaying with Penny and Kara. Yeah, still slaying. Were you a Buffy fan? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you should check out.

[01:02:27] Check out, still slaying. Yeah. Penny and Kara have been going through covering kind of highlight episodes from each season. Oh, cool. Yeah, so not a full rewatch, but focusing in on the ones that are particular favorites. And I think Cobra Kai is about to come back.

[01:02:41] So Rich, Rima and Jason have just covered one of the Karate Kid films in anticipation. Yes. Our next episode will be the Bear Season 3 Episode 3 Doors. For those of you that are based in the UK, if you didn't know already, we're going to be doing a listener meetup

[01:02:57] in Glasgow on the 17th of July at the bar Dram on Woodlands Road. Dram. We will be accompanied by Jason, Karen and David who are over visiting Scotland from the States. So if any of you out there are walking dead cast fans

[01:03:12] or would like to come and meet some other people who are interested in podcasting and geeking out about good television, please check the show notes and the Facebook podcast to get a group for more information. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.

[01:03:26] And if we all managed to stay at one table the whole time, then you can imagine it's a bottle episode. What are you drinking at the moment, P? A Scotchmalt whiskey society bottling. A Scotchmalt? I'm sorry. Did we move to America? I think they call themselves a Scotchmalt.

[01:03:42] No. No, they do not. How much whiskey have you had? Pass me the bottle. Let's check this. Fuck off. They don't. Right in your face. If, OK, right, you're drinking a Scotchmalt with me society bottling. Anyway, if you'd like to come and drink some Scottish whiskey

[01:04:00] with us, please do. On that note, our episode next week may be a bit delayed because we're going to be up on the Isle of Skye showing our American friends around one of our favourite bits of Scotland.

[01:04:10] So we may be a few days delayed in getting out to you, but bear with us. We'll be happy to see you then. All right, that is our show. Thanks for listening. Let it rip. Jamie Dimit.