The Bear's Jon Bernthal Improvised A Heated Mikey Moment In Season 2
Few scripted shows excel at causing your blood pressure to sky-rocket like "The Bear." Christopher Storer's acclaimed series centers on the employees of a Chicago-based eatery, which is itself an inherently high-stress environment. (Er, restaurants in general, that is, not specifically those in Chicago, although I leave it to the Windy City's residents to make the final call on that one.) Adding to the discomfort, the show pulls you deeply into its characters' perspectives, using invasive close-ups and rapid-fire edits to place you in their headspace and make their underlying anxieties all the more palpable. Other times, the series holds for vast periods without cutting, which makes you sit with its leads as they quietly work through their feelings. That or scramble for dear life like in the mostly one-shot season 1 episode "Review."
Miraculously, "The Bear" managed to top that episode for sheer emotional turbulence with the extra-long season 2 installment "Fishes." Set about five years before the rest of the season, "Fishes" follows series protagonist Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) as he returns home from a trip abroad to enjoy a star-studded Christmas from Hell with his family and their closest friends. Perhaps most importantly, "Fishes" affords us a chance to spend some real time with Carmy's older brother Michael aka "Mikey" (Jon Bernthal), who died by suicide before the events of season 1, leaving his Italian beef sandwich shop behind for Carmy to renovate as he sees fit.
The impression of Mikey that "Fishes" leaves us with is far more volatile and raw yet also more relatable than the idealized version we're shown in Carmy's memories in season 1 (themselves framed as flashbacks). But before we dig into Bernthal's big, explosive improvised moment in the episode's climax, we need to discuss the scenes leading up to it.
The other side of Mikey
The version of Mikey that Carmy remembers in season 1 seems anything but troubled. Jovial and laid-back, he's the epitome of the nurturing older brother, sharing good-natured anecdotes and cracking wise around his loved ones. Everyone contains multitudes, though, and in "Fishes" we see the turmoil swirling beneath Mikey's calm facade burst to the surface under the strain of having to deal with his mentally unwell and probably alcoholic mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her slimeball boyfriend Lee (Bob Odenkirk). As Bernthal discussed with Variety in 2023, it's Mikey's demons that pushed him to go out of his way to avoid working at his sandwich shop with Carmy while he was still alive:
"[...] He feels like this shop and the way that he's run it and everything around him has been this enormous Albatross, and he's kind of run into the ground. He's shrouded in hopelessness, and he wants to keep his brother out of it. He wants to keep his brother pure. That might manifest itself sometimes in jealousy and anger."
"Fishes" goes a long way in fleshing out Mikey as a character for this reason, and Bernthal was grateful for the opportunity to take him off the pedestal that Carmy and others had placed him on in season 1:
"Through the lens of memory, it was this beautiful celebration of this guy. But this year, they really showed the other side — his ugliness, his damage, his hurt, his pain, the parts of him that didn't quite sync up."
It's "bold storytelling," as Bernthal pointed out, but it's also a compassionate approach that allows viewers to better connect with Mikey and possibly even understand him in a way that some of those closest to him struggled with during his time with them.
My, my, how the tables have flipped
Eventually, once the Berzatto clan sits down for dinner, it briefly appears as though things will be okay ... right up until Carmy and Mikey's poor sister Natalie, aka "Sugar" (Abby Elliott), commits a minor faux pas and things escalate violently, with Mikey — who, up until that point, was content flinging forks at Lee while his "uncle" berates him — flipping over the dinner table in the ensuing chaos. "Oh, the table flip definitely wasn't scripted," Bernthal explained, adding:
"But it's still a testament to [Christopher Storer]. I was like, 'Hey, man, you gotta let me kind of go crazy at least once!' I do a lot of action stuff and I'm aware of how big of a reset that it is, where the food is meticulously laid out and it's so specific and is a character within itself. He definitely gave me the green light. It's funny when you work with directors, especially in TV, because sometimes they'll give you the green light, but then be like, 'Just maybe save it 'til the end.' Chris was like, 'Go do you.'"
Bernthal is on the record as having a problem with Method actors who use their process as an excuse to behave badly on-set, so it's nice to see him walking the walk (and not just talking the talk) by getting permission from Storer and not simply improvising the table flip without any thought or consideration for his co-workers. As stressful as "The Bear" is to watch by design, it shouldn't be equally tumultuous for its cast and crew to make. In Bernthal's case, maintaining the intensity of the scene both on- and off-camera was anything but a strain. "It was just such a joy to do," he recalled.
"The Bear" is currently streaming on Hulu.