On Tuesday 5 May, the day before the official announcement of the release date of the next season, “Gary” was released somewhat surprisingly on Disney+, a special flashback episode of The Bear 5, the final season of the cult-culinary series created by Christopher Storer arriving in June.
“Gary” is the name of a town in Indiana where, in the episode thus titled, Richie Jerimovich (the lovable and intractable restaurant manager of The Bear, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Mikey Berzatto (Carmy’s older brother who managed the old family restaurant The Beef of Chicagoland, until his suicide which caused the return of his little chef brother at the beginning of the series, played by Jon Bernthal) go on a business trip on behalf of of “uncle” Jimmy Kalinowski known as Cicero. In addition to being the protagonists, Moss-Bachrach and Bernthal are also co-authors of the screenplay for this episode set in the past. Which, being a flashback episode, serves more as a prequel, if not a spin-off, of the events narrated in The Bear. But in the final scene the images return to show the present of the story, and what you see could have a shocking impact for The Bear 5, with consequences that we now try to imagine. Obviously, from here on out it’s a spoiler zone for those who haven’t seen Gary (or The Bear 4, of course).
What the Gary episode of The Bear is about
How the Gary special episode of The Bear ends
How The Bear 4 ended
What will happen in The Bear 5 after Gary’s ending?
What the Gary episode of The Bear is about
The episode is set in the past, years before the events shown in The Bear. Mikey is still alive, Richie is still married to Tiff (Gillian Jacobs) and the two are about to have a little girl, who we already know will be called Eva: in the main series Eva is approximately between five and seven years old, and the most scrupulous fans have noticed that in “Pisces”, the wonderful sixth episode of the second season, also a flashback and set at Christmas 2018, Tiff is in an earlier stage of pregnancy, so here we are in 2019.
Mikey and Richie meet one morning because they have to deliver a package whose contents they don’t know to a client of Jimmy’s in Indiana, in Gary, a town of 70,000 people half an hour’s drive from Chicago, known for being the hometown of Michael Jackson and his brothers and sisters as well as for being mentioned in a famous 1985 song by John “Cougar” Mellencamp (curiosity/coincidence: John Mellencamp is also mentioned in Citadel 2, released on Prime Video on day after Gary’s release on Hulu/Disney+).
Tiff asked Richie to return home by 5.15pm, because that’s the time her mother’s water broke and she’s convinced the same thing will happen to her, but when they arrive at their destination they discover that they have to wait a few hours for the client to arrive. The two therefore decide to pass the time – and in Richie’s case to ease the anxiety about his wife’s imminent birth – by taking a sort of cheerful tour of the city. They eat in a restaurant similar to theirs, play basketball with some kids, have a beer in a convenience store. Until Mikey decides to find some cocaine, and from there the situation degenerates as expected (literally).
Because Richie decides to go into a bar, Mikey stays in the car but then gets convinced by “Sherri from Gary” (Marin Ireland) to go in and take part in a kind of impromptu alcoholic party at lunchtime, with Richie and the others playing at telling each other absurd stories that are both real and completely invented. Between beer, alcohol in general and cocaine, the two fraternal friends who call themselves cousins lose all control. But if the good drunken Richie limits himself to making himself ridiculous and joking with everyone to release the tension of impending fatherhood, Mikey sinks before Sherri’s eyes into the vortex of depression which, as we know, will ultimately lead him to take his own life.
How the Gary special episode of The Bear ends
When Richie finds out from Jimmy that Mikey has his phone turned off and that the customer is waiting for the package to be delivered, he warns his friend who is locked in the bar bathroom with Sherri. Mikey, who was about to kiss the girl after confessing his fears, doesn’t take the interruption well, and thanks to drugs and alcohol ends up transforming the greeting to the people he just met into a speech of hatred and contempt for Richie, accused of ruining everything and therefore destined according to Mikey to be a terrible father.
The teasing turns into insults, then spitting, until Richie reacts with a couple of slaps in the face and leaves the club, followed closely by Mikey. The two, until recently amused and at peace, are now light years apart. They deliver the package, which they discover is a supply of “plastic impellers” (components for pumps or fans) for which the customer could not wait for the end of the courier strike, and in absolute silence they return to Chicago.
In the penultimate scene, Richie takes out the CD where he had recorded a special compilation for this road trip to Gary, and throws it out the window. The two arrive at a level crossing, and at this point the time jump occurs.
In the last scene we are in fact in the present: it is raining, Richie is in the driving seat, he is dressed well, in a new and well-maintained car, his beard is more trimmed, but when he looks at the empty seat next to him, Richie feels a sense of sadness. Maybe he thinks of Mikey, maybe Carmy, maybe both of them. At the traffic light it turns green, Richie starts the engine and drives forward in the rain, but a second later he sees a car coming from the right heading towards him. He has time to shout “no no no” before the collision occurs, at high speed. End of the special episode.
How The Bear 4 ended
We talked about the finale of the fourth season in depth in another dedicated article: in short, at the end of last season Carmy decided to leave The Bear to Syd, Richie and his sister Natalie and to interrupt his career as a chef to find and understand himself and thus try to solve the problems that torment him intimately.
In the synopsis with which Disney+ previews the plot of The Bear 5, we read that the final season “picks up the morning after Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Natalie ‘Sugar’ (Abby Elliott) discover that Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) has abandoned the restaurant business, leaving the place in their hands. With no money, with the threat of a sale and a storm hindering them, the new partners must join the rest of the team to carry out one last try, in the hope of finally getting a Michelin star. In the end, they will discover that what makes a restaurant ‘perfect’ may not be the food, but the people.”
What will happen in The Bear 5 after Richie’s accident in Gary?
In light of the car accident Richie is involved in at the end of Gary, then, what can we expect from the episodes arriving in June? Let’s try to make two hypotheses.
The first is that, in fact, Richie’s accident occurs that morning in which he, Syd and Nat discover Carmy’s decision, or in any case at the beginning of the timeline of The Bear 5. If this were the case, we can hypothesize that Richie does not die: it is difficult to eliminate the character most loved by millions of fans of The Bear (including us) at the beginning of the final season, and it is no coincidence that his car is hit on the passenger side.
However, his injuries may leave him in the hospital, or at home, or at a restaurant but unable to move for a while. A circumstance that could convince Carmy to postpone finding himself for a while to help out in the kitchen at The Bear. Or maybe not, because Carmy will decide to stay at Richie’s bedside to exchange some loving insults.
The second hypothesis, however, starts from the assumption that the accident with which the Gary episode ends could occur later in the timeline of The Bear 5. And at this point everything would become possible, even that – to give an example that we hope is apotropaic – in that accident Richie loses his life. With consequences that are really hard to imagine before the release of The Bear 5.
