Where The Bear's Surprise Prequel Episode 'Gary' Fits In the Watch Order
The Bear more than earned its reputation as an emotionally-focused show a long time ago, but should a case be made for it being the most mental-health-conscious TV series of the decade?
The latest evidence for this arrived on Tuesday evening with the surprise announcement that an hour-long and utterly heartwrenching preview special had just dropped on Hulu — and, blissfully, just around the time that most people in the UK were finishing up work on the first day back after the May Bank Holiday weekend. If that isn’t the most thoughtful gesture, it’ll do till one gets here.
This welcome news was first spotted on Ebon Moss-Bachrach and John Bernthal’s Instagram pages, which makes perfect sense, as the episode (titled Gary) was not only co-written by them, but it also takes us back in time to explore Richie and Mikey’s relationship before Mikey passed away.
Read on to learn everything we know so far about Gary, including what it’s about, where it lands in the show’s timeline, how it came to be, and what it means for The Bear’s fifth (and presumably final) season.
Where Gary Lands in The Bear’s Timeline
If you turn this episode of The Bear on for even 60 seconds, you will already have an idea of where it lands in the show’s chronology.
The special opens to the shredding guitars of Yes’ Heart of the Sunrise as Richie suits up for what looks like some bad behaviour — dark shades, black Members Only jacket, and most worryingly, a gun in the waistband of his trackies. If you’ve followed the show in any way over the last few years, you’ll know that the character left this kind of lifestyle behind him a long time ago. However, the main clue is the arrival on screen of Gillian Jacobs’ Tiff, Richie’s ex-girlfriend and current co-parent, who is still very much smitten with him and still very much pregnant.
As we learn that their daughter Eva is roughly five years old at the beginning of Season 1, this places Gary around that same amount of time in the past. The only other flashback episode to feature both of these characters before was the iconic Season 2 Christmas special Fishes, in which Tiff and Richie were also still close and Tiff was also pregnant, albeit less visibly than here. This means that Gary plays out a few months after Fishes, presumably September or October, by the look of the trees — not to mention Richie’s excitement and anxiety about Eva’s imminent arrival.
Long story short: Gary takes place a few months after Fishes and roughly five years before The Bear Season 1.
What Happens in ‘Gary’ (No Spoilers) and What This Means For Season 5
In true Bear fashion, Gary sees showrunner Christopher Storer using a flashback to further flesh out some of his show’s central characters.
Having already done this for Carmy (with his flashbacks to previous high-pressure jobs) and Tina (with the wonderful standalone episode, Napkins), we now have a full episode to dive deep into the fractured and formative bond between Richie and Mikey that Storer hinted at in certain moments of both Fishes and Forks, Richie’s celebrated standalone episode from Season 2.
The basic setup here is the two best friends heading out on a job involving driving a mystery delivery to Gary, Indiana. Along the way, they joke around and listen to music before getting a little messed up in a local bar, at which point some harder truths begin to pour out.
Written by Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach, the episode further explains how important his friendship with Mikey was (and still is) to Richie and how that loss must have affected him. It also shows, kind of for the first time, just how dark a place Mikey was in at that time.
The episode doesn’t suggest anything super tactile in terms of upcoming plot points in The Bear Season 5, at least until the final moments — about which I will say absolutely nothing.
How Hulu and FX Made ‘Gary’ Without Anyone Knowing
Getting a surprise episode of a major show like this happens so rarely that it’s kind of amazing that FX was able to pull it off without anyone knowing. Then again, the Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach bromance has been evident for a few years now. Having just started a 16-week stage production of Dog Day Afternoon together on Broadway in March (Bernthal plays the Al Pacino character with Moss-Bachrach in the Cazale role), the actors presumably wrote and shot Gary at some point during that show’s rehearsal period.
Whatever the case, it’s a remarkable achievement for two of the busiest actors in Hollywood at the moment. Aside from those substantial theatre commitments, Moss-Bachrach will likely be heading to Cannes next week with Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, a queer musical set during the AIDS crisis in New York and starring Rami Malek that will compete for the Palme d’Or. Bernthal will next be seen in Punisher: One Last Kill on Disney+ before taking the character to the big screen in Spider-Man: Brand New Day this summer, just two weeks after appearing in a little movie called The Odyssey.
We will have to wait and see if Bernthal’s Frank Castle will pop up alongside Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm in Avengers: Doomsday later this year, but seeing how the MCU likes to bring old friends back together, I imagine Kevin Feige would be more than willing to let it happen.
