Television series love to give viewers the gift of a good Christmas episode, but there’s never been one quite like “Fishes,” the sixth episode of the Emmy-nominated second season of “The Bear.”
It begins with the wafting sound of Andy Williams singing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and ends with the family matriarch crashing her car through the house. In between, we’re thrust into a chaotic family gathering, five years back in time, in which three adult children navigate their way through awkward conversations with relatives (blood and honorary) while managing their alcoholic mother, who’s teetering on collapse while trying to prepare the Feast of the Seven Fishes.
Even for a show known for its tense, emotionally exhausting storytelling, “Fishes” put its audience through the wringer, not that anyone seemed to mind. Of the 23 Emmy nominations “The Bear” received this year, nine were specifically for “Fishes.” This is the story of how it all came together.
Children of alcoholics, whether they drink or not, tend to behave like alcoholics, as main character Carmy Berzatto demonstrates in Season 3 of FX’s “The Bear.”
CHAPTER 1: ‘I’m going to play her’
Jamie Lee Curtis (Donna Berzatto): I was in Idaho, where I live part-time. My husband was fishing. I had heard about this show, and I turn on the first episode. You don’t know what the f— is going on. You see this guy. He’s frantic. He needs money for the restaurant. He calls his sister to bring a jacket so he can sell it. She brings the jacket. They hug and it’s awkward. There’s this weird tension. At some point, she asks, “Have you called Mom?” And he says, “No” and she leaves. And I went, “Oh, I’m going to play their mother.”
Jeremy Allen White (Carmen Berzatto): She told me that on set the first day. It was wild. You know, Jamie sidesteps the small talk. She gets straight to the point.
Jon Bernthal (Michael Berzatto): I remember meeting her, she gave me this kiss, in character, and said, “You know, you were always my favorite.” I guarantee you she said that to every single one of us. I just know it!
White: Yeah, she wrote Carm a letter, and I think it was signed, “You’re the one.”
Curtis: I found these little Steiff bears on EBay and I picked three different ones and wrote letters to the children as Donna saying, “I bought this for you the day you were born,” and then told them how important the moment was. I wanted us all to have something that nobody else had.
Abby Elliott (Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto): Jamie gave me children’s books for my kids. She was just the kindest, warmest, fuzziest person — until she put that wig on.
Bernthal: When she put that wig on, she became like a volcano with a tidal wave attached to it.
CHAPTER 2: ‘No one makes things beautiful for me’
Joanna Calo (executive producer, co-writer of “Fishes” with Christopher Storer): We pitched the episode for Season 1, but it ended up exactly where it was supposed to be. Fifteen episodes in, you knew the family, and now we could go back and show why they behave like they do. Then we thought, “Let’s do Christmas.” And Chris was like, “Well, we gotta do Seven Fishes then.”
Curtis: I flew out to Chicago, got to the set, and it was like being a lobster dropped into boiling water. This episode is just so f— cray-cray. It was absolutely thrilling.
Andrew Wehde (cinematographer): We shot at this house in Evanston, [Ill.], except for the dinner scene. That was a set. The idea was to give the actors a safe space to have unlimited freedom. We prelit it all. Jamie could come into that kitchen and just start cooking immediately.
Curtis: There’s a joke that when I die, all my friends are going to order a white-on-white hand towel, put it over their shoulder and wear it to my funeral. It’s a big part of my life. That’s why Donna has it on her shoulder. If you come to my house, I promise you, that is the first thing you’ll see.
Calo: We wanted it to sound like when you’re in a room with way too many people who’ve known each other for way too long and are probably drinking way too much. That energy of weaving through a crowd and hearing something terrible from another room.
Elliott: That scene in the kitchen is just one long take, and it felt like a play. When I’m down on my knees cleaning up and Jamie grabbed my face, that’s all Jamie. Chris came up to me after and said, “Oh, my God, that look on your face! You looked so scared!” And I genuinely did not remember doing that. It was like I had an out-of-body experience with Jamie.
Curtis: I think she has made that dinner since the beginning of f— time.
Calo: It’s usually the matriarchs doing all the work to make these Christmases nice for their families, and it’s just f— miserable. It felt like a great way to tell a food story that wasn’t in a restaurant.
Curtis: Donna’s mother did this dinner. That was the family she grew up in. And she can remember Richie and the Faks running around in the kitchen when they were 8, 9 years old. But now, you see the fatigue of being overworked and overstressed and everything compounding because of the alcoholism and the mental illness, and it’s f— Christmas and the expectations that go along with that.
