"Tomorrow" is the first episode of the third season of the American comedy-drama television series The Bear. It is the 19th overall episode of the series and was written by series creator Christopher Storer from a story he co-wrote with cast member Matty Matheson, and directed by Storer. 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 chef de cuisine, who returns to his hometown of Chicago to run his late brother Michael's failing Italian beef sandwich shop and revamps the shop into a fine dining establishment, "The Bear". In the episode, Carmy reminisces over his past experiences in other restaurants as he tries to move forward with the new restaurant's structure.
The season-three premiere of The Bear has been ranked as both the best and the worst installment of the series.
Plot
The episode is presented as a nonlinear, intertwining collection of flashbacks as Carmy goes to work the morning after the soft opening of The Bear.
Flashbacks
Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) spends years working for renowned chefs at various restaurants. He first stages at The French Laundry, then returns to Chicago to work for Chef Terry (Olivia Colman) alongside Luca (Will Poulter) at Ever, where he eventually rises to the CDC position. Impressed with Carmy's talent and dedication, Chef Terry sends him to Copenhagen to work at Noma under René Redzepi, an experience he cherishes.
Carmy returns home from Copenhagen for Christmas, but after a tumultuous family dinner,[a] he takes up his cousin Michelle's offer to move to New York City to pursue his career, where he stays with her and her boyfriend Stevie (John Mulaney). Sugar (Abby Elliott) sees him off at O'Hare, expresses a fear that she'll never see him again, and slips $1,000 in Carmy's jacket pocket that he had previously refused to take from her. In New York, Carmy first works for Daniel Boulud at Daniel, and later David Fields at Empire, the latter of whom harshly criticizes and berates Carmy for his mistakes while instilling in him the "subtract" principle: using as few ingredients as possible. Carmy develops a hamachi dish with a blood orange sauce and garnish only for Fields to have him swap out the blood orange for fennel to exert his ownership over the dish, but Carmy discreetly substitutes one plate back with the blood orange, which is served to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri).[b]
While Carmy is working at Empire, Natalie calls him to inform him that Mikey (Jon Bernthal) has died by suicide. While the family attends the funeral, Carmy cannot bring himself to enter the church and stays in his car. He also gets into a conflict with Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) when Mikey gives Carmy ownership of The Beef.[c]
Present day
After being freed from the walk-in refrigerator,[d] Carmy apologizes to Sydney for having abandoned her during the soft opening. He later leaves a message to Richie apologizing for his tirade at him while trapped in the fridge. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is devastated upon discovering that his mother has died, and Sydney leaves him a message offering her condolences.
Carmy arrives early to the empty Bear. He cleans up a full ashtray, empty wine glasses, and cloth napkins discarded on one table, rearranges the tables, creates new flower arrangements from the existing massive bouquets, and kicks the bar cart and metal ice bucket across the dining room. Synthesizing his past work experiences, he prepares a brand new set of courses for the menu and creates a list of "non-negotiables" for the restaurant to follow, so that it can perform at the highest of standards.
Production
Development
In May 2024, Hulu confirmed that the first episode of the season would be titled "Tomorrow", and was to be written by series creator Christopher Storer from a story he co-wrote with cast member Matty Matheson, and directed by Storer.[1] It was Storer's eighth writing credit, Matheson's first writing credit, and Storer's 13th directing credit.[2]
Writing
On the episode's structure, Jeremy Allen White said, "It felt very fresh and new. It felt very exciting in its structure and style. It felt different, while also being very much at the heart of the same tone as the show."[3]
Regarding the conversation between Carmy and Sugar, White explained, "So often and so frequently, Sugar does this beautiful thing where she's really reaching out to Carmy. And he feels incapable of reaching back or being like, accepting in some kind of way. I think for that scene, for Carm, he just felt like he had to go, there was nothing left for him in this place anymore."[4]
Casting
Famous chefs guest star as themselves, mentoring the Carmy in-universe: "Boulud teaches Carmy how to prepare one of his most famous dishes, while [Rene] Redzepi gives Carmy a nod across the room."[5]
White also filmed with Daniel Boulud, who taught Carmy how to prepare Boulud's "signature crispy paupiettes of sea bass dish."[10] Boulud posted on Facebook about the experience, writing, "Filming at Restaurant Daniel for the season-three premiere was done entirely au naturel—no retakes, no gimmicks. The experience was as raw and real as it gets. Jeremy Allen White's incredible talent shines through as he dives in with a perfect blend of fearlessness and confidence. A truly remarkable experience!...Cooking with Jeremy was like cooking with my young chefs. He is a great cook, fast learner, and extremely focused."[10] The scenes with Boulud feature some glamour shots of his restaurant's French-made Mauviel-brand copper pots and pans.[11]
According to cinematographer Andrew Wehde in an interview with Panavision.com:[12]
