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| "Doors" | |
|---|---|
| The Bear episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 3 |
| Directed by | Duccio Fabbri |
| Story by | |
| Teleplay by | Christopher Storer |
| Cinematography by | Andrew Wehde |
| Editing by | Adam Epstein |
| Original release date | June 26, 2024 |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Guest appearances | |
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"Doors" is the third episode of the third season of the American television comedy-drama The Bear . It is the 21st overall episode of the series and was written by series creator Christopher Storer from a story he co-wrote with co-producer Will Guidara, and directed by co-producer Duccio Fabbri. It was released on Hulu on June 26, 2024, along with the rest of the season.
The series follows Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto, an award-winning New York City chef de cuisine, who returns to his hometown of Chicago to run his late brother Michael's failing Italian beef sandwich shop. In the episode, the staff prepares to resume business in The Bear, with conflicts arising in the span of one month.
Marcus (Lionel Boyce) and the staff attend his mother's funeral. He delivers a eulogy, where he relates how his mother was always there for him, and how her life influenced him. Afterwards, the team returns to the restaurant to start their duties. On the first day, they are surprised by the packed attendance, and it initially goes well with few problems. As the days pass, conflicts start arising, with some accidents occurring in the kitchen.
Through the following month, the conflicts escalate. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) angers Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) when he decides to make his own "non-negotiable" list to build a more relaxing environment. Cicero (Oliver Platt) is also upset when he learns that Carmy is buying expensive items, including $11,000 for an "Orwellian" butter. [a] Sugar (Abby Elliott) also realizes that the restaurant is losing money despite booked reservations, as changing the menus gets them to waste food. In an attempt to try to recover some of the money, Sugar suggests adding a new turn at 9:30pm, which the staff reluctantly accepts.
Carmy and Richie continue fighting with each other over different aspects, frustrating Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), who constantly needs to calm Carmy down. When Richie explains that a customer specifically requested no mushrooms in his meal, Carmy turns aggressive by wanting to place the mushrooms anyway. This leads to a physical altercation between them, which also leads to the restaurant's expo sheets flying off the table. As Sydney eyes a lost food ticket on the floor at the end of service, she wearily realizes the extent of the restaurant's dysfunction.
One of the dishes served at the Bear during the period depicted in "Doors," bottarga, is a "dried roe sac." [2]
In May 2024, Hulu confirmed that the third episode of the season would be titled "Doors", and was to be written by series creator Christopher Storer from a story he co-wrote with co-producer Will Guidara, and directed by co-producer Duccio Fabbri, the series' longtime first assistant director. [3] It was Storer's tenth writing credit, Guidara's first writing credit, and Fabbri's first directing credit. [4]
On Marcus' eulogy, Lionel Boyce commented, "I was like: a monologue. Alright, alright. But I think it felt reassuring. It's like jumping off a cliff, but he believes in me. He wouldn't have written it if he didn't think I could do it. The writers are trying to steer the ship in a certain direction, and they want this in there, so my job is to uphold that and do my best to deliver it as close as possible to the way they want it." [5]
In 2025, a BuzzFeed writer tagged waiter Fak in "Doors" as one of the show's funniest moments: "Fak serving broth by pouring it and then bringing it back into the kitchen to a dumbfounded Carmy might be one of the funniest cringe moments in the whole show. The second he started walking back, I hid my face." [6]
According to supervising sound editor Steve Giammaria the episode begins at the funeral for Marcus' late mother, Angela Brooks, with a rather loud silence, which is unusual for the show. However, according to Giammaria, "There's a real depth to this quiet; there's a lot actually happening. There are layers of benches creaking and people coughing and all of this stuff to give it that feeling of being in a church at a funeral—something, unfortunately, that people are familiar with. So it's just sitting in that silence and that heaviness." [7]
