The Bear Season 2 Starts With The Perfect Song For The Series' Next Chapter

It can be tricky to pull off a perfect needledrop on a television show; for every "Yellowjackets," there's a show that simply can't make it work. "The Bear," though, typically chooses excellent songs to use throughout its episodes... and the big song used during the opening of the Season 1 premiere is no exception.

The Season 1 premiere, simply titled "Beef," opens with a montage set to Bruce Hornsby's 1988 song "The Show Goes On," which runs for the episode's first seven and a half minutes — the same length as the song. As Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his crew try to renovate their old sandwich shop and turn it into a fine dining destination in the heart of Chicago, Hornsby's song goes, "From where I sits, everyone stands in judgment / And everybody watching as the curtain falls down / See the lights do a long slow fade." This works perfectly for Carmy, a formally train chef hoping to transform his late brother's shop into something incredible and new... and in the process, he'll be judged by critics and guests alike.

That's to say nothing of the chorus, which says that "the show goes on" with "everyone watching all along," concluding that, "still without you, the show goes on." Without Carmy's brother Mikey (played by Jon Bernthal in flashbacks), he and his staff soldier on, trying to open a spot that would make Mikey proud.

To say that The Original Beef of Chicagoland — known informally as "The Beef" — is a mess when Carmy arrives to take it over in Season 1 is an understatement. Slowly but surely, Carmy works with some of the original staff and hires new faces, like Ayo Edibiri's aspiring chef Sydney Adamu, trying to convince the old guard — especially his "cousin" Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Mikey's best friend — that expanding past beef sandwiches could be a great thing.

After a disastrous first takeout service, all seems lost... until Carmy discovers a message from Mikey. Inspecting the cans of San Marzano tomatoes in the restaurant's run-down kitchen, Carmy opens them only to find that they're not stuffed with carefully preserved whole tomatoes, but with cold hard cash. Carmy finally has the funds needed to revitalize a place that represents his family legacy, and after getting the gang back together, they gather together for a family meal. In the last shots of the finale, Carmy puts up a sign in the window indicating that The Beef is closed... and The Bear will reopen in its stead.

For a million reasons, "The Show Goes On" is a pitch-perfect needle drop for this moment in the overall narrative of "The Bear," but there's one other aspect you might not have considered: a song about performing is an ideal match for a show focused on fine dining and chefs. Cooking is, in and of itself, a sort of performance; Carmy learned how to cook in some of the world's finest kitchens and under interminably difficult bosses (one, played by Joel McHale, was seen briefly in flashbacks in Season 1), and every move he makes is calculated and choreographed. When things aren't planned to the minute, like in the Season 1 one-shot episode "Review," it descends into utter chaos. No, seriously — Sydney stabs Richie by accident and then walks out. It's bad.

In order to create The Bear together and help this new, ambitious restaurant succeed, Carmy and his staff will have to move as one, planning their dance to the minute so that their cooking is unimpeachable. The show does go on in Season 2 of "The Bear," and with these chefs sticking together, they very well might be able to transform this sandwich shop into a destination.