Tomorrow (The Bear)
"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. Jeremy Allen White won a Primetime Emmy Award for his performance in this episode.
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 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 alongside Luca 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, 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. Sugar 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.
While Carmy is working at Empire, Natalie calls him to inform him that Mikey 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 when Mikey gives Carmy ownership of The Beef.
Present day
After being freed from the walk-in refrigerator, 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 is devastated upon discovering that his mother has died, and Sydney leaves him a message offering her condolences.One of the establishing shots from "the morning after" shows a Metra train departing Ogilvie Transportation Center. 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, puts place settings and candles on every table, 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. It was Storer's eighth writing credit, Matheson's first writing credit, and Storer's 13th directing credit.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."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."
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 René Redzepi| Redzepi gives Carmy a nod across the room."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."Filming
Jeremy Allen White filmed scenes at the French Laundry in Yountville, California, United States, and at Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, during the last week of May 2024. The show filmed in the kitchen gardens at both restaurants. At Noma, Carmy "picks flowers, spring onions, and pea pods."White also filmed with Daniel Boulud, who taught Carmy how to prepare Boulud's "signature crispy paupiettes of sea bass dish." 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." The scenes with Boulud feature some glamour shots of his restaurant's French-made Mauviel-brand copper pots and pans.
Sydney is served the blood orange hamachi in a part of the Railway Exchange Building dressed to look like a restaurant dining room.
According to cinematographer Andrew Wehde in an interview with Panavision:
Set decoration and props
- 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. Associated with Sharpies since "Review," Carmy uses a 0.7-mm-tipped Pilot G2 pen to write out his list of non-negotiables. 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."
- Carmy and Luca are shown juicing blood oranges with Zulay cast iron juicers, powder-coated navy blue.
- 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 to come out from behind the locked door.
- 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.
- Carmy makes the ravioli using a wooden mold by John Francis Designs that was specifically developed "with no patterns to distract from the beautiful runny yolk" for use on The Bear season three.
Sound recording
According to Scott D. Smith, a career sound mixer and head of The BearFilm editing
Editor Joanna Naugle said in an interview with Immersive Media that the episode is ruminative and repetitive by design:Music
The entire episode is set to the same single piece of music, "Together", composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as part of their Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts V: Together. Range magazine commented "The track's ethereal, dreamy cadence deepens the episode's construct as a stream of consciousness, feeding off the negative, liminal spaces that define Carmy's daily grind."Food: Carmy's blood orange hamachi
A key detail in "Tomorrow" is that we see Carmy creating and plating the paupiette of hamachi with blood orange sauce, which 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." Paupiette is a classic French form of fish cookery whereby a thin slice of fish is stuffed, rolled, and tied up with a string before being poached in stock. Hamachi describes young Japanese amberjack fish, 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. Hamachi is expensive and said to be worth it because of its "smooth, almost-melting mouthfeel."Carmy is first depicted juicing blood oranges during his time working for Chef Terry at Ever. 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.
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. "No repetitions" is one of the rules of a Thomas Keller kitchen. 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."
The dish that was served to Sydney in New York was a one-off, created on the pretext that the diner had an allergy, fennel soubise being a key element of the plate. 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.
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."
Food: Carmy's menu revisions
Carmy scratches several dishes off the menu, including the welcome broth, focaccia, lettuces, gricia, and seven fishes. One of the dishes Carmy makes to present to Syd when she comes back to the restaurant on Monday is raviolo al'uovo with pancetta dust. According to Epicurious magazine, raviolo al'uovo is a fragile but "sophisticated and sexy" dish featuring a "lovely golden egg yolk nestled in a bed of creamy ricotta cheese, all wrapped up in a tender blanket of pasta. Cut these lovelies open, and the yolk flows out of the center." The Bear commissioned a "simple" but elegant wooden pasta mold specifically for this dish.He creates and labels several sauces: saffron fumet, demi, brown butter, nettle purée, squash velouté. According to culinary producer Courtney Storer the dish with the peas "recognizes his relationship with Chef Terry and loves her, and it makes it to his plate kind of like an homage to her."
Release
The episode, along with the rest of the season, premiered on June 26, 2024.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."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." 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."
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 are allowed to breathe every once in a while." 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."
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 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."
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, 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." 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."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."
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 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."