Brigade (The Bear)

"Brigade" is the third episode of the first season of the American comedy-drama television series The Bear. It is the third overall episode of the series and was written by series creator Christopher Storer and directed by Joanna Calo. It was released on Hulu on June 23, 2022, along with the rest of the season.

The series follows Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto, an award-winning New York City chef de cuisine, who returns to his hometown of Chicago to run his late brother Michael's failing Italian beef sandwich shop.

Plot

Carmy attends an Al-Anon meeting in an attempt to better understand his brother's struggles with addiction. At the restaurant, he introduces a brigade de cuisine-style kitchen and relies on the ill-prepared and increasingly frustrated Sydney to manage it. After initial failures, the staff begins to connect to their new rolesparticularly Marcus, the passionate baker. Sydney confronts Carmy about being missing most of the day after not listening to her reservations about the new hierarchy. Carmy agrees that they need to collaborate and listen to each other if the business is going to succeed.

Timeline

"Brigade" takes place around November 15, 2022, because Sugar leaves Carmy a voicemail reminding him that it's Mikey's birthday.

Context

• Sydney is touching her cheek like she has tooth pain when she walks past Carmy telling Marcus about the plum dish. She has a similar problem in a later episode ("Worms").
• When Sydney is yelling at Richie about "the chits," she is talking about the order tickets.
• Sydney tells Sweeps and other staffers clean out the "lowboys," which is what restaurant workers call low refrigerators that fit underneath countertops.
• The title of the episode refers to the kitchen brigade system, developed by the 19th-century Frenchman Auguste Escoffier, who documented and codified many traditional kitchen practices, including what are now called the French mother sauces, and applied the "structure and duties of a military brigade into the kitchen, assigning over 20 specific cook positions throughout the kitchen." War vet Ebra connected the dots between a military brigade and the restaurant form when he commented, "I was in a brigade once. Many people died." According to one examination of the show in the journal Organization Studies, Carmy and Syd are working through an organizational process called recategorization, of which the brigade system is a crucial preliminary step: "Originating in 19th-century France to organize work in upscale kitchens, this concept, akin to Taylorism, aims to optimize task efficiency and productivity. Previously operating with a flat structure and unclear assignments, The Beef's team now sees the new sous-chef assigning specific roles...This intervention creates a hierarchical structure, with each chef adhering to a strict chain of command. The sous-chef also introduces daily routines like a 'pre-shift meeting', 'front-of-the-house walkthrough', and 'end-of-the-day review', fostering internal work coordination. Initially, the new work systems faced pushback, with one chef even responding, However, over time, the implementation of the kitchen brigade and clear role distribution improved operations and enhanced team culture."
• Carmy -
• Sydney - ,
• Tina -
• Ebra -
• Marcus -

• In 2024 the New York Times surmised that the spoon Carmy brandished while meeting with the staff in "Brigade" is a Gary Kunz sauce spoon, which is "a workhorse of restaurant kitchens" and "beloved by professional chefs".
• Sydney preps carrots and chops onions using a Kuhn Rikon peeler and a Mac Mighty MTH-80 chef's knife.

• Carmy describes an involved dessert that required "plum syrup, consommé, compressed fresh plums, and a plum geleé" prepared to match the consistency of Haribo gummy bears.
• Family meal is Ebra's chicken , a seasoned meat and vegetable dish popular in Somalia and Somalian-American communities. One food writer commented that "it makes perfect sense why this would be the dish Ebrahim throws together given what he has access to in the Beef's kitchen...[suqaar] basically requires chopping everything into small pieces and cooking it together" like a Somali stir-fry.

In 2024, The Hollywood Reporter placed "Brigade" at 22 on a ranked list of 28 episodes produced to that point, highlighting the changes to the restaurant that lead to "Carm and Syd's first major fight, swiftly followed by their first makeup, followed just as swiftly by the memorable (and accurate) line: 'Fuck brunch'." ScreenRant ranked "Brigade" 27th out of the 28 episodes produced through the end of season three, in part because Syd's solitary battles with the crew make it "a draining watch...The episode goes a long way in showing how chaotic things get in the restaurant...but it struggles to match up with the rest of the series."

In 2025, Vulture ranked "Brigade" as 16th-best out of 38 episodes of The Bear, describing it as a "formative" piece of season one.

• List of The Bear episodes
• The Bear season one
• Previous episode: "Hands"
• Next episode: "Dogs"