Fires, Smoke, Mirrors & Mirages
Syd is the passion that drives him, inspires him, and motivates him, but getting closer to her feels like trying to catch smoke.
Syd is the fire that fuels that passion and also the smoke after that fire, the one that ever-burning embers emanate, the one that smokes the spices and the food that you eat, the food that nurtures you.
Smoke is air and is a byproduct of fire; fire is a symbol of passion.
Syd is the fire of passion, the passion he felt for cooking for the first time when she came along. Before her arrival, he didn´t cook for passion, but for escapism and vindication, to prove to others something, old habits die hard, and Tina called him out on this in S4, which makes total sense because she is one of the 4 representations of the Mother of Victory archetype that is depicted on the show. Carmy felt the fire of passion for what he did for the first time when he started doing it for Syd´s bullshit star, but it got out of control because of his addictive personality. That fire was his purpose, but it still was about proving her something; it was still imbalanced and thus toxic. It still consumed him because it wasn´t the right purpose, it wasn´t selfless or about giving her or himself joy, it was about proving her he was worthy of her looking his way, about proving her he was not broken, proving her that he was still the best, not a guy who was just making sandwiches and couldn´t do math. He wanted to prove to her he could do it and in that way this tie her satisfaction to himself, so basically, it was about himself and about a challenge he chose because it re-inforced his own grandiosity (this grandiosity is nothing but an over-compensation of his own low-esteem, of course, so it´s a byproduct that will disappear when he recalibrates his self-worth outside the kitchen and away from whatever he thinks he has to prove Syd). It didn´t even occur to him that she didn´t need, nor wanted, all of that, even when she specifically told him in S1. But, as usual, he always gets it all wrong.
Syd is also the smoke after the fire is out, for him.
The smoke that remains just because the embers keep burning after the flames are gone. Carmy wants that warmth, and that smoke is the one thing Carmy just can´t catch. That is why he feels he lost the passion for what he did; what he actually feels lost is his connection with her, and he can´t face that, so he would rather leave.
Passion is a tricky thing, though
It can be what moves you in a healthy direction and makes you grow, and it can also blind you and consume you.
I think that Storer is making Carmy first learn the difference between the different kinds of fires and graduations of it, and also the ways in which he should regulate his fire within to make sure it doesn´t consume him or his entire existence, and that is exactly why he made Carmy a burnt-out workaholic. So he learns to appreciate life outside work after hitting rock bottom because of work and learning to do that work for all the right reasons, with Syd leading by example. In other words, following Syd´s lead, not being fixed by her, but inspired by her. The way in which he´s going about it by quitting like this is, of course, all wrong, because as it has been established, he always gets it all wrong, even when his heart is in the right place. But the bottom line is just fine.
On Syd´s side, same thing but in reverse, she needs to take Carmy as a cautionary tale of what never to do, as an anti-role model, so she never loses her spark and all those things he will never be, but he appreciates about her. And also, just like him, learn to self-regulate, but not her passion in her case; more like her fears, her insecurities, her lack of self-confidence, and I will paraphrase Ayo´s perspective on Sydney here because we happen to be like one mind on this subject: "Her self-value that is related to other people. A lot of what she thinks of herself is rooted in others, and even like her job, it's a job of service; the pleasure that she gets comes from giving other people pleasure and peace. I wish selfishly that there was a version where it's like she would be able to just have like a sense of self. That she was able to release that otherness. Because I think that it's like the goalpost is always moving, right? It's like, if I have this job, then finally, okay, now I'm at this job, well, I have to get this person's approval. Okay, well, now I have it. But actually, it's not enough." All of that she needs to self-regulate and find her balance, obviously by herself, to release this "otherness", which in this case is Carmy and his approval, his constant surveillance on her performance that she dreads according to what she told TJ, (04x04) but also seems to need or want. She said she knows she doesn´t need Carmy, and that´s true, but she wants him anyway, and that even though from the outside it's quite clear why, Syd only seems to think it´s because she wouldn't want to do it without him (02x09), just like him. And just like him, what they don´t wanna do, is what will help them find that balance they couldn´t find so far together. To then give it another try, but this time from a better starting point, when all those demons they both have have been exorcised.
