Biography
As Mikey's best friend, Richie Jerimovich spent so much of his childhood at the Berzatto house that he essentially became a part of the family. [1] Per Moss-Bachrach, "I don't think his parents were really in the picture...Mike was very much his anchor and made sure Richie got fed—three square meals a day, probably since the time they were six and eight years old." [2] Richie told Chef Terry in season two that his biological father was a staff sergeant in the U.S. military at one time. [3] Matriarch Donna Berzatto (Jamie Lee Curtis) was so involved in Richie's upbringing that she threw his birthday parties. [4] He and the Berzatto brothers call each other cousin even though they are not biologically related. [5] Both Mikey and Richie ended up working at, and eventually running, the Original Beef of Chicagoland restaurant, an Italian beef sandwich shop in the River North neighborhood that had originally been purchased and managed by the unnamed Berzatto dad. Along the way Richie married Tiff, and together they had daughter Eva (Annabelle Toomey); the couple divorced not long before the opening episode of the series. [1] Richie seems to have struggled with maintaining a consistent income during the course of the marriage. [6]
Despite strife between him and Carmy, Richie anchors the Bear as front-of-house manager, and by season four, while he is "still prone to dramatic self-flagellation, Richie finally seems like a full-fledged adult...[with] pain and self-doubt right at the surface but [also] a layer of wisdom." [7] Richie is responsible for hiring three experienced restaurant employees from the shuttered Ever to shore up the staff of the Bear: Rene (Rene Gube), Garrett (Andrew Lopez), and Chef Jess (Sarah Ramos). [8] Richie seems to be developing a particularly close friendship with expo savant Jess. [8]
Relationships
When Carmy Berzatto returned to Chicago to take over the restaurant, he and Richie immediately settled back into sibling-like squabbling. [9] Richie is introduced as a "lovable brute who cosplays as an Italian and gets into Worldstar-style fights with staff. 'Y'know he's not even Italian, right? 100 percent Polish. Fuckin' insulting,' Richie shouts at Carmen about a passerby in episode four. 'You know you're not even Italian, right?' Carmen shoots back." [10] Richie is, simply put, an asshole, and the "most damaged, the most broken, and the most aimless [character], a miasma of resentment and condescension yelling about a changing restaurant in a changing neighborhood to hide his fear." [11] Carmy (also an asshole, but of very different temperament) [12] is forever annoyed by Richie's antics, but also cherishes him as the most genuine surviving relic of his brother, such that they ritually share cigarettes and memories of Mikey, and Carmy eventually empties the restaurant's cash reserve to bail out Richie after an accidental head injury to a patron results in an arrest and a night in jail. [9] For his part, Richie periodically softens long enough to reveal a tender brotherly affection for the now very grown baby of the family, and to reveal a vulnerable weariness and a self-aware sense of shame about the consequences of his choices. [11]
In season two, Carmy sent Richie to stage in the front of house at a fictionalized Ever, a legendary three-Michelin star Chicago restaurant where Carmy had once been chef de cuisine to executive chef Andrea Terry (Olivia Colman). Moss-Bachrach characterized the filming of the episode as a little "lonely" and the Ever set design as "cold" compared to setting of the cozier, more familiar Bear. [13] The episode where Richie stages, entitled "Forks," introduces a number of new recurring characters and is one of the most beloved in the series, as Richie embraces hospitality as honorable work both for himself and in service of his family. Terry tells Richie that she agreed to host him because Carmy testified that "he's good with people," with which she agreed. Richie returns to the Bear with a newfound respect for the restaurant business generally and Carmy specifically. This détente between the sibling rivals lasted but two episodes before a minor kitchen crisis resulted in a Carmy breakdown. Richie saved the day by doing expo for Chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) but his concern for Carmy's then-girlfriend Dr. Claire Dunlap (Molly Gordon), who ended the night in tears, fuels a brutal and emotionally scarring argument between Carmy and Richie that in turn fuels an extended estrangement, which lasts through much of the spring and summer of that year. [11] The fight, argued at maximum volume and maximum vitriol from opposite sides of a locked steel door, has been described as "mutually assured destruction with the red buttons getting smashed by each side." [6]
Richie referred to Carmy as Donna (their shared, and insane, mother), and accused him of intentionally hurting Claire and being unable to appreciate a good thing (Claire as girlfriend). [14] This sent the already irritable and stressed Carmy into orbit, and he escalated by calling Richie a loser and a leech obsessed with the Berzattos, dependent on Carmy to continue financially supporting Evie. Richie replied that unlike Carmy at least he had someone, Carmy was alone. Richie also brought up, and not for the first time, charges that Carmy had abandoned his family by leaving home and not coming back for Mikey's funeral. There was spitting and spite, many fuck yous, and Richie wrapped up the fight by yelling "I love you" multiple times. Once Carmy was cut out of the fridge, he called Richie at Syd's suggestion and left an apologetic voicemail, telling Richie that he was sorry, that he loved him, and that he would see him tomorrow. This resolved nothing. [14] Richie never apologized for his part in the debacle; in the opinion of one Collider writer, "Saying something so purposely hurtful to Carmy in the heat of the moment was one thing, but refusing to acknowledge it or own up to it was worse." [14] The animosity between the cousins shaped their behavior for the better part of season three: "Carmy is only concerned about his own goals and form of atonement...Richie is only concerned about how much Carmy hurt him, and doesn't seem to consider that when he wastes time causing a scene in the kitchen during service, or he tosses snide digs and picks fights, he is only hurting the restaurant and its employees. At their core, they are each just hurt and angry at each other, and that fuels their respective forms of punishment." [14] In season four the pair limped forward, slightly more able to listen than to yell over each other, and "Carmy has stopped smoking, and Richie armors himself in motivational quotes (which come as naturally to him as a stately stride does to Neil Fak)." [15] Bitter sniping, particularly from Richie, continued, however: "'Don't talk shit to me through the baby,' Carmy snaps to Richie in Episode 5, after the latter makes a snide remark about the former, ostensibly to Carmy's infant niece. In Episode 6, Richie calls Carmy a 'fuckin sociopath,' 'a little fuckin' narcissist bitch,' and 'Carmental'." [15] Vulture noted Richie's resentment: "...Richie doesn't know how to have an adult conversation with a male he's related(ish) to. He seems to only know how to throw syllabic grenades..." [16]
All this came to a head in the season-four finale, "Goodbye," when Carmy's bad communication and apparent retirement from restaurants triggered a ferocious conflict between, first, him and Sydney, and then, second, a more cathartic and confessional discourse between him and Richie. The dialogue and emotion of "Goodbye" has been described as "the conversational equivalent of a thunderstorm that brings a merciful, if furious, end to a heat wave." [15]
