Whenever The Bear introduces a new female character, I pray she doesn’t become a love interest for one of the male leads. Not because I hate romance, but because I specifically hate the way The Bear does romance.

The clearest offender is Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) relationship with Claire (Molly Gordon). A childhood friend who re-enters Carmy’s life, Claire is less a real human character than she is a walking self-help book for Carmy. She spends almost every moment she’s on screen talking about him: her memories of him, his mental health struggles, his relationship with his family. In theory, she has a life apart from Carmy — her defining character trait outside of being his girlfriend is vaguely “nurse” — but in watching The Bear, you wouldn’t know it.

Usually a great performer (see: Shiva Baby, Oh, Hi!, and more), Gordon is reduced to two modes here: luminous love interest hanging onto Carmy’s every word, or calming therapist. She’s not the only Bear character to meet this fate. As The Bear builds Ever staffer Jessica (Sarah Ramos) into a possible match for Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), it replaces her level-headed expertise with empty platitudes designed to ground him. (Season 4 line “honesty is sanity” made me want to drive my head through a wall.) Elsewhere, Richie’s ex-wife, Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs), acts as a similar pillar of support.

Their heads constantly askew, their eyes lit up in adoration, their mouths always ready to offer up an eager laugh or some cornball advice, these characters morph into The Bear‘s single idea of a Woman In Love. Now, The Bear‘s standalone episode “Gary” offers a new addition to this pantheon: Sherri (Marin Ireland) from Gary, Indiana.

Sherri is a woman whom Richie and Mikey (Jon Bernthal) meet at a bar while on a work trip to Gary. She immediately strikes up a rapport with Mikey, playing a private game of “Fact or Fiction” with him, listening to his complicated woes while nestled together in a bathroom stall, and stealing his beanie and wearing it like a middle schooler trying to get a rise out of a crush. It’s a level of blindly supportive compassion we haven’t seen since Claire Bear, and Ireland, typically a huge asset to any project, soon becomes trapped in The Bear‘s love interest archetype. (Someone please ban affectionate head tilts from the set of The Bear, effective immediately.)

While Sherri feels like she was meant to be a moment of bright connection in Mikey’s life, maybe even “the one that got away,” she really just comes across as an empty vessel for him to pour his trauma into. “What are you looking for, Michael?” she wonders. Later, when he asks permission to do a bump of cocaine, she simply responds, “I want you to be you.” It’s a series of faux-deep exchanges that even two great performers can’t sell. (It doesn’t help that Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach wrote the episode.)

That faux-deepness is what sinks The Bear‘s other romances, too. The show tries to force these deep, cosmic connections, but it forgets that these relationships should be a two-way street. Perhaps that’s why many viewers are drawn to shipping Carmy and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). While the showrunners have affirmed that their relationship is platonic — and I personally agree with that choice — what sets this hypothetical pairing apart is that they each have such rich lives, both in their work together and their time apart. That’s because The Bear is invested in both of them as characters, rather than just using one as a device to unlock the other. You simply can’t say the same of The Bear‘s other romantic pairings, and the release of “Gary” further proves that romance is the recipe The Bear has yet to master.

“Gary” is now streaming on Hulu. The Bear Season 5 premieres this June on Hulu.

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 second ago

If there’s one thing Star Trek has always been weird about, it’s sex. Sure, The Original Series liked to titillate audiences, but broadcast restrictions kept them from getting too spicy. The Next Generation was comparatively celibate, to the point that Patrick Stewart would beg new writers to get Captain Picard laid. Eventually, the pendulum swung the other way: Discovery gave us an explicit sex scene that traumatized an unwilling participant while traumatizing the audience with the sight of naked Klingon breasts.

Obviