‘The Bear’ Works A Different Kind Of 12-Step Program

In the first season of The Bear, Carmy’s attendance at Al-Anon meetings is a significant but minor subplot, culminating in his shaky, disjointed 7-minute share in the season’s last episode (“Braciole”). Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) focused his share on the relationship with his big brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal)—the drug addict in the family who died by suicide. Carmy unloads to his fellow meeting-makers that he was shocked by his brother’s addiction: 

“I didn’t know my brother was using drugs. What does that say? As we got older, I realized I didn’t know anything about him… really.”

Carmy, big-eyed and droopy with guilt and shame, is grappling with a standard Al-Anon member’s paranoia — that every bad thing that happens is somehow their fault. 

Carmy’s self-pitying tone could be misconstrued as martyrdom. But, if someone is working the program correctly, the main goal is self-forgiveness and “re-parent” yourself since most members come from loud, chaotic, and unsafe households. That chaotic upbringing has burrowed itself in Carmy and his sister, Natalie, aka “Sugar,” and every kitchen Carmy has ever worked in. 

As an active member of both Al-Anon and its sister program, Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA), that was my experience. But even typing that makes me feel like I’m not taking any personal responsibility and blaming it all on my parents. Am I just a pants-pissing 50-year-old little boy who can’t regulate his emotions, especially around my family? Absolutely! However, I can only take personal responsibility by attending ACA meetings. 

Also, Al-Anon is a program many non-12-step civilians assume is a shortened version of the main beverage-related program, Alcoholics Anonymous. (Certainly, it’s possible to be in both—I am—but they offer entirely different healing methods even though the same 12 steps are followed.)

But seeing Al-Anon front and center in a show as popular as The Bear was an exciting development in portraying 12-step programs in movies and television. (When I texted another fellow from Al-Anon about Carmy’s meandering monologue scene, we both mentioned that you could tell it was scripted television since him taking a 7-minute share as a newcomer would never fucking happen — it’s terrible etiquette.)

12-step has become a go-to narrative short-hand for how to show a character’s pathetic downfall. AA is so ubiquitous and well-known that it frequently appears in children’s animated movies. (The first one that comes to mind is Wreck-it-Ralph when, in an early scene, the eponymous character is in a basement meeting of “Bad Guys Anonymous,” which even had its own version of the serenity prayer. Toy Story 4 does a similar bit.) 

Yes — Mikey’s death messed up Carmy and his sister Natalie something awful, but it’s not until Season 2’s flashback episode “Fishes” that we get a true sense of the enormity of individuals guilty of causing the Berzatto children pain. (Bernthal got an Emmy nod for his role in this episode, as did Bob Odenkirk as the menacing “Uncle Lee.”) 

But it doesn’t take long to find out the main culprit of the Berzatto children’s emotional trauma: their mother, Donna. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Donna with brazen alcohol-fueled hysteria: In every scene she’s in, we realize how brutal, emotional, cruel, and unpredictable her household was. (Curtis is a practicing member of the 12-step community, so she’s well-versed in crazy-making behavior.) 

It’s an over-the-top performance that appeared to be the least-subtle For Your Consideration pander (it worked!), but it’s also a convincing portrayal of a screwed-up family’s main qualifier. 

What is a qualifier? In Al-Anon, it’s usually a parent or child who drove you into the rooms, whose own addiction was severe enough to alter your behavior into something equally unmanageable. Many of the patterns of growing up in an alcoholic, dysfunctional household on constant display in The Bear are pretty typical. In addition to the continuous RAGE circling Carmy like a red fog any time he puts on a white chef’s coat, there are also more subtle showcases of the family disease inside him: Self-sabotage. Insecurity. Hypersensitivity. And then there’s the grief. One most of the Al-Anon members I interact with have grief in their bones.  

But is The Bear the first Al-Anonic TV show to exist?  A quick Google search about “Al-Anon in TV shows” doesn’t yield many results—except one. Unsurprisingly, Chris Storer, showrunner and creator of The Bear,  is an enthusiastic ACA club member. He had outed himself to Esquire while doing press for Season 1.

When I was growing up, my household was kind of gnarly. I had mental illness and addiction in my family. I go to Al-Anon all the time. I’m still dealing with this as an adult and finding healthy ways to approach it. Some of the same thoughts that I was feeling about my family I noticed in a lot of toxic work environments. No one sets out, I don’t think, to create a gnarly workplace. Especially in kitchens, you realize that they were probably mistreated by someone, they probably learned this, they probably have something they’re not dealing with. In this particular kitchen, one of the things we really wanted to discuss was that Carmy has seen these kitchens, he has been around some of these toxic workplaces, and he’s like, “I’m gonna not do that.” But he’s also trying to fix this restaurant initially for all of the wrong reasons. Inherently those two ideas are going to be wrestling with each other. And to have Sydney come in—who’s coming in from such a positive place of really wanting to learn something, only to ultimately fall into the dark, chaotic nature of this restaurant—it said something to me about the disease of addiction and some of the toxins that run through families.

“Fishes” messed up a lot of people I know in the program—some who couldn’t watch the whole thing lest they get swallowed up by a full-on panic attack due to the dredged-up memories of their own fork-throwing family affairs. (My own rage was triggered by every episode a Fak showed up in Season 3. I wanted to throw a whole drawer of forks at the television whenever they came on.) 

In the “Legacy” episode of Season 3, Carmy is back in the rooms, keenly focused on the lead shares of the day. There’s talk of unattainable apologies. There’s talk of frustration about when the addict gets sober, and the loved ones are left with the damage. “It seems easy to apologize. It’s just a couple simple words,” one member says. 

Lost children are always disoriented by apologies—how to give and accept them. Carmy fits in squarely—but he has no idea where to begin. Does he start with Claire or Richie? Or Syd? Or maybe his entire staff?

But the perfect encapsulation of what a child of an alcoholic feels like comes in the “Ice Chips” episode of season three, where Sugar and her mother finally reconnect in the maternity ward, but not without Natalie telling her exactly the effect her parenting had: 

“I feel like everybody’s mad at me all the time. I ask people if they’re alright way too much. If someone starts to feel sick, I start to feel sick. I feel alone. Or ugly. Or like I’m in trouble. I feel like Pete’s gonna leave me—I always put you first.”

Donna first takes that as a compliment, but then she finally realizes it’s not. She agrees and acknowledges Sugar’s pain. It’s the closest thing The Bear has come to having any of the characters “make amends,” but maybe more will come in Season 4. But will The Bear win any awards if everyone stops yelling and finally hugs it out? Not everyone can be Ted Lasso.

A.J. Daulerio is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor. He is also the founder of The Small Bow, a recovery newsletter.