"Because ['Tomorrow'] wasn't a dialogue-based episode, so much of it was us going into spaces and just shooting. It was a very small, intimate team: me, operator Gary Malouf, and 1st AC Matt Rozek. I control the look, Gary controls the way it's moved, and Matt controls what's in focus...Gaffer Jeremy Long and key grip David Wagenaar were obviously part of that situation, along with some other help. We would roll into The French Laundry or wherever, and we were harnessing what these places already are, finding the most beautiful way of capturing them. The episode lives on three lenses: the H Series 28mm, 35mm, and 55mm. We needed the audience to go on this journey with Carmy in all these places, and what we captured came from the power of light and the power of these three lenses. I use no filters. The lenses are so powerful that if I added any filtration, it would only change the natural beauty of what the lenses are doing. The portrait work on our show has this sharp, crisp focus on a singular spot, whether it's Jeremy's eyes or a piece of the food. But the organic, natural falloff around them doesn't feel like a portrait that you would normally see on a 75mm or a 135mm. It has this dreamy quality to it, and it never feels harsh. We always talk about the fact that the most beautiful cookbooks around the world have their food photographed in a way that's soft and bloomy, and it makes you love what you’re looking at versus making it something sterile...The biggest difference between episode one and the rest of season three is that episode one is shot to feel large-format. We shot it as wide open as possible to give us that isolation of Carmy, because that dude is in his own world. We wanted everything to be focused just on him."[12]
Costuming
In the flashback where Sydney is presented with the hamachi blood orange dish made by Carmy, she is wearing a "printed midi dress from Dries Van Noten's fall/winter 2018 collection."[13]
Set decoration and props
While revising the Friends & Family menu in order to present to Sydney with a suite of simpler or more refined dishes when she comes in to work on Monday morning, Carmy uses an array of kitchen tools including a Benriner-brand mandoline slicer and a Vitamix blender.[11]
Carmy's food journaling is depicted in this episode's flashback scenes. He appears to use Leuchtturm1917 journals from a company based in Geesthacht, near Hamburg, Germany. [14] Associated with Sharpies since "Review," Carmy uses a .07-mm-tipped Pilot G2 pen to write out his list of non-negotiables.[14] According to California restaurateur Greg Ryan by way of The New York Times, these pens are commonly used by kitchen expediters because they "work well on receipt paper, don't smudge, have a fine tip, and write super-smoothly."[15]
Elsewhere in the Bear-verse, there is a framed Patrick Nagel poster hanging in the hallway behind Richie when he is trying to get someone (presumably Mikey) to come out from behind the locked door.
Sound recording
According Scott D. Smith, a career sound mixer and head of The Bear's audio recording team since the pilot episode, the real Ever restaurant, which is the setting for several flashback scenes in "Tomorrow," has remarkable sound baffling. He wrote in an article for a film-industry journal in 2025, "This restaurant incorporates some of the best sound treatment I've ever encountered for a front-of-house dining area. With absolutely nothing that would clue the average diner as to how the room was treated, I had to look very carefully at the walls and ceiling areas to figure out how the architect and builders had treated the surfaces. At the end, I remarked to Chef Duffy, 'I would eat here based on the acoustics alone, even if the food was terrible.' I wish every location where we shoot could be as good as that one."[16]
Film editing
Editor Joanna Naugle said in an interview Immersive Media that the episode is ruminative and repetitive by design:[17]
"It's playing on the idea that these are memories for the characters, but also memories for the audience. They also experienced this in a different time. I think that repetition of reusing footage is so great, and 301 especially is so much repetition...I'm kind of not sure where [Carmy] mind is [after the events of the season-two finale], so I loved having 301 be a place to get meditative with him. He's cycling through all these different times in his life. Anybody who is creative or has a creative pursuit has thought about, what are all the little things that made me the artist I am or the person I am? It's the people who didn't believe in me. It's people who did believe in me. It's the family members who pushed me away. It's the family members who supported me."[17]
A key detail in "Tomorrow" is that we see Carmy creating and plating the paupiette of hamachi with blood orange sauce that is more than likely "the best meal" Sydney ever had, that she described in passing to both Marcus in season one's "Braciole" and Carmy's mom, Donna Berzatto, in the season four wedding episode "Bears."[19][20]Paupiette is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a "long thin slice of meat or fish...spread with forcemeat or other filling and rolled up,"[21] but here more likely describes a classic French form of fish cookery whereby a thin slice of fish (tuna, sole, whiting, or even anchovy) is stuffed, rolled and secured with string before cooking in a stock.[22]Hamachi describes young Japanese amberjack fish (Seriola quinqueradiata), also known as yellowtail, farm-raised and prized for use in sushi and sashimi. The smaller fish are the hamachi, larger ones are called buri but it is unusual for even the bigger fish to get larger than 20lb (9.1kg).[23] Blood oranges are a type of citrus fruit with reddish flesh and skins that produce a deep red, almost maroon, sweet-tart juice. They primarily grow in California and around the Mediterranean region.[24]
