Summer reissue: Season three of the critically-acclaimed darling The Bear was released in late June. Two fans of the show watched the full season over the weekend – only one emerged still a fan.

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There are two types of people in the world – haters and enthusiasts. The labels are self explanatory and most people would be able to self-identify pretty quickly. A hater can still be enthusiastic about things and an enthusiast can absolutely hate, but when it comes to pop culture, the two often feel worlds apart. Such has been the case this past weekend, when haters relished the new season of The Bear for (they say) failing to live up to its reputation. Enthusiasts, meanwhile, gave the benefit of the doubt.

Mad Chapman (hater in bold) and Claire Mabey (enthusiast) argue about whether The Bear is still any good.

Claire, I saw you posting about how you thought the latest season of The Bear was in fact really good, and it had me worried. Are you OK?

More than OK, thanks for asking! I dined out on The Bear season three and enjoyed all the courses, especially the episodes “Napkins” and “Ice Chips”. This season had to be about learning to live in the world they’d created and had to extend the notion that while they’re meant to be a team and working together, the characters are still coming at life and work from very different, and unresolved places. This season tick, tick, ticked those requirements. But, what’s wrong with you? 

So many things but regarding this show specifically, I’ll start with the first and biggest problem with season three – nothing happened. As I was about to press play on the first episode, I wondered aloud to my partner whether there would be a quick “previously on” to get us caught up. There wasn’t, because instead the entire first episode was a “previously on”. The world’s longest flashback montage that basically explained, yet again, why Carmy can’t control his emotions. I saw people posting about how that first episode was a masterclass in storytelling and felt like I was going insane. Nothing happened!

But, everything happened! An entire career deftly cut into images of intense training, the contrast of brutal, nasty kitchen overlord vs quiet encouragement (from Olivia Coleman, even!). This is the heart of the story: can Carmy shuck his demons and actually make The Bear work? Or is the trauma of the loss of Mikey, the ongoing stress of a problematic mother, compounded by the sense of failure instilled by the very bad boss going to win over? This is highly relatable drama and we all know it cannot resolve, or even unfold, easily. It’s messy, it comes in flashes and visions. This is Real Life TV. Is this making you insane?

Yes because that was the message of the first 20 episodes of The Bear. None of this was news to me as a viewer. Sure it’s nice to be reminded but it was extremely indulgent to expect people to be into a rehashing of the same motivations for an entire episode. And then to basically play the same flashback another 40 times by the end of the season. I swear Joel McHale shot one scene and said three lines and yet takes up about 20% of the screen time this season, that’s how repetitive it felt.

You said you like ‘Napkins’ and ‘Ice Chips’, the two episodes where the story deviates from the leads and focuses on supporting characters. Those sorts of episodes are supposed to be fun asides, but because there was nothing else going on, they became the most plot-filled, narrative episodes of the season. Don’t you see how that is an indictment on the show as a whole?

No, because this is how the story has unfolded the whole time: Season two was like an entire season of offshoots into the side characters which to me was showing that a restaurant (or any biz I guess) isn’t about the most visible components, it’s about all of the parts working as a whole. This is a timeless conundrum (a big old ego mucking up what could be so great) and The Bear shows that in the restaurant world it’s an ongoing problem.

Season 3 was also situating The Bear (the show and the restaurant) in a post-Covid world where everything is upended, uncertain and sucky. The two episodes we liked most are like islands of sense in a nonsensical operation: everyone involved knows that starting a high-end restaurant today is a major gamble. Season three had to zoom out, survey the landscape, in prep for season four which will surely test Carmy’s mettle even more: can he pull his head out of the past enough to see the present, and the future? You will all be watching to find out. I’d bet a chicken dinner on it. 

Season four will be can Carmy pull his head out of the past enough to see the present, and the future? THAT WAS THE PREMISE OF SEASON ONE, TWO AND THREE! Do you see why this is making me feel crazy?? OK, let’s get hypothetical. I don’t disagree that there is a reason behind structuring the show like this, I just think it was the worst option. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is far more interesting as a character than Carmy, and his moments and story were the highlights for me this season. Sydney (Ayo Edibiri) is far more interesting than Carmy, and she barely got a look in, narratively, which I am choosing to assume is because she was too busy starring in a thousand other projects.

What I would’ve loved to see was something, anything different. I thought Carmy was going to lose his shit (as per) and leave, forcing Sydney and the crew to step up and develop a new dynamic. But no, it was just same old Carmy doing same old Carmy shit. Again I say – nothing happened. So much so that the cliffhanger midway through the season (The Bear restaurant being reviewed) was not only not resolved in the following episode but was dragged on for like five whole episodes and then became the cliffhanger for the entire season! Do you know how lazy it is to offer a mid-season cliffhanger and then not answer it until the following season? That’s like offering a starter and then offering the exact same dish for dessert. Surely you agree that part was bad?

