Whatever grows together, goes together
I originally wrote this as a response to someone wrt to the S4 finale, but I want it to end up in the tags so I can see what the people think, so I'm posting it as a stand alone.
I’m going to say something controversial yet brave. I actually don’t it’s that deep and I’m gonna explain why [I don't think Carmen leaving is permanent].
The season starts off with Carmen and Mikey in the kitchen and Carmen is trying to sell Mikey on the idea of a restaurant because they make people happy. They make them feel less alone. And in Napkins last season, we see Mikey talk to Tina about his envy of Carmen being the kind of person who knew what he wanted to do, did it, and was good at it. Smash cut to Natalie telling Carmen it’s okay if he fell out of love, and then Carmen telling Sydney that that’s what happened.
Carmen says two things about his leaving. First, that he doesn’t know who he is outside of the kitchen. Second, that he’s going to get them out of debt. Now, in the background of this entire season we have Ebra making business moves for The Beef window, and by the end of the season we see that it’s such a good idea to franchise that even The Computer gets a pep in his step and tries to convince Jimmy to get out of the car to hear the business pitch. And in earlier seasons, Carmen had talked to (I think Mikey?) about franchising. THAT is the way they get out of debt, and as far as we see on screen, Ebra hadn’t yet asked Carmen for his blessing on moving all of that forward.
So, of the two things Carmen mentioned needing to be locked, one of them is already squared away, and even if it wasn’t, the conversation between Computer and Natalie where they’re financially in the green and getting better suggests that while it’s batshit insane to keep running, they could do it. That just leaves Carmen finding himself, right?
This entire season, we see Carmen make an actual effort to get better wrt to communicating and being supportive of the people at The Bear — not just Sydney, but everyone. And parallel to that, these themes of family and togetherness keep popping up in the background. Marcus and his dad, Syd and hers, Richie v Frank with Eva, Carmen with his mom, like everyone has to contend with what family is to them. And then we have Sydney tell Donna that your work family is kinda an extension of your family family and Natalie looks at all of the crew photos when Computer asks why the fuck they should keep doing this, and she doesn’t outright say it but the reason you keep going is for your family! The reason Sydney stays at The Bear is because of her family!
Season 3 makes it pretty clear that Carmen is going to step away, because that’s what Chef Terry does with Ever. And she’s the ONE good role model Carmen ever had. And in that conversation, her desire to leave boils down to a desire to LIVE, and that’s something Carmen has never really done in an untainted way. Even in Copenhagen, where he was thriving and enjoying himself, he was thriving but he was doing what he was doing to prove a point to the universe. And he admits to Sydney that his tendency to do that is what’s killing them all of the time. It’s even part of why he gets so weird about Sydney being better than him, which he is finally big enough to admit.
So yes, he leaves. And I can see the mental calculus he did for “I’ll never leave you alone again” here, reasoning that because you’re never alone in a restaurant Syd isn’t alone. Because she has everyone else at The Bear (completely oblivious to the fact that she wants HIM there too but we’ll get there). But, I don’t think that means he’ll stay gone, and since this is gotten long winded I’m just gonna bullet point the reasons why I think that:
He can’t leave his family a second time, but he does need to choose himself over his family (and for real this time).
He actually has to leave in order to get over the guilt of feeling like he left everyone to deal with Mikey - thereby making him undeserving of being at the funeral.
If he is ever going to fall in love with cooking again, the thing that everyone seems to agree that he was born to do, he has to fall in love with it on his own terms for his own reasons without the goal being to prove something (to Mikey)
They’re gonna franchise like he wanted to, and I think in breaking the cycle like Lee was talking about, Carmen needs to leave the fucking scene of the crime and go work at one of the other places or manage The Bear from afar. Which doesn’t mean staying gone, it just means taking on a role a la Shapiro
Which brings me to the real reason I don’t think Carmen can stay gone and one of the funniest things about his fight with Sydney. When Carmen is being catty about Shapiro, after they’d already established Carmen is leaving for sure and explained why, he takes like a dedicated moment to laugh and say he knows he’s better than Shapiro. That he could smoke him. And he’s so certain about that because Sydney is even better, and she makes him better at this! He wouldn’t even want to do anything without her. He is literally leaving the dream he had with his brother TO HER because she’s the only person he can trust to just fucking let it go so he can breathe for a minute. But this bitch of a man promised he wouldn’t leave her alone, and his family and all of the other people he loves and wants to support are there. And so between his innate competitiveness, the promises he’s made to “water the plants Georgie” and the fact that - much like Sydney - everyone would give him insane amounts of grief if he stayed gone…. I think that he’s just gonna end up on sabbatical and come back.
Like, at the end of the day, this is a TV show about cooking and family. Nat left her day job to step foot in a demon restaurant. I don’t think there’s a way for Carmen to leave and stay gone for good without the series ending. And I don’t think that’s what he wants, either because in his heart of hearts Carmen is a creative. He needs an outlet. And Luca says it best, the problem with pressure ultimately becomes the fact that you can’t seem to work without it at a certain point, not that you can’t work under it. And if he represents the best version of Carmen (and Shapiro the worst), and Sydney is the even better version that Carmen aspires to be…. His ass isn’t staying gone! He’ll fall right back into this trap like the two of them. Only this time he’ll be a better partner.
Whatever grows together goes together, and right now, Carmen has growing to do (again), before he can return to his family. On his own terms this time.
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