Calo: There’s no level of appreciation that would make it work for Donna. The dinner starts as a gift. And eventually, it becomes, “I gave for so many years. Why didn’t anyone give back?” There’s that great “SNL” sketch about Christmas morning where everybody is opening their gifts, so excited. And they’re all great. And it gets to the mom, who gets ... a robe. I fill my own Christmas stocking. I will admit that here.
Curtis: “I make things beautiful for them, and no one makes things beautiful for me.” That has become an anthem for so many women. That has become a refrain of feeling unloved, unseen, unappreciated. And many people feel like their mothers would say the same thing as Donna. And I can relate to that phrase too, even though I have a lot of people helping me in my life.
CHAPTER 3: ‘I wanted to slap the f— out of him’
Bernthal: If anyone knows how to push your buttons, it’s family. Because they know you intimately. And there’s history and resentment and love.
Elliott: Why does Natalie ask Donna if she’s OK even after Carmy and Mikey tell her not to? I mean, somebody had to. They’re just going to put their heads down and ignore Donna, but Natalie can’t do that. It’s a compulsion. It’s a middle-child trait and a younger sister sensibility too. She deeply cares about her mom, as twisted as that is.
Calo: Donna has forced Natalie for her whole life into the place of making it OK and then resenting her for making it OK. Donna acts in an intense way, hoping for someone to pay attention and make it better for her. And there’s always one kid who takes on the job.
Elliott: If someone I love takes too deep a sigh, I’m the kind of person to ask, “Are you OK?” Even in the [Season 3] birth episode, Natalie’s in labor and — I don’t think this was scripted, it was more me talking to Jamie in one moment — I asked, “Are you OK?” It’s just this thing I feel so connected to. But with Donna, that really builds. It’s annoying to be asked if you’re OK. It’s never going to fix anything.
Bernthal: Mikey was romanticized in the first season as this larger-than-life figure who could take over a room. With “Fishes,” you get to see the other side of that. You get to see the ugliness, the despair, the hopelessness. He’s a dreamer who’s not allowed to dream. He has to take care of everybody. So that scene with Carmen in the closet ... he is so proud of his brother and so in awe of him. But there’s also this unbelievable amount of jealousy and frustration that he’ll never be able to do that.
White: Carm clocked that his brother was in trouble, just not the severity. I don’t think Carm’s ever been outside of himself enough to really take in another person in their entirety, sadly. I think that’s Carmen’s real struggle. Also, I think he was in survival mode that whole dinner, fight or flight.
Bernthal: When Carmy gives him that present, [the plans for their new restaurant], he sees how much hope he has in him. It’s so beautiful and Carmy wants it so bad. But Mikey absolutely knows where he’s headed and he’s horrified. He knows he can’t stop the train at this point. What a tragic thing to realize. “I’m doomed.”
Curtis: That scene when Carmen comes into the kitchen and tries to force Donna to come to the dinner table, I held back. I wanted to slap the f— out of him in one take.
White: Did she not? She slapped me. If that wasn’t a slap, then I’m scared of what she had in mind.
Curtis: She is furious that Carmen left. “I had to beg you to come home.” She also calls him “Michael.” She’s in her head.
White: There’s some co-dependency going on there.
Wehde: We matched the closeups of Donna and Carmy to the closeups of Claire and Carmy in the market in the episode before, subliminally reminding the audience where Carmy’s head is at.
Calo: You gotta sort out all this parent s— before you get into a relationship.
Curtis: Donna hasn’t seen Carmen since that dinner. Five years.
CHAPTER 4: ‘Let’s burn the whole thing down’
Bernthal: The start of the episode, Mikey’s trying to keep the peace. “Don’t push Donna.” Like Donna’s the real live wire. It’s not Mikey. But Lee has been delivering these jugular jabs the whole day, talking about the failed businesses. So by the time they sit down at the dinner table, Mikey’s like, “F— it. Let’s just burn the whole thing down.”
Bob Odenkirk [“Uncle” Lee Lane]: Keep in mind, Uncle Lee may be prized in some circles for his bluntness and intensity and steely self-assurance, though I think that kind of bluntness, often celebrated as “he doesn’t suffer fools,” is really just “being an a—.”
Curtis: I think there had to have been some contact between Donna and Lee, you know what I mean?
