Get Your Binge On: The Bear and The Summer I Turned Pretty

Last month I binged two very different shows over the course of two days. Do you want something gritty, darkly funny, and intense? Or do you want something frothy and cute that still manages to tug at your heartstrings? 

The Bear: The first season is only eight episodes long, most of those only half an hour, and it is an absolute triumph. Created by Christopher Storer, who also wrote and directed a number of episodes, this is the story of Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) a man who has returned to Chicago after his brother died by suicide and left Carmy his restaurant. Carmy is one of the best chefs in the world and left behind a prestigious job at a fine dining restaurant to work at this struggling beef sandwich shop and he is thrown into the deep end dealing with a recalcitrant staff who are used to doing things their own way and are deeply suspicious of this young upstart and his fancy ideas of instituting a French brigade system to whip them into shape. The man doesn't even want to make spaghetti with tomatoes from a can, what is this anarchy?!

What follows is an incisive look at the business of running a restaurant. Financial ruin faces Carmy at every turn, and his passion for food often has to take a backseat to the need to run a solvent business. His staff of misfits eventually start to warm to him, but for every step he takes forward, there's always the drama of a surprise health inspection, a power outage, or personal trauma to take him two steps back. As the series progresses, we get to spend more time with the other characters, particularly the new recruit, Sydney (Ayo Edibiri), who was trained at the Culinary Institute of America and shares Carmy's vision, but is still extremely young and has to earn the respect of the older, more seasoned employees who see her as an interloper. Will she succeed? You had better watch to find out!

The main reason I am recommending this show, however, is Episode 7. Even if you don't binge the whole thing, I am tempted to tell the whole world to at least watch this one episode. It is only twenty minutes long, but during those twenty minutes you will have an absolute panic attack. It is a searing masterclass in how to script and edit a tight episode of television that tells a chaotic, frantic, tale of the absolute worst day at this restaurant. It follows every single character and gives them a chance to have their own personal moment of hell and keeps you riveted to the screen from the first shot to the last. It is a shot of pure adrenalin and that was the moment I knew this show was destined to be a classic.

The Summer I Turned Pretty: Look, I get it. The title makes me cringe too. My boss overheard his daughter's teenage friend describe the show as "cringey but you'll really enjoy it if you watch it alone." Which might be the most incisive review ever. An adaptation of a Jenny Han YA book series (she's the author responsible for the charming To All The Boys I've Loved Before trilogy), this show tells the story of Isabel "Belly" Conklin (Lola Tung), a high school sophomore who arrives at Cousins Beach with her mother, Laurel (Jackie Chung), and brother, Steven (Sean Kaufman), to spend their annual summer vacation at the home of her mother's best friend, Susannah (Rachel Blanchard), and her two sons, Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno).

What follows is an angsty tale of teen romance as Belly navigates the fact that this is the summer she has boobs and doesn't have braces and is suddenly an object of male interest. Which sounds gross, but I promise is handled with a bit more finesse than that. I didn't care about Belly and her romantic shenanigans that much, but I did enjoy the focus on her female friendships and the tensions between the new girls she meets when preparing for a debutante ball versus her old friend back home who is starting to feel left out. But the best part of the show, to me, was the mothers. Susannah and Laurel have a friendship that reminded me a lot of my best friends from college that I still love to this day. These two have an INTENSE summer, and I won't spoil anything, but the last episode wrecked me for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with the teenagers and was all about the adults.

So give this fluffy show a chance. It has surprising heart and depth and even tries to tackle issues like racism and classism, albeit always with a light touch. It also boasts a great soundtrack and some gorgeous summer beach vibes in a house I would like to move into immediately. I'm quite looking forward to future installments and there's enough of a cliffhanger that I'm genuinely considering just getting the trilogy from the library to find out what ultimately happens to these characters. Surely there's no higher praise I can give a show?