Back in Season 3 of “The Bear,” Sugar and Richie share a sweet moment as she prepares for her baby girl to arrive, where Richie reveals that the day before his daughter was born, he was on a trip with Mikey, which ended up upsetting Richie’s wife.
Now fans can see exactly how that trip went, thanks to a surprise prequel episode hitting Hulu this week.
But according to star and co-writer Ebon Moss-Bachrach, this adventure wasn’t always going to be its own hour.
“Chris [Storer] and I have been talking about, for years … some sort of big momentous day that Mike and Richie had,” he told TheWrap. “That was always kind of in the back burner. We never thought about making an episode about it.”
Titled “Gary,” the standalone episode sees Richie (Moss-Bachrach) and Mikey (Bernthal) take a road trip to Gary, Indiana, on an errand for Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt). It takes place roughly five years before the series premiere of “The Bear,” and is co-written by the actors.
Moss-Bachrach and Bernthal had wanted to do something bigger together for the show for a while, but the idea for the episode didn’t come together until they were headed into shooting Season 4 of “The Bear.” And it didn’t start specifically as a callback to that offhanded moment in Season 3.
“I was really interested in showing some of the love between these guys, because we don’t get to see much of Mikey in the show at all, really,” Moss-Bachrach explained. “And it’s only sort of harrowing kind of moments, for the most part. I’m speaking about ‘Fishes.’”
So, he and Bernthal tossed around a few ideas, and got on a call with series creator Storer to pitch just “a scene or two,” unrelated to this particular memory of Richie’s.
“Before we could say anything, Chris immediately said, ‘Listen, would you guys be open to writing a standalone episode for the show about this day, about a trip?’ And it’s sort of based on a, in a very loose way, a Western. Where two guys go to a town and drop something off, and time kind of melts away, there’s a gal at the bar. You know, that, in a very sort of archetypal kind of way.”
Immediately following that conversation, Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach got back on the phone with each other, and according to Bernthal, “We were like two kids” freaking out about the expanded opportunity. The actual writing started after a reading for their Broadway run of “Dog Day Afternoon.”
“We sat on my balcony of the hotel, and we literally scribbled it down, and really, that thing that we put together that day in, you know, a couple hours time, that really is the bones of what you see here for ‘Gary,’” Bernthal recalled. “It was only sort of a ‘yes, and…’ situation, there was nothing like, ‘Eh, that doesn’t really seem right, well, how about this?’ And that’s really, that’s how we work as actors, that’s how we did this as writers. It was a joy.”
For Bernthal, it marks his second writing turn this year, as he also co-wrote Marvel Television’s Special Presentation, “The Punisher: One Last Kill” with Reinaldo Marcus Green.
“I think people are probably just so sick of me changing all the lines that somebody else wrote for me,” Bernthal joked.
More seriously, he explained that writing is currently bringing him a lot of happiness.
“I never thought I would find something that moves me, and that I get so much joy out of, the way that acting did when I first started,” he admitted. “And, yeah, for the last few years, writing has really done that for me, and I love it. I’m chomping at the bit to get to the computer when I’m writing something, and I’m just so grateful that something else kind of came my way, and that I’m getting to do it. And I’m getting to do it with with the people that I love.”
Bernthal noted that his relationship with Moss-Bachrach runs deep, as they’re both at the same stages in life and in their careers, and they trust each other implicitly. That bond is what made “Gary” that much easier.
Of course, the ending of “Gary” definitely raised some concerns for fans. In the final moments of the episode, we briefly flash forward to present-day Richie, who is clearly reflecting on the memory of the road trip during a drive in the rain. Out of nowhere, his car is t-boned by an oncoming truck.
So, how worried should we be, headed into Season 5 next month?
“I mean, all I can really say is, I think that you should always be worried for Richie,” Moss-Bachrach said. “I think he’s a volatile individual who often is guilty of making poor choices, and that’s — I’ll leave it there.”
All four seasons of “The Bear,” along with the standalone episode “Gary,” are now streaming on FX on Hulu. The fifth and final season premieres June 25.
The post ‘The Bear’: How a Throwaway Line From Season 3 Turned Into a Surprise Episode appeared first on TheWrap.
