Why Richie's Redemption Arc In The Bear Season 2 Fits The Character Perfectly
This post contains spoilers for "The Bear" season 2.
Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is not the type of character you'd expect to see change. In season 1 of "The Bear," Carmy's "cousin" and colleague is all kinds of trouble, getting arrested for fighting a customer, selling coke in the alley behind the restaurant, and just generally being a rude, anger-driven person. There are certainly bright spots in his storyline, but he also feels very realistic in a way that made a redemption arc seem unlikely; anyone who's worked in the restaurant industry recognizes the type, and the type is, among other things, very set in his ways.
Yet Richie does change. As season 2 of "The Bear" unfolds, it's with a focus on him as much as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), and audiences are given the tools to better understand where he's coming from and why he wants to be better. He has a kid he's trying to grow up for, and he wants to be the reliable person for Carmy that Mikey (Jon Bernthal) never could be. But Richie's got a chip on his shoulder, and until we finally see him take it off during the remarkable episode "Forks," in which he pays his dues at a very fancy restaurant, working his way up from cleaning forks to giving customers custom treats. It's the rare episode that doesn't end with disaster, and by the episode's end, Richie is confident enough to return to The Bear a new man — one who belts out Taylor Swift in the car.
'Every second counts'
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, series co-showrunner Joanna Calo revealed that she and series creator Christopher Storer actually conceptualized Richie's transformation from the start. "The funny thing about Richie is that we saw Richie for who he became in season two from the first episode," she told the outlet. "We wanted to make sure other people could experience that at some point, but he was always that guy and he very much reminds us of real people we know." She notes that she and Storer built "The Bear" in part around "really specific stories we heard from chefs that we wanted to bring to life."
While Richie might remind you of a stubborn, hotheaded coworker, even the people who are hardest to work with have backstories and motivations for their frustrations. The show excavates Richie's story beautifully over the second season, particularly with the emotional one-two punch of "Fishes" and "Forks." For Moss-Bachrach, it all came down to Richie earning the validation that everyone at The Bear was too busy to give him. "When I read 7, and I got to the moment where Chef Terry tells Richie, 'Carmy believes in you. He said you're good with people,' I was very emotional," he told Variety, describing a beautifully understated scene featuring guest star Olivia Colman.
"It was this kind of validation that he'd been looking for," Moss-Bachrach adds. "He needs so little, so that one sentence is everything for him. I found it really profound and moving." The experiences he has in "Forks" shape him for the rest of the show. In addition to unabashedly jamming along to "Love Story," he starts coming to work in a suit, ignoring the questions and comments from coworkers and embracing an aesthetic change that makes him feel more like the man he wants to be.
Richie's search for purpose played out perfectly
Moss-Bachrach also revealed that he got all of the scripts for season 2 ahead of time, which made the process of tapping into the character a lot easier. "As an actor, it's an incredible luxury, because you get to think about how you want to sculpt and carve your [character] over the course of the season," he shared.
The actor calls Richie's season 2 arc "really strong," noting that he's on "a search for meaning and purpose." Those fully developed scripts, he says, worked as "a full tank of gas to drive with through the season." Speaking of driving, he also talked to Variety about pulling off that cathartic moment at the end of "Forks," when Richie blasts Taylor Swift's "Love Story" in the car and sings along — a throwback to earlier, when he got his daughter tickets to her concert. "The essence of that scene is victory and rapture and feeling good about yourself," Moss-Bachrach notes. "It's so rare when you get to inhabit a space like that. Lightness and celebration is so beautiful to watch."
It is, and it's something "The Bear" was in short supply of in its excellent but emotionally bruising first season. Season 2's biggest and best surprises weren't the many celebrity cameos, but the moments in which the show allowed its characters moments of victory in a hardscrabble world. Richie's journey in "Forks" is the best, purest example of that, and it's cool to know that it was, to some extent, always part of the plan.
"The Bear" season 1 and 2 are now on Hulu.