Odenkirk: I think Uncle Lee and Donna have come close to being ... close a few times, and they’re built for each other a bit too, both recognizing a roughness to their inner selves, an appreciation of the other’s survival abilities.
Bernthal: Mikey does not like Lee. I whispered in Chris’ ear, “I want to flip the table over.” And his face lit up with excitement.
Odenkirk: I basically did the script, but once things get really hot, well, that’s all made up out of Chris Storer’s hot-as-heck setup. Chris teed up this intensity with his wonderful writing and then it’s just hot-headed, explosive fireworks.
Calo: My favorite moment was Jon Bernthal growling.
Wehde: My camera operator Gary [Malouf] was in handheld and he thought Jon was going to plow him down.
Bernthal: You’re sitting on that boiled rage for a long time. My favorite thing to do as an actor is to create real danger and fear and immediacy on the set.
Elliott: I was pregnant, so my lungs were in my throat.
Bernthal: [When Michael threatens to hurl a fork at Lee,] we started with rubber forks, but they weren’t hitting Bob’s face right. It didn’t look violent at all. I have a rule with stunts: If I slap you, then we can turn the cameras off and you can slap me. And I said that to Bob. “Let me throw this at you and you can throw it right back at me.” Everybody laughed and thought I was crazy.
Odenkirk: Jon’s a good man and a very fine actor. I think Uncle Lee wanted to go at it a lot more than he wanted to throw a fork. And yeah, Mikey would have put Lee in some pain. But Lee maybe has a taste for some pain, like a lot of guys who look for fights.
Elliott: I felt such sadness for Mikey at that table. It was such a circus. And then Donna finally comes in and Natalie can’t help herself and she asks the question.
Curtis: Everyone’s praising her. What she thinks: “You’re lying to me.” And then Natalie asks if she’s OK, it’s like, “I’m your problem? You want to see a problem?” I can imagine Donna Berzatto back in the day in a bar fight. So without understanding why she drives the car into the house, it’s the ultimate “f— you people.” And then she’s laughing in the car. She thinks it’s the funniest thing that ever happened.
Elliott: I was inhaling so much through the whole episode. And finally when the car crashed, I could exhale.
EPILOGUE: ‘This is why I don’t go home for Christmas’
Curtis: I don’t imagine they ever gathered in that house again. Maybe they had Christmas at the Faks next year. But this destroyed the tradition. The whole thing is just so f— heartbreaking.
White: Maybe Carmy spent next Christmas with [cousin] Michelle. Or maybe he just thought it was best to stay away from all of it and spend Christmas alone and safe.
Bernthal: If anyone has the ability to have a performance like that at a family dinner, it’s Michael. He’s charismatic enough, empathetic enough and wise enough that he could be the belle of the ball next Christmas and make everybody feel like a million bucks. He’d get everyone to laugh about it. “Let’s hide Mom’s car keys!”
Elliott: Natalie spent the next Christmas with [husband] Pete’s family. I think Pete has older parents, and they sit in front of the TV and eat lasagna.
Calo: I think a lot of those people show up at the house again next Christmas. People repeat patterns, and they’re hard to break. Maybe Donna isn’t making dinner. She gets a break. And someone says, “Remember last year when Donna drove her car through the house?” That’s family.
‘The Bear’ has returned for a new season, and its episodes are formed much like an album with different tracks.
White: I was surprised at how relatable the episode was. I had so many people come up to me and say, “This was my Christmas in 2016” or “That was my Thanksgiving.” Aside from the car coming through the house, of course.
Bernthal: The biggest comment I get walking down the street is: “This is why I don’t go home for Christmas.”
Elliott: So many people related to that episode. They feel safe telling me their stories. And I say, “I am so sorry to hear that. [Pause] I don’t know you.” [Laughs.]
Curtis: For most people, Christmas is not the most wonderful time of the year. This episode of television had a big impact. I heard from people from all over. “Triggering” is a word that’s used now a lot in psycho-speak, but it applies here. It triggers a response — an emotional response, a physical response, a nervous response in people.
Calo: My mom watches a lot of Hallmark Christmas movies. Many people’s moms watch a lot of Hallmark Christmas movies. And, you know, I’ve seen some great ones. But after a while, they’re so sweet, they start to hurt your teeth a little. Maybe you need “Fishes” every year to cut the sweetness.
Elliott: I still haven’t watched the episode. I lived it. At some point, I might go back to it. But I might need 30 years.
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