Carmy's first iteration of the dish used dill, which Fields rejected with the edict "never repeat ingredients," which in turn seemed to influence Carmy's season three dictate to the Bear restaurant staff that they were going to change the menu every day.[25] "No repetitions" is one of the rules of a Thomas Keller kitchen.[26] At the French Laundry, the nine-course menu changes daily and "No ingredient can be featured more than once on each night's menu, with the exception...of truffles, caviar, and foie gras."[26]
The dish that was served to Sydney was a one-off, created on the pretext that the diner had a allergy, fennel soubise being a key element of the plate, but Syd has worked with various forms of fennel multiple times since joining the crew of the Beef, including for the first family meal she prepared on her first day, and she thus almost certainly does not have such a food sensitivity.[27][e]
Jeremy Allen White told the Daily Beast in June 2024, "There is this connection between these two people that existed before they even met...Then, that gets you thinking about, like, what a beautiful thing it is to prepare food for someone. How you're connected forever, in some way, dining in these restaurants."[29]
Critical reviews
Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone wrote, "The premiere, 'Tomorrow' is the sort of thing that only a show this beloved can get away with. Though it offers us glimpses of Carmy and the others in the immediate aftermath of the soft opening, it's less interested in its eponymous day than in all of Carmy Berzatto's yesterdays. [...] There's dialogue here and there, but the whole thing is essentially a tone poem, working to put us inside our hero's head even more than usual. [...] It's a lovely table-setter for the season."[30]
Marah Eakin of Vulture gave the episode a 4 star out of 5 rating and wrote, "Carmy can't control all that no matter how hard he tries, even after countless tough hours spent working in kitchens worldwide. However, if we know anything about The Bear, none of that will preclude Carmy from putting immense pressure on himself to somehow circumvent it anyway."[31] Matt Singer of Screen Crush wrote, "Though not the most conventionally satisfying episode of The Bear, I wondered whether 'Tomorrow' was meant to suggest Season 3 as a whole will be structured like one long tasting menu. In which case this episode could be seen as the equivalent of a chef preparing for work by gathering their ingredients. With that out of the way, they can now start to turn up the heat."[32]
A.J. Daulerio of Decider wrote, "Filled with quiet walks, gentle plant tending, cozy houseboats, sparkling workstations, and inspirational dough rolling by a stoic pastry chef named Luca, this episode proved that the characters (and the audience) are allowed to breathe every once in a while."[33] Josh Rosenberg of Esquire wrote, "The Bear is still asking which part of the artistic process brings happiness: the work or the reward? Is it selfish to want to enjoy the experience, too, or is it that self-centeredness that drives you to put blinders on in the pursuit of glory? I can't promise that Carm will find an answer by the end of season 3."[34]
In a less positive review, Jenna Scherer of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "B–" grade and wrote, "'Tomorrow' itself is an odd dish, combining ingredients that don't quite go together. Though it sometimes feels like a dreamy (and nightmarish) journey through Carmy's psyche, it often lands with all the artfulness of a clip show, making what should be a stage-setting season premiere feel like a filler episode. Maybe Storer could stand to take his own advice: subtract."[35]
Retrospective reviews
In 2024, The Hollywood Reporter placed "Tomorrow" first on a ranked list of 28 episodes produced to that point, calling it "the single greatest episode of The Bear, [which] is also its least accessible...You can't just sit someone down with 'Tomorrow' and expect them to get The Bear, the way I'd argue you could with 'Dogs' or even 'Review.' Those two episodes are the TV equivalent of an Italian beef sandwich; 'Tomorrow' is fine dining at its televised best."[36] ScreenRant ranked "Tomorrow" 8th out of the 28 episodes produced through the end of season three, describing it as "one of the best-executed creative experiments of season three."[37]
In 2025, Vulture ranked "Tomorrow" as 38th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear, commenting, "It's all very beautiful and sensuous and interesting, but in terms of storytelling, it's a bit of a dud."[38]
Esquire magazine listed "Tomorrow" at number 10 on its 2025 list of the top 10 best episodes from the first three seasons of The Bear, commending the installment for "impressively [avoiding] the usual fast-food origin story BS. Instead, Carmy's fragmented memories come together like a mosaic, a collection of recollections that unfold in order of feeling rather than their place in a chronological timeline."[39]
↑ Sydney recounts this incident to Marcus in "Braciole" describing how she spent her money years ago exploring New York City's finest restaurants, and that her favorite dish was cooked by Carmy.
↑ Fennel was symbolically treated as a female aphrodisiac in Greco-Roman mythology, while since the Italian language and culture since the Renaissance period associate fennel with male homosexuality, possibly due to potentially feminizing phytoestrogens in fennel.[28]
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