The bowls Carmy complains about are Jono Pandolfi earthenware in "toasted clay." [8] The pieces are handmade in New Jersey. [9]
"Doors" takes place over the course of a month, and Sydney wears multiple headscarves over that period of time. One of the headscarves that Sydney wears in "Doors" is decorated with images of colorful feathered fishing lures; she wears the same scarf again in episode five "Children." [10] She also wears a constellations of the zodiac scarf from Printed Image. [11] [12] While talking Tina through preparing a dish, she wears a black-and-white checkered bandana from World of Crow that "was one of her more muted styles." [12] Another bandana is the Narcissus design from Eloi, which is decorated in gold stars and "several faces with oversized features." [12] Her final scarf of the episode is the red and green "Glowing Chard" design by Centinelle. [13]
In March 2024, scenes depicting the cast filming a funeral leaked to the Internet, with fans speculating that they would attend Marcus' mother's funeral. [14] Jeremy Allen White considered the leak "a bummer", commenting "It was very difficult to pretend that moment could have been something else that was photographed. We had to learn how to be a bit more careful, and I think our production acted accordingly." [15]
The church scenes were filmed at St. Mary's Catholic Church on Lake Street in Evanston, Illinois. [16]
The episode featured many operas for the score, including L'amico Fritz , Lurline , and La traviata . [17] The use of opera is a "departure from The Bear's typical soundtrack of Gen X alternative rock." [7]
Jenna Scherer of The A.V. Club gave the episode an "A–" grade and wrote, "One of The Bear's greatest strengths has always been its ability to make viewers internalize characters' emotions, and 'Doors' is a whirlwind of them. Over the course of half an hour, the episode takes us through a month at Chicago's hottest new restaurant, as Carmy and Sydney put their brigade de cuisine model into practice in a kitchen — one staffed by people who, less than a year ago, were working at a neighborhood sandwich dive." [18]
Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone wrote, "'Doors', which chronicles a month in the life of The Bear, where Carmy's evolving menu, and the conflict between him and Richie, turn the restaurant increasingly messy in both a literal and emotional sense. It's a potent 1-2-3 punch to start off the season, as a reminder of just how many ways Storer and company have found to tell what would seem at first to be a pretty simple story of an interesting workplace." [19]
Marah Eakin of Vulture gave the episode a 3 star out of 5 rating and wrote, "Every season, The Bear has at least one episode that sits at a rolling boil the whole time, makes your heart race and your anxiety pop, and leaves you feeling utterly exhausted. This year, that episode is 'Doors'." [20]
A.J. Daulerio of Decider wrote, "The first hour's worth of orders goes eerily, uncomfortably smoothly. All the non-negotiables are clicking, and there have been exactly zero meltdowns so far. But we know better. At The Bear — chaos reigns." [21] Brady Langmann of Esquire wrote, "If episode 1 was Carmy's fridge-enclosed vision quest and episode 2 was our reintroduction to the restaurant's crew, episode 3 is a reminder of why The Bear captivated us in the first place: the shock-horror-can't-look-away-from-the-car-crash feeling of watching shit go very, very wrong. With that in mind, 'Doors' is a vintage episode of The Bear. It's the first time we see the kitchen truly in full swing since the restaurant's disastrous opening in the season 2 finale." [22]
In 2024, The Hollywood Reporter placed "Doors" at 13 on a ranked list of 28 episodes produced to that point, commenting that "in many ways 'Doors' feels like the episode that gets the show back on track, after an experimental beginning and a rocky follow-up. Finally, The Bear is open and we get to see exactly what that looks like...'Doors' goes right into the punishing nature of working in this industry—at this high of a level, every single day—if not forever, then at least for the rest of season three." [23]
In 2025, Vulture ranked "Doors" as 18th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear, commenting, "A relentless, loud, slog through a month of service at The Bear, 'Doors' is a marvel. It's a technically excellent episode, to be sure, but it's also damn near impossible to watch. It's not that the episode fails in getting its point across. It's just that the point is that working at The Bear is so fucking tense that you feel like you want to claw your skin off even just watching the episode at home. In short: Love the episode, hate the feeling." [24]
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