In Carmy´s case that burnout comes after years of negligence and denial, and most of all of letting a fire, that used to give you purpose, get totally out of control. As mentioned above, poor or null self-regulation is at the root of this behavior, naturally, and the reason for it is his self-sabotage tendency that is directly associated with his traumatic background and addictive personality.
Carmy is yet to learn the difference between this "fire":
It´s like having to choose between burning and warmth or between purpose and impulse, all metaphorical forms of the same thing:
Self-regulation is a foreign concept for him. He goes to extremes, both of "all in" or "nothing at all". None healthy.
He´s trying to change that by going "nothing at all" now.
It may work. Probably. For a while, but unless he learns to self-regulate without needing to go rad to do it, he´s just gonna end up exchanging one problem for another and regretting it in the long run, as usual. That´s not real growth or healing. Especially if he resorts to any of his usual escapism methods, like traveling or art. He will be sublimating his withdrawal in that case, not treating his addiction, and therefore that would not be a real solution, although for a while it may look like one.
His relationship with fire has to change for it to be sustainable and helpful, as opposed to imbalanced and thus destructive.
That is why he´s the Admiral of 2 ships.
Storer gave him 2 options to freely choose from. And plenty of opportunities to do it.
Because for free will to be genuinely exercised, there must be multiple choices to freely choose from. No conditions, no inductions, no pressure. Otherwise, the choice will be tainted and therefore invalid. You can´t manipulate the game if you wanna be a true winner, and if your win is a result of manipulations, you haven´t really won.
Here´s the catch: One of those options is not real fire, but it feels like burning, according to Carmy. A burning sensation he grew to "love", because what was the alternative exactly?
Storer chose to represent this fake substitute for fire with a freezer, a fridge-guy who Carmy never called in time and unleashed hell, and freeze-out trauma response, though.
But makes him feel like on fire, because his escapism has escalated to that new level, after years of untreated disorder.
C is not real fire, but he got burnt with that relationship anyway, due to his lack of self-regulation and after having put in the freezer what he didn´t wanna feel for Syd and transferring his undealt-with feelings onto this new substitute that made his life apparently "easier". That is why her symbolic representation is the freezer, the fridge guy, Carmy never called when he got distracted by her, and why his relationship with Syd got "colder" for a while, when C was in the picture, before Carmy realized that it was Syd, his real fire, who deserved his full focus (02x09).
Carmy is learning to be FREE, but for that, he has to free himself of his self-inflicted imprisonment first.
That was what S3 was all about, that prison, and how he acknowledged that was exactly what it was, by the end of it. And that is why S4 starts out with him starting to question his life choices that took him there and how to get out, which ended up in his decision to retire. So he´s trying to suppress the fire that used to move him, not regulate it or learn to control it.
Syd Disappears, like behind a smoke screen... Shapiro has already given his best and his lowest shots (04x04 and 04x06). She eventually (04x08) calls him to officially decline his offer.
Mind you, she actually made that decision during the wedding, according to what she told Richie during their dance, and we can clearly see when she gets Shapriro´s text that she looks over her shoulder, at the table she had just shared a new "under the table moment" with Carmy and his family. And this is my take on that wedding.
Sys is the fire in his heart in terms of motivation, inspiration, not the one that consumes him, not the one that feels "really hard".
The other kind, the kind that he admits he would jump in front of a fucking train for.
Smoke seems to be a recurrent theme regarding Syd, but only because her fire is the "ember kind".
The one that comes out of a chimney, a warm home.
As I mentioned here and also when I said that Carmy "retiring" is doing exactly what she told him to do, and I elaborated on it here, and how smoking is a culinary technique she prefers, and Carmy likes. Most chefs do, TBH, but Storer made a point to let us know time and time again in S1, 2, and 3 that Syd loves smoky things or that that element is on brand for her somehow. Till S3, only in the kitchen, but that changed in 04X10.
IMO, the most significant angle Storer gives to this "smoking" term is also the verb. The action of smoking itself that now seems to bring Syd and Carmy closer together.
I went over it last year when he "quit" because I knew he was gonna relapse, like every addict does before quitting permanently. And I also mentioned what the real reason was why he quit in the first place, and how that was never gonna work out because it was more about self-punishment and not allowing himself any amusement or enjoyment, than about self-care.
