The Bear Season 4 fails Tina

In its third season, The Bear turned its spotlight on chef Tina Marrero (Liza Colón-Zayas), with its “Napkins” episode centering her in a similar way to how Season 2’s “Honeydew” and “Forks” centered on Marcus (Lionel Boyce) and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).

That focus granted viewers a new appreciation of the longtime Beef/Bear staff member. “Napkins” offered up a thoughtful look at Tina’s daily routine before she came to work at The Original Beef of Chicagoland. Viewers met her family, ached for her as she struggled to find a new job, and likely teared up during her first meeting with Mikey Berzatto (Jon Bernthal).

Absolutely one of Season 3’s strongest outings, “Napkins” pushed Tina to the forefront in a way that mirrored her new importance and purpose in the kitchen of The Bear. Colón-Zayas even went on to win an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in 2024. (Eligibility-wise, the award was for her work in Season 2, but her performance in the far more recent Season 3 undoubtedly swayed voters’ opinions.)

With Tina and Colón-Zayas both getting their flowers in Season 3, what new ways would Season 4 find to make them shine? What would be in store for Tina on her next steps on her culinary path?

The answer: pasta. Just… pasta.

For the entirety of The Bear Season 4 — which spans 60 days, according to the countdown clock in The Bear’s kitchen — Tina has one goal, and one goal only: Turn a pasta dish around in under three minutes.

By the end of the season, she gets there, managing to make and plate a pasta dish in two minutes and 59 seconds. It’s a professional victory for Tina, and a personal one too, given the amount of pressure she put on herself to overcome this obstacle. But also… that’s it? After giving Tina more to do season over season, you’re just going to stick her in pasta hell for all of Season 4? After the memorable highs of “Napkins,” you’re just going to relegate Tina to texting Sydney, “Mama this pasta is killing me” in the middle of the night? It’s not just the pasta, this whole plotline is killing me!

Tina’s one-note storyline this season — minus the “Mama this pasta is killing me” text, which might just be the comedic highlight of all of Season 4 — is a symptom of The Bear‘s broader pacing problems. Characters outside of Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) get very little to do, stuck in repetitive loops. Look no further than Gary (Corey Hendrix), still struggling with wine dates by the end of the season. Or Marcus (Lionel Boyce), whose winning of Best New Chef from Food & Wine rings hollow given that we barely know a thing about the pastries he’s been making all season-long. But forget about giving these established characters any time! Every second counts, and we have to spend a good chunk of those seconds on Teddy Fak’s (Ricky Staffieri) burgeoning relationship with Kelly (Mitra Jouhari), for some reason.

The minimizing of Tina is extra frustrating following her role in Season 3, not just because it diminishes her previously established importance, but because it also reframes “Napkins” in a worse light.

While “Napkins” provides important context to Tina’s character, I was also underwhelmed by its use of flashback, writing in my Season 3 review, “The flashback format of the episode is disappointing: We’ve already seen Tina grow leaps and bounds as a chef and a person since the beginning of The Bear. Why can’t we hone in on that growth as The Bear gets up and running? Why do we have to look to the past, when other character-centric episodes root us in the present?”

In my mind, as solid as “Napkins” is, and as great as Colón-Zayas is in it, setting Tina’s episode in the past suggested The Bear had little idea of what to do with Tina in the present. Season 4 proves that. Instead of growing her further as a chef and a character, The Bear gives Tina one repetitive task and pushes her to the sidelines, which I assume smell like pasta. And as we all know, that pasta is killing her.

Frankly, if all I can remember about a key character’s storyline is one text, then that pasta might just be killing the show too.

All episodes of The Bear Season 4 are now streaming on Hulu.

​Mashable