Look, I don’t disagree that Richie and Syd are gold: we can always have more of both. But the crazy-making cycles of Carmy feel truthful to me. If he was suddenly the world’s best boss we’d all be thinking something was very very off with the storytelling. I’m looking for cold hard truth in my fiction and the messy back and forth / stilted expressions of sometimes-love of Carmy is deadly truthful: he’s like his Mum. Season three’s function in the story of The Bear was to show that Richie and Syd might leave. If they do, the whole thing is screwed. They had to be sidelined because they are sidelined. The review part I do concede could have been done better. But we also needed a reason for Uncle to bring in Computer and declare the whole thing as vulnerable as we hoped it wasn’t. 

Restaurant review culture is tough but also it’s not the real nail in the heel here: it’s the economy which is painted so beautifully in this season with the shots of other restaurants flailing, despite the beautiful people trying to make it work. This is the uncertain, crappy economic reality we’re all in. We’re living this ghastly period of history and it’s playing out in real time. That’s where, I reckon, The Bear is nailing it and why perhaps it feels loose and unstructured. There’s no hindsight available for this storyline. That’s why I think the focus on family is so key: at its heart The Bear is still a family restaurant (the increased airtime for the Fak family, Tina’s episode, the joyous success of the sandwich window and the OG team brought back in to run it – all necessary tangents to illustrate the family) and the tension now is whether family is resilient enough to overcome the uncertain pressures of the world (and Carmy). 

Hmmmm I still don’t think that’s enough to excuse the, in my opinion, shoddy pacing and lack of any real character development. And on the broader sector commentary… did you not find that as cloying as I did? Spending a solid 10 minutes of the season finale hosting a literal roundtable discussion of chefs waxing lyrical about why food is important. I felt like I was watching an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about a champion high school basketball team reuniting. Sure, interesting enough if that’s what you’re into but not cutting the mustard for a critically-acclaimed drama/comedy series.

When that roundtable just. kept. going. and then the only reprieve was – surprise surprise – more flashbacks of Joel McHale saying the same one line over and over, that’s when I realised “oh, this show sucks”. But also I’m a hater so I’m happy to let you have the final word on why people should still watch it, because my official recommendation is to save your time and frustration for a different show.

OK, OK that roundtable was pretty cringey but did give Syd some time to sparkle and appear totally at home among the professionals she’s looked up to for so long (looked to me like Ayo was improvising some of that chat and it suited her). Joel McHale is one creepy cookie: anyone who’s had a monster bully boss would have rooted for Carmy at confrontation time (which did, to be fair, end in a very anticlimactic manner. Also realistic though).

The Bear is an illustration of when family trauma meets insanely high level artistic and economic world building: it’s messy, it’s beautiful, it’s delicious (mostly – did not care for the meat slabs) and you root for the characters all the way. Blessings on Syd, Tina, Richie, Carmy and sweet (in more ways than one) Marcus. You want to watch because you want them all to thrive because the writers have managed to create characters that shine through even messy plotting and circular habits. Will The Bear work out? See you at season four.

First published July 1, 2024.

Summer reissue: Play it at breakfast, lunch or tea, the song ‘Fish and Chips’ is almost as famous in Aotearoa as the dish itself. So why is the woman who wrote it virtually unknown?

First published October 7, 2024.

Update, December 27: Claudia Mushin, 78, died peacefully and surrounded by loved ones on December 17, more than three decades on from the conception of ‘Fish and Chips’. Mushin had lived with complications linked to contracting polio in the 1960s.

When you see Claudia Mushin zooming through the streets of Wellington’s Miramar in her electric wheelchair, you might hear a familiar chorus sung in her wake: “fish and chips make me want to lick my lips.” The ditty has been repeated thousands of times across New Zealand schools since the 1990s, and it’s made Mushin famous enough in her Miramar neighbourhood that locals who spot her whizzing by can’t help but burst into song.

Hum the tune, and most New Zealanders 40 and under should be able to sing the lyrics back to you – it’s funny how a few rhymes you learn in primary school can stick with you for ever. ‘Fish and Chips’, originally born from the mumblings of Mushin’s son Steve, was a track on the third collection of Kiwi Kidsongs, a series of Ministry of Education albums that were sent out on cassette tape, then CD, to every New Zealand school across the motu from 1990 to 2010. 

Finding Claudia Mushin

Despite the success of ‘Fish and Chips’, Mushin is virtually unknown by New Zealanders outside of her Miramar neighbourhood. The same could be said about most of the composers of other Kiwi Kidsongs hits – like ‘Bad Hair Day’, which briefly propelled composer John Phillips into the spotlight after it went viral on TikTok last year.

Searching for information about the ‘Fish and Chips’ originator online can lead you away from Mushin’s trail. A 2023 clip from 7 Days introduces Janice Marriott as the producer of ‘Fish and Chips’, and the hosts seem to think she wrote the song. Marriott did work as a producer for the Kiwi Kidsongs albums, but only two years after the song was released.

Perhaps some believed Mushin to be too ill to talk about her own song, or even dead, or the 7 Days producer responsible for the segment just didn’t do their homework. Whatever it was, Mushin doesn’t have much to say about the palaver.

