The second season of The Bear finally landed in Australia last month, and there’s something we need to talk about immediately.
It’s not about the delicious food, incredible writing, or Emmy-worthy performances. It’s about whether or not we should be pushing for the show’s two leads, Sydney (Ayo Ediberi) and Carmy (Jeremy Allen-White) to get together, and why we’re so fixated on wanting them to.
The Bear follows a bunch of ragtag cooks as they work together at a sandwich shop. Having inherited the restaurant from his brother upon his death, ex-fine dining chef Carmy hires the ambitious Sydney to “stage” before being quickly promoted to sous chef. Sydney is hugely talented, but with one failed catering business behind her, she’s still cutting her teeth. The two don’t always see eye to eye, but they do share a vision for what the restaurant could be.
Sydney and Carmy’s duo’s chemistry is definitely compelling — we see it expressed in the way they collaborate, the way they argue, and even the way that they move. And hot actors portraying compelling characters is usually a failsafe way to ignite the screen or people’s imaginations. For all these reasons, you’d think Sydney and Carmy were love interests. But so far, they’re not, and it’s sparked conversation on social media about whether, as a culture, we’re too obsessed with romantic heterosexual love.
For the record, The Bear’s writers, and the actors themselves, have said in interviews over the years that the Sydney and Carmy are a purely platonic duo. Ayo Ediberi even recently took to Instagram, posting a selfie of herself and Allen-White jokingly saying in the caption that he’s her “biological father”. None of this has stopped fans on Twitter, when Season 2 aired in the US, from lambasting writers of the new season of the show for introducing a love interest for Carmy who isn’t Sydney.
Those who have already binged Season 2 will be aware of Carmy’s new love interest, Claire, played by Molly Gordon. Given that Claire is white, some fans of the show accused the writers of racism, citing the introduction a white love interest for Carmy despite having overwhelming chemistry with a Black woman.
To be fair, there is a very real history of Black women being “discarded” as love interests for white male protagonists in favour of white women. The “Disposable Black Girlfriend” trope involves Black women on screen not being taken seriously as love interests, but for conduits for leading men to find their true (white) love.
carmy being all garden state manic pixie chef whilst sydney is having a nightmare with the chaos menu like i'm glad he's having fun, and sure he needs a break but so does my girl?????? #thebear
— Bolu Babalola is technically on leave ?&? (@BeeBabs) July 25, 2023
Could an element of that trope be at play, here? It’s definitely possible. Sydney has never been Carmy’s girlfriend, and as far as we know there are no plans to make her so. However, it’s not possible to divorce The Bear from that history, especially for fans who find it difficult to see Carmy in a relationship with a white character.
I know too well the pain of watching a duo in a story you love, and desperately believing they should be “more” than friends. I’m still reeling from the Ted Lasso finale as I was forced to accept that Ted and Rebecca were never going to be endgame. For as long as there have been characters with complicated relationships, there’s been fans wanting to label them. After all, people have been insisting Sherlock Holmes is in love with Watson for almost 200 years.
Carmy staring at Sydney Adamu doing basically anything is so puppy pic.twitter.com/TqRqZvBm4O
— Margo ???️✏️ (@iMargo_CEO) July 31, 2023
I’m not here to say that Carmy and Sydney should or shouldn’t end up together, or arrive at some kind of amiable FWB situation. But if these conversations teach us anything, it’s that many of us refuse to see platonic adult relationships, both in fiction and in life, as complicated and important as romantic ones.
But the idea that all intense relationships between men and women must be romantic comes from the spectre of “compulsory heterosexuality” — a term popularised by Adrienne Rich, where women are encouraged to view all of their interactions and connections with men as romantic.
For hundreds of years, heterosexual marriage between men and women was the only relationship men in power permitted women to have with men outside of familial connections. Friendships between men and women existed but, at best, were seen as stepping stones to marriage – an attitude that continues to loom large over any rom-com that’s dropped in the past 30 years.
For that reason, platonic friendships between men and women are rarely viewed, at least on screen, as whole and fulfilling in and of themselves. In Sydney and Carmy’s case, why is their bond as creative collaborators and equal partners in that collaboration not seen as compelling or even valid without the subtext of romance by so many members of the audience? Why is their belief in one another so implausible without a romantic motive?
What’s special about The Bear is that it presents how relationships between people are complicated by the chaos of being an adult — whether that’s working all day to make rent on minimum wage or dealing with the trauma of losing a sibling. These challenges, though, aren’t fodder for converting friendship to romance. Friendships, especially close friendships like Sydney and Carmy’s, are the relationships that anchor us in our lives.
The assumption that Carmy or Syd only care for one another and their business to the extent that they do because of some latent attraction to one another is based on a bygone era where men and women couldn’t be friends for the sake of friendship. This assumption, that friendships between straight men and women are transitory, a stop on the road to romance, is a pretty bleak one.
Merryana Salem is a proud Wonnarua and Lebanese–Australian writer, critic, teacher and podcaster. Follow them on Twitter.