On that occasion, I presumed, correctly, that he was gonna smoke again in S4 and that eventually, the NEW CARMY, the truly healthy best version of himself (the one Syd inspired him to work on), was gonna quit smoking again, this time for Syd. Unfortunately, since Storer keeps moving the finish line, I foresee that being S5 material, and maybe they will help each other quit together, which will bring them even closer in a non-professional way.
What never crossed my mind back then is this plot twist Storer created by taking Syd´s smoke theme and making it a challenge for her. A challenge she accepted, in the form of starting to smoke to hold on to Carmy, a Carmy that´s leaving her, which I elaborated on here.
She´s gonna get good at Carmy, because that´s what subliminally the smokes represent for her. They are gonna get past this. And he smoked the competition again, by baby-trapping her with the restaurant to make sure she never gets poached again! Because she´s The Bear and he´s "putting the restaurant first", not because he loves her, of course, it´s totally platonic, and I´m C´s BFF.
And @inamorati10 brought up something I hadn´t taken into account either: The phrasing Carmy used to refer to Shapiro:
"I smoke him." ... "So do you."
Syd is smoke between Carmy´s fingers because he can´t even touch her and she´s smoked him too, she´s better than him, and now he knows it, he confirmed it, and that´s why he finally let himself retire and let The Bear go, knowing it will be in better hands than his own, knowing he´s not failing Michael.
Syd smoked the competition too and will continue doing so with Shapiro when her restaurant and his compete head-to-head in the race for the star. Shapiro is a loser, and that includes the bullshit star.
I still hope I´m wrong about thinking that Storer intention is that all of this ordeal Carmy is putting both through with his retirement also serves to have Syd wining the star on her own, no Carmy involved, and in that way heal her impostor syndrome once and for all, because truth be told I´d prefer she heals it differently and that they win the star together, which is also why I think declined Shapiro´s offer. But looks like I got it right, and it breaks my heart.
Regardless of whether I´m right or wrong about the star and her impostor syndrome, the canonical fact remains: Syd and Smoke are elements that go together in Storer´s universe because
Syd is his air, and it affects him on that level.
S4 made it perfectly clear:
You can go without air for a while, but never succeed permanently, because it´s simply not compatible with life.
As @inamorati10Syd puts it: "It reminded me of a beautiful quote that I heard on the Bones Brigade Documentary. Rodney Mullen was talking about his mentor, Stacy Peralta, and how he was not overwhelming or overly critical. He said that whenever Stacy would laugh or giggle, the team knew that they were doing something awesome. Rodney said, ´Fires are combustible not because of gas, but because of the vapors. And his laugh was quite like those vapors.´ I think Syd can be like those vapors for Carmy. And, vice versa, Carmy can be like those vapors for her. Carmy brings up that side of Syd where she can be perfect like him, but in a nurturing and loving way. <by opposition>, everything he´s not but wants to be. And he´s everything she thinks of as ´The best in the world.´ They elevate each other by loving each other. And with that love, she can be the best in the world, too. She doesn't need to earn The Star just to show off; it will just be a result of her passion for her work, her fire, and the fire he ignites in her as well. And in return, Syd will teach Carmy how to let his own fire warm the people around him..."
While I love that analogy and how @inamorati10´s mind works, for me, this whole Sydcarmy dynamic reminds me of the Ama divers.
The word ama (海女) means "women of the sea", and in Japan, refers to women who live near the coast and whose profession is to dive daily to the bottom of the sea.
Nowadays, they do dive with equipment, but what made them extraordinary was that until the 1970s, the ama practised snorkelling without any equipment other than a loincloth, without wetsuits or tanks.
They are renowned for their ability to hold their breath for extended periods while diving to depths of up to 30 feet. They can remain submerged for up to two minutes at a time, relying on breath-holding techniques and specialized breathing methods to gather shellfish, seaweed, and, of course, pearls.
Sadly, it´s a fact that fatalities have occurred among the brave women who practice this ancestral art. I always wondered how could anyone love doing something so dangerous for such a little reward, and in my absolute ignorance assumed that some didn´t and were in one way or another forced to do it, but in my research, I found this and many more articles like that one that tell the story of these ancestral guardians of the sea that don´t want to see their beloved tradition die and will most likely be the last generation of Pearl hunters, which breaks their hearts.
