TV Show review
Review basis: 5 seasons · through June 25, 2025
June 23, 2022 · TV-MA · Returning Series
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
The Bear follows a fine-dining chef who returns to Chicago to save his late brother’s rundown Italian beef sandwich shop. He battles debt, a chaotic crew, family trauma, grief, addiction, and his own mental health struggles while trying to turn the place around and build something better. Across five seasons the story stays centered on personal pressure, kitchen stress, chosen family bonds, and emotional growth with almost no visible identity politics, activist speeches, or social-justice framing. Diverse casting fits a real Chicago working kitchen and draws no special emphasis or complaints.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Bear.
Woke representation / casting
Diverse kitchen crew matches realistic Chicago service-industry demographics with no forced signaling, quotas, or story-world mismatches.
Woke political dialogue
Dialogue stays on food, family fights, grief, and kitchen pressure; almost no explicit political or activist language appears.
Identity-driven story themes
Main arcs center on trauma, addiction, mental health, and chosen family; race or gender elements stay background and incidental.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Shows toxic kitchen culture and family pain as personal and industry problems without reframing them as critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, or systemic oppression.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Virtually no right-leaning complaints or backlash accuse the show of woke messaging, DEI, or identity politics across seasons.
Creator track record context
Lead creator keeps a low activist profile focused on personal struggle; some supporting writers and directors carry moderate identity-themed records from other work, but the series itself shows little activist drive.
Production
