Hulu's hit show, The Bear, has received critical acclaim for its exploration of the stressors of working in the restaurant industry. In particular, the series brilliantly portrays the mental toll that running the family business takes on main character Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen-White), a former Michelin caliber chef returning to his native Chicago to inherit a restaurant from his troubled late brother Michael (Jon Bernthal), who has recently killed himself. As Carmy grapples with the death of his beloved sibling and sporadically tries to reconnect with his sister, Sugar (Abby Elliott), he comes face-to-face with the isolation and emotional turmoil engendered by his brother's excruciating battle with drug addiction.

The show examines how each of the people close to Michael, from Carmy to Sugar to "Cousin" Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) has processed Michael's battle with addiction differently: Carmy attempts to ignore his pain by immersing himself in his work, and suffers from panic attacks; Sugar lashes out and tries to control her family members, to no avail; and Richie violently resists any changes being made to the running of the restaurant. The chaos that this creates, therefore, makes The Bear's portrayal of addiction candid, heartfelt, and most of all, brutally realistic.

Crucially, Michael's struggles have had an isolating effect on Carmy, who is haunted by the too-late discovery of his sibling's severe addiction to painkillers, having previously interpreted Michael's rejection of him as a commentary on his own shortcomings. However, as more details come to light about the extent of Michael's struggles, he comes to understand the depth of his sibling's mental health issues. He's nevertheless ashamed of his failure to realize how deeply his brother was suffering. This pain, however suppressed, problematically surfaces in his fraught, and often violent, confrontations with, Richie (someone he calls cousin, but who was essentially Michael's best friend), and in his thoughtless behavior towards his most supportive colleague, Sydney (a lovely Ayo Edebiri). When at last Carmy attends an Al-Anon meeting per his sister Sugar's request, he's forced to confront the havoc that his brother's addiction has wrought in both his personal and professional life.

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Image Via FX on Hulu

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While doing so is crucial to his personal growth and ultimately inspires him to mend fences with his sister, being a part of Al-Anon also means admitting that he didn't know or understand Michael as deeply as he believed. In a moving monologue, Carmy questions his inability to reconnect with his brother and the deep-rooted insecurities it's created, demonstrating how profoundly his sibling's addiction has undermined his confidence and his capacity to relate to others. "I didn't know he was addicted," he says. "What does that say?" Allen-White's rich characterization of Carmy, then, reflects the far-reaching effects of having a loved one with addiction: Michael's illness has poisoned not only Carmy's relationships with his family members, but his relationship with himself –– creating a volatile cycle of anger and guilt that threatens to destroy him. Only in acknowledging the destructiveness of his brother's behavior, however, can he begin to heal from the feelings of rejection and self-hatred that haunt him throughout the series.

By the same token, Sugar's profound anger towards Carmy stems from her frustration over the family's initial refusal to accept the dangerous, manipulative, and deeply depressed person that Michael became under the influence of drugs. Only when Carmy acknowledges her hard-bitten view of their troubled family dynamics is Sugar able to soften and offer her grieving brother the affection that she herself craves.

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Image via FX Networks

It remains to be seen, however, whether cousin Richie, brilliantly portrayed by Moss-Bachrach, will ever be able to accept the extent to which addiction destroyed Michael, and, in turn, nearly destroyed the Berzatto family business. Doing so means viewing their drug and alcohol-fueled friendship in a new light –– a friendship that has disrupted Richie's own troubled marriage and overshadowed his ability to acquiesce to Carmy's more regimented leadership of the restaurant. Much like Carmy, Richie can't confront his grief over Michael's death until he's pushed himself beyond the realm of acceptable behavior. When he, at last, realizes that his anger and sadness are spiraling out of control, it's almost too late: he's nearly killed a man. The Bear thus demonstrates the drastic actions that the Berzatto family members take to suppress their guilt and rage over the death of the lovable, but ultimately unpredictable, Michael Berzatto.

The rawness of the actors' performances –– Jeremy Allen-White's hangdog expression and acute sadness, Abby Elliott's palpably portrayed frustration, Ebon Moss-Bachrach's swaggering anger –– is a boon for the show. Despite the characters' perpetual profanity, frustration, and initial inability to regulate or even recognize their deepest feelings, The Bear's commitment to truthfulness and candor about addiction makes it one of the most emotionally effective works on television. The Berzatto family is forced to pick up the pieces after an all-encompassing illness has nearly destroyed them, reflecting their ongoing struggle to move past Michael's overwhelming drug problem and subsequent suicide.