My point is that the ones that used to dive with no equipment and survived just got really good at apnea, but they all knew their limit.
That’s Carmy. He won’t die; he will come up for air again. —At some point...
And Syd is his air. The mirages they encounter along the way are the pearls for them. Maybe the biggest mirage of them all is the star, who knows?
Same for her. Because they are mirrors to each other and the lessons they have to learn are either the same or complementary to each other.
You can go without air for a while, you can hold your breath and dive for pearls, but you can never succeed permanently, because it´s simply not compatible with life.
And that, chefs, is a symbolic foreshadowing of his relationship with her fire and her "smoke". His air.
All it takes for them not to dive to their demise, like the old Ama divers whose pearls cost them their lives, is not only to understand that they don´t need each other, which Syd already did, yet she still wants him there by her side, not to choke. And as for Carmy, he is struggling with because she´s his air, and deep down, he knows that this retirement is going to feel like apnea for him, no matter how self-inflicted it is. But to move on from this co-dependency, they developed after dancing this dance for almost 2 years now, to symbiosis.
All it takes for codependency to turn into symbiosis is balance, will, and time.
That´s how they can come up for air, and that need for air won´t cost them each other.
Syd and Carmy mirror their journeys and are constantly going through the same motions in symbolic parallel universes, but they are painfully unaware of this. Some of those parallelisms I already went over above, but there are more.
Here´s More on @inamorati10 ´s take that I found super interesting on this topic:
"So far, there is no indication that Syd has ever been in love before now."
IMO I think that just like Carmy, she probably thinks she has, but that love wasn´t real. Hence her tattoo. I have the feeling it´s about an ex, but I could be wrong. My point is that if it is, it must have been a relationship gone sour, just like the one Carmy had with C. Short-lived, but long enough to leave a painful mark and a few lessons learned the hard way. My take on why someone would tattoo on their skin something that means betrayal, hurt, grief, unrequited love, etc, is because some of those things happened to them, if not all, and they vowed never to go through it again. The ink being a constant reminder of such a vow, which would further explain her "walls".
@inamorati10 said: "She knows exactly who she loves and where she wants to go, and it scares the hell out of her. Shapiro's restaurant would be an easy compromise, and no one would blame her for choosing to work there. It would be like choosing a "safe and comfortable" person to date, much like it would be for Carmy choosing to be with Claire."
And this is why I fully agree with that reasoning.
But to me is quite clear that both Syd and Carmy love challenges, which is also what made Shapiro´s offer endearing to Syd to begin with.
She confessed to TJ that she doesn´t wanna start over in a "new house", but I´m sure that if she thought about and seriously weighed in that offer for so long and didn´t decline it at once, it wasn´t just because of Carmy being a menace, it was also for the challenge it presented; she didn´t back down.
More great context provided by @inamorati10
"No one would blame him for choosing her because she is beautiful, safe, successful, and comfortable. Throughout these four seasons, Carmy has been choosing his ´Shapiro´ by wanting to be with Claire."
Carmy was transferring, of course.
So this new parallel that their "substitutes" symbolize for both, and how both chose each other over and over, instead of changing the course of their lives to the point where they had nothing else in common, proves how it´s impossible for them to really conceive their live without the other one in it, even when they both have other options. They are exercising their free will by doing this; they are being free.
And here we are again → SMOKE.
@inamorati10 gets it again: "But he loves Syd on an entirely different level. She "smokes" Claire in his mind. "
"Syd can be everything to him, and he doesn't want to sabotage it like he did with Claire because this time it would truly crush him."
But here is the real core, @inamorati10 nailed it again:
This is about the heart-to-heart convo Syd had with TJ, because we both find it sooo full of insight:
"I think that when you are that age, you feel things on such a pure level."
And this is everything Syd is going through and what she needs to overcome, without Carmy for these exact reasons, but Carmy is going through the exact same thing with her, whether they are both aware of this or not:
"If you think about the song "Losing my religion", it basically tells a story of a person with a crush and who is afraid of saying too much or saying the wrong thing, and putting somebody on such a high pedestal that you start to lose yourself in pursuing/not pursuing them. It is a scary position to be in, so you start to think of ways to avoid getting hurt and not wanting to destroy your dream. When you are an adolescent, and your friends ask you if you like a boy or a girl, you always say "no," even though you are absolutely smitten with them. It's almost too much to handle to let people know how you feel. The adult Syd starts listening to very logical reasons to choose Shapiro's restaurant. This is her way to avoid getting hurt."
None of them wants to get hurt or hurt the other, yet that is exactly what they BOTH end up doing:
And there´s more mirroring:
The passing of the torch with a spoon that Carmy received from Chef Terry and that Syd got from Carmy.
The fact that they both inherited a restaurant, Carmy from Mikey and Syd from Carmy, with the difference that The Beef had a "very delicate ecosystem" that just wouldn´t work without Michael, and The Bear has now a "vibrant collaborating team" in place, that will work with or without Carmy, probable even better without this version of Carmy, which is what Carmy admitted.
They both come from this.
They both love this feeling.
And I could go on and on...
My point is that they are one and the same in spite of being so different because they both have their fire in common and similar challenges to overcome, that, in one way or the other, they will overcome because of each other, whether they do it together or individually. My preference is that they do it together, but if they end up together after working separately to be the best version of themselves first, and then they share that improved version with one another at some point down the road again, I´m sold. And I think that´s exactly what Storer is doing storing.
With C, he´s Logan, not the real Carmy he always is with Syd, POS included.
Carmy reflects/projects his old self onto the C person, his HS persona, who had an unfulfilled crush on her, and thus she had been on his bucket list ever since, so when she showed up and forced herself back into his life, at the worst timing possible, he eventually caved and decided to allow himself to live what he didn’t get to live back then. But that relationship is not real; they never really talked, not about anything serious, which was mentioned by her in S2 and showed in the form of flashbacks in S3. It´s easy to infer that their "relationship" was merely physical, not intimate, not serious, not "I´d jump in front of a fucking train for you" real. Because it wasn´t.
He’s regressing and compensating with C; she’s quite literally his past.
And here´s where the Sydcarmy mirroring begins with Shapiro being Syd´s mirage, and unlike Carmy, she didn´t fall for it.
"Shapiro is Syd´s C", as @inamorati10 correctly points out.
Not only do I agree with such a take, but I also believe that Syd wouldn’t have grown under his shadow. She certainly did while working with Carmy, despite it all. And Shapiro is more of a diva than Carmy, not even as talented, and most likely he would have used her talent to make himself look better and take all her 💐💐💐, which is the exact opposite of what Carmy is doing by “setting her up for success” at The Bear and the reason why Shapiro NEEDED Syd, not the other way around, and he was such a sore loser when she declined his offer. As a matter of fact, he started to show how much of a sore loser he was even before she officially declined (04x06), to strongarm her into accepting it, cornering her, which showed his true colors that I perceived back in S3.
Both Shapiro and C are options that may look good on paper or better than the alternative at face value, but when correctly assessed, they are nothing but mirages, illusions, not real alternatives to what Syd and Carmy have, which is true and genuine and therefore also flawed and perfectly imperfect but dynamic and a WIP.
There´s a reason why I think the song that season represented Carmy´s journey is actually a huge musical foreshadowing of their whole arc together:
If we take Blowing Kisses and Let Me Live in your city (WIP), as Syd’s song and Carmy’s song, respectively, those songs speak to each other. They are like a soul-to-soul dialogue, and they both have a fragment that is a common ground, but mostly about the other. Blowing kisses has the “I’m not a beggar to language any longer” that’s more about Carmy than about herself, although it applies to her as well, and Let me live in your city has “I got a wall around me you can’t even see” that is mostly about Syd but Carmy has his walls too… beautiful.
They have sooo many things to work on, together, individually, as part of a larger team, even, and I think that whatever temporary separation is meant to show us how inexorably tethered they are, no matter what, and how their paths will always cross again because they belong together, but timing and self-growth are as important as partnership and collaboration. And there´s a way to be partners anyway, maybe in a deeper and more meaningful way, even than just working together. Maybe that work has to be done outside the kitchen now for it to work again inside the kitchen later.
The point is that they can tell apart a mirage from the real thing.
What they have is real, it has always been, and that is why it is hard to extricate them both from that status quo.
Nothing REAL could ever be destroyed by what, in essence, is just a new kind of agreement.
Remember to follow my tag #Gingerpovs 💋
