Gary The Bear’s Episode Ending Explained: What to Expect from the Final Season After the Special Episode “Gary” (SPOILER)?
Gary The Bear’s Episode Ending Explained: Tuesday, May 5, the day before the official announcement of next season’s release date, on FX Network, a bit of a surprise “Gary”, flashback special episode of The Bear Season 5, the final season of the cult-culinary series created by Christopher Storer, coming in June. “Gary” is the name of a small town in Indiana where, in the episode thus titled, Richie Jerimovich (the amiable and intractable floor manager of The Bear, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Mikey Berzatto (Carmy’s older brother who ran the old family restaurant The Beef of Chicagoland, until his suicide which caused the return of his little brother chef at the beginning of the series, played by Jon Bernthal) during a business trip on behalf of “uncle” Jimmy Kalinowski known as Cicero.
In addition to starring, Moss-Bachrach and Bernthal also co-wrote the screenplay for this episode set in the past. Which, being a flashback episode, serves more as a prequel, if not a spin-off, of the events narrated in The Bear. But in the final scene, the images return to show the present of the story, and what you see could have a shocking impact on The Bear Season 5, with consequences we now try to imagine. Obviously, it’s a spoiler zone for those who haven’t seen Gary (or The Bear Season 4, clearly) from here on out.
Gary The Bear’s Episode Ending Explained: What is the Gary Episode of The Bear About?
The episode is set in the past, years before the events shown in The Bear. Mikey is still alive, Richie is still married to Tiff (Gillian Jacobs) and the two are about to have a baby girl, who we already know will be called Eva: in the main series Eva is about five to seven years old, and the most scrupulous fans have noticed that in “Pisces”, the wonderful sixth episode of the second season, also a flashback and set at Christmas 2018, Tiff is in an earlier stage of pregnancy, so this is 2019.
Mikey and Richie find themselves one morning having to deliver a package whose contents they don’t know to a client of Jimmy’s in Indiana, in Gary, a town of 70,000 people a half-hour drive from Chicago, known for being the hometown of Michael Jackson and his brothers and sisters as well as being mentioned in a famous 1985 song by John “Cougar ” Mellencamp (curiosity/coincidence: John Mellencamp is also mentioned in Citadel Season 2, released on Prime Video the day after Gary’s release on Hulu/FX Network).
Tiff asked Richie to get home by 5:15 PM, because that’s when her mother’s water broke, and she’s convinced the same thing will happen to her, but when they arrive at their destination, they find they have to wait a few hours for the customer to arrive. The two then decide to cheat the wait, and in Richie’s case, to ease their anxiety about his wife’s impending birth by taking a kind of cheerful tour of the city. They eat at a restaurant similar to theirs, play basketball with some boys, and have a beer at a convenience store. Until Mikey decides to find some cocaine, and from there the situation escalates as expected (literally).
Because Richie decides to break into a bar, Mikey stays in the car but then gets persuaded by “Gary’s Sherri” (Marin Ireland) to come in and attend some kind of impromptu lunchtime drinking party, with Richie and the others playing at telling each other crazy stories somewhere between real and fictional. Between beer, alcohol in general, and cocaine, the two close friends who call themselves cousins lose all control. But if good drunk Richie just makes a fool of himself and jokes with everyone to release the tension of his new fatherhood, Mikey sinks before Sherri’s eyes into the vortex of depression that, as we know, will eventually lead him to take his own life.
How does the Bear Special Episode Gary Ends?
When Richie learns from Jimmy that Mikey has his phone turned off and that the customer is waiting for the package to be delivered, he warns his friend, locked in the bar bathroom with Sherri. Mikey, who was on the verge of kissing the girl after confessing his fears, doesn’t take the interruption well, and thanks to drugs and alcohol, he ends up turning the greeting to the people he just met into a speech of hatred and contempt for Richie, accused of ruining everything and therefore destined, according to Mikey, to be a terrible father.
The teasing becomes offensive, then you spit, until Richie reacts with a couple of slaps in the face and leaves the club, followed shortly by Mikey. The two, until recently, amused and at peace, are now light-years apart. They deliver the package, which they discover is a supply of “plastic impellers” (components for pumps or fans), so the customer could not wait for the end of the courier strike, and in absolute silence, they return to Chicago. In the penultimate scene, Richie takes out the CD where he had recorded a special compilation for this road trip in Gary, and throws it out the window. The two arrive at a level crossing, and at this point, the time jump occurs.
In the last scene, we are in fact in the present: it rains, Richie is in the driver’s seat, he is well dressed, in a new and well-maintained car, his beard is more well-groomed, but when he looks at the empty seat next to him, Richie has a pang of sadness. Maybe think of Mikey, maybe Carmy, maybe both of them. The light turns green, Richie starts the engine and moves forward in the rain, but a second later, he sees a car coming from the right heading towards him. He has time to scream “no no no” before the fight happens, at high speed. End of the special episode.
How The Bear 4 Ended?
We talked in depth about the season four finale in another dedicated article: in short, at the end of last season, Carmy decided to leave The Bear to Syd, Richie, and his sister Natalie, and to interrupt his career as a chef to find and understand himself and thus try to solve the problems that intimately torment him.
In the synopsis with which FX Network previews the plot of The Bear Season 5, we read that the final season “resumes the morning after Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Natalie ‘Sugar’ (Abby Elliott) discover that Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) has abandoned the restaurant industry, leaving the place in their hands. With no money, the threat of a sale, and a storm to thwart them, the new members must join the rest of the team to complete one last test, hoping to finally earn a Michelin star. Eventually, they will discover that what makes a restaurant ‘perfect’ may not be the food, but the people”.
What Will Happen in The Bear Season 5 After Richie’s Accident in Gary?
In light of the car accident Richie is involved in at the end of Gary, then, what can we expect from the episodes coming up in June? Let’s try to make two hypotheses. The first is that, in fact, Richie’s accident occurs that morning when he, Syd, and Nat discover Carmy’s decision, or at least at the beginning of The Bear Season 5‘s timeline. If so, it’s safe to assume Richie isn’t dead: it’s hard to take out the character most beloved by millions of The Bear fans (including us) at the start of the final season, and it’s no coincidence that his car gets hit on the passenger side.
However, his injuries could force him to the hospital, or to his home, or to a restaurant, but unable to move for a while. A circumstance that could convince Carmy to postpone his search for himself for a while to help out in The Bear‘s kitchen. Or maybe not, because Carmy will decide to stay at Richie’s bedside to exchange some loving insults. The second hypothesis, however, starts from the assumption that the incident with which the Gary episode ends could occur later in the timeline of The Bear Season 5. And at this point, everything would become possible, even if – to give an example that we hope is apotropaic – Richie lost his life in that accident. With consequences that it’s really hard to imagine before The Bear Season 5 comes out.