Instead, she laughs when told a generation of New Zealanders consider her ditty iconic. “I mean, it was just on the whim of Steve asking me if he could have fish and chips for tea, and it all went from there,” she says. “It obviously spoke to the children.”

The family had moved to Wellington from the UK three years earlier, and 12-year-old Steve quickly caught on to the New Zealand family tradition of fish and chip night, with Steve constantly asking his mother to recreate it at home. Instead, Mushin wrote a song about it – a classic mum move, Steve says, as she always had a pad of paper to scribble on nearby. ‘Fish and Chips’ is one of three songs she penned that ended up on Kiwi Kidsongs albums.

These days, the 78-year-old is too weak to lift a pen on her own, and is preparing to move her life into a care home. She’s been trying to get back on the mend following a recent fall, but it’s difficult as contracting polio as a child in the 1960s has left her with multiple disabilities. However, the younger nurses caring for Mushin do get a kick out of singing ‘Fish and Chips’ to its creator.

When the song first came out, Mushin had just started working at Miramar Central School, where she spent 19 years teaching and tutoring. By the end of her time there, she was 65 and using a walker, which her students nicknamed Wally. 

“[‘Fish and Chips’] passed through the classrooms, through the families, and at my last assembly, the kids all sang it to me,” Mushin says. She’s “amazed” the song managed to travel further than the classrooms in Miramar.

The song didn’t necessarily give Steve major clout on the playground – by the time of its release, he was 15, and having your mum make songs about your fish and chip cravings was definitely uncool. It was only a few years ago, watching a group of friends and strangers sing ‘Fish and Chips’ over a potluck, that he realised his mother had penned a beloved earworm.

Creating an iconic children’s anthem

Mushin can still remember writing ‘Fish and Chips’ at the kitchen table in 1990. She was a kindergarten teacher at the time, and had long loved poetry and rhymes as a little girl, but tunes learned from BBC’s Singing Together no longer felt timely. ‘Fish and Chips’, on the other hand, seemed something any New Zealander could get behind.

She hummed the tune to Wellington Teachers College music lecturer James Middleton, who helped put the song to music. It was later recorded in Tītahi Bay, by Radha Sahar and Tony Clark, in 1992. Sahar has tried to rake through her mind, but she can’t quite remember recording ‘Fish and Chips’ specifically – after all, it was just one of hundreds of her sessions with Kiwi Kidsongs.

Mushin recalls a prominent ‘Fish and Chips’ memory: the time the Ministry of Education tried to ban it. The song was included on a compilation album of the best of Kiwi Kidsongs in 2000, which the department tried to remove as it believed the message of ‘Fish and Chips’ went against its own healthy eating guidelines.

“[A mother] was taking their child home from school, and the child started to sing it. She [the parent] thought, ‘that’s a terrible song’, expecting children to eat fish and chips for three meals a day,” Mushin says. “She was obviously over-PC, and she set about getting the Ministry of Education to ban it.”

Mushin’s loyal students fought back, and eventually Fair Go’s Kevin Milne showed up to deliver justice by interviewing Mushin and the kids and broadcasting their disappointment. In a letter to the programme, the Ministry of Education wrote: “Fish and chips is almost an iconic Kiwi takeaway and it would be a shame if we could not have a fun song about it. I think we made a mistake when we looked at withdrawing the song. We have now fixed the mistake by including the song.”

The albums were a project by Learning Media, a Ministry of Education enterprise launched in 1989 and shut down in 2013. This is where Janice Marriott was involved – she worked behind-the-scenes at the enterprise as a producer for 15 years, from the time of the fifth Kiwi Kidsongs album. Her job was to keep her ear to the ground to find the next children’s hit, and connect with musicians such as Phil Riley, who wrote ‘Sausages and Custard’ about Marriott’s dog, and John Phillips of ‘Bad Hair Day’.

She’s the person who picked the songs that appeared on the albums, though Marriott says the hardest part of her job was “making the ministry happy”. When Kiwi Kidsongs was discontinued, Marriott tried to convince the Ministry of Education to relaunch the project to no avail. It’s a shame, she says, that kids these days have fewer musical influences in the classroom.

A teacher’s legacy

Once in a blue moon, ‘Fish and Chips’ still gets played on the radio – in 2016, after it got a run on Australia’s ABC network, Mushin received a modest $200 in royalties. On TikTok, the song is getting a new lease of life as a nostalgia hit.

Steve says the success of ‘Fish and Chips’ managed to perfectly encapsulate his mother’s energy. Cheeky, playful and concerned only with life’s pleasures – that’s exactly who Mushin is, he says.

An artist and author himself, he says the work of teachers isn’t too dissimilar to that of creatives, in the sense that what they do can totally transform a person’s life. “Teachers live on nothing, and they very rarely receive recognition when they pour so much into their jobs,” he says. “You remember them for your whole life, and they often don’t realise they’ve had this impact on you.”

The woman living with five chronic illnesses, who used a walking frame while corralling her classes of five-year-olds and cemented herself into the minds of thousands of New Zealanders through her rhymes. “Claudia is a giant,” Steve says. “She is the strongest person I’ve ever met, while being the weakest person I’ve ever met.”

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