"Gary" is a fantastic and heartbreaking prequel to The Bear.

"Gary" is available for streaming on Hulu, but not under The Bear. It's a standalone title.

“Gary” was released on Hulu without the slightest shred of lead-up. The surprise drop landed on the streaming platform May 5th, with the hour-long episode covering an errand Richie (Ebon-Moss Bachrach) and Michael (Jon Bernthal), or “Mikey,” have to run for Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) in nearby Gary, Indiana. The episode takes place well before the start of The Bear, as Richie’s daughter is yet to be born, Mikey is still alive, and Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs) and Richie are still married. Tiffany and Richie’s daughter, Eva (Annabelle Toomey), is about five when Season 1 starts, so “Gary” takes place five or so years before we met our unstable cast of culinary geniuses, and about seven from where we are right now, approaching Season 5. 

I’ve been openly critical about The Bear at times, even though I think “Gary” is another step in the right direction after the unmitigated disaster that was Season 3. Season 4 brought me back after I was fully willing to leave this bumass restaurant business for good, and “Gary” keeps that momentum going. 

Here are five takeaways from “Gary,” The Bear’s surprise prequel episode.

SPOILERS BELOW

1. Mikey is Just Like his Mom

The matriarch of the Berzatto family, Donna, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, very likely suffers from bipolar disorder. Boozing doesn’t help, and nearly every flashback we see or story we hear told about her details a woman who is cheery and caring one minute, and abusive and destructive the next, all with her bottle of wine or vodka by her side. Mikey, her oldest son and the older brother of Carmine (Jeremy Allen White), displays a lot of the same traits in “Gary.”

We’ve seen flashes of the demons Mikey dealt with before he took his own life, especially in the infamous “Fishes” episode, but never in such vivid detail as in “Gary.” These two episodes happen just a few months apart, ironically; Mikey was clearly having a rough go of it around this time. On this single errand for Uncle Jimmy that takes just a morning and afternoon, we see Mikey spiral into a whirlwind of cocaine and drinking, pour his heart out to a complete stranger (played beautifully by Marin Ireland) inside a bathroom stall, talk massive amounts of shit to some unwitting teenagers playing basketball, announce his undying love and respect for his best friend and a soon-to-be father in Richie, and in the very same drug- and alcohol-fueled speech, tear him apart for being an utter failure who will one day let his wife and daughter down. 

This is a hurt person, and hurt people hurt people. Mikey’s mind was perpetually swaying from an overt sense of love and loyalty to complete self-destruction. That self-destruction required others to be brought down with him, and big, goofy Richie was an easy target. Mikey and Donna wrestled with the same issues.

2. Richie has Changed Dramatically

Richie is the resident grumpypants for much of The Bear. Take your suggestions and shove them up your ass. You have a question about something? Ask Sugar (Abby Elliott) and get out of my face. Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t tell me how to act. Sounds a little like Mikey, right?

The death of Mikey was a crossroads for Richie, and it seems to have led to him taking on some of his old friend’s personality traits while he struggles to cope. He’s infinitely more stable than Mikey, but the prickliness we see in The Bear was simply not present in “Gary.” He’s happy-go-lucky. He’s excited to be a dad and to be entrusted with some sort of important task by Uncle Jimmy. He’s happily married. The world is at Richie’s fingertips, though much of the good he foresaw will soon slip through his grasp. 

To his credit, he does seem to have turned the corner by Season 4. Richie is a professional in the restaurant business now, who understands his emotions more than he used to, as well as how to manage them. He’s a better co-parent with his ex-wife. He runs a tight ship in the restaurant. Richie is not cheerful anymore, but he’s become more put-together as The Bear has gone on. 

Things are about to change for Richie again, and not in a good way. 

3. Richie is Probably Hurt Badly

“Gary” ends in the present day. We see Richie in the black shirt and tie he wears around the restaurant, driving on a rainy day. He looks to the passenger’s seat forlornly, suggesting he’s reminiscing about the many drives he used to take with his fallen best friend. He crosses an intersection and WHAM…t-boned. 

Richie has been in a serious accident. Is he dead? Unlikely. Is he badly injured? Likely. One of my main issues with sections of The Bear was its utter lack of plot development. Things move along at a snail’s pace or not at all, as the creators are often more keen on zooming into characters’ expressionless faces than coming up with what to do with them. Is a massive car accident gratuitous? A cheap way to create conflict/change? Yeah, maybe. But it definitely builds the anticipation heading into the fifth and final season, which will be released on June 25th. 

4. Tiffany Was Alone for the Birth of Eva

The Bear loves adding stress to any situation based on some element of time. A ticking clock, a looming deadline. The digital countdown for them to save the restaurant in Season 4 practically becomes a character of its own. “Gary” is no different, in this case Mikey and Richie having to get back home before 5:15, based on Tiffany’s superstition about her impending labor. 

Welp, Richie wasn’t home before 5:15, in part because a train got in the way, but mostly because of the duo’s partying while waiting for Uncle Jimmy’s transaction to begin. This very likely means he missed the birth of his daughter, Eva. A phone call from Tiffany suggested she was going into labor. He didn’t make it back in time, and Tiffany was left to manage on her own. There were undoubtedly many reasons their marriage did not work out, but missing the birth of their first child while he was out drinking with his friend, only to show up with a curly red lipstick mustache, probably played a role. We see a glimpse of the new Richie on the ride home: a sad person crumbling under the weight of his failings as a man. 

5. Uncle Jimmy Knows Who to Take Seriously

Uncle Jimmy has always been the money man. How he came to accrue such wealth is shrouded in mystery, but it’s fair to assume based on how cagey he is about his dealings that not all his money was generated legally. He may be an investor in Berzatto businesses, in part, to launder some of that dirt off his hands. In any case, he’s a shrewd businessman who understands who to put in positions of influence. Mikey and Richie are not some of those people. 

Carmy? Sugar? “The Computer?” Those are people Jimmy can trust. Carmy, despite all his personality flaws, has the talent to overcome them (most of the time). Sugar is a hard worker who can manage the business and the host of personalities around her. The Computer is a whiz on the spreadsheets. Mikey and Richie don’t have any of these abilities, they’re just loyal to him. This is why they’re put on what they think is a big job, which, in fact, was simply to deliver a box of plastic pump impellers. Why? Just to save Jimmy a few bucks. FedEx was on strike and he didn’t want to pay an exorbitant carrier fee. 

You can almost see it, can’t you? Jimmy pulls them aside at a family gathering, saying he needs them to do something important for him. It’ll only take a day. It’s just a simple drop-off/pick-up with an associate of his in Gary, Indiana. They don’t need to know any specifics. They are all in, eager to impress the big kahuna of the family, hoping this will lead to more trust and responsibility. Hell, Richie even brings a gun and dresses like the Terminator. In reality, they wouldn’t have done it if they knew the real reason for this trek. They’re just a pair of jabronis in the grand scheme of things. Jimmy knows all this, and frames the task so they’ll accept it without giving him any guff. 

Uncle Jimmy knows his people. 

I really enjoyed “Gary.” Consider me fully back on the Bear wagon. I’d probably give this episode a PG Score of 9/10. We’re about a month and a half from saying goodbye to this ragtag restaurant group, and “Gary” gives Season 5 a ton of juice heading into it. 

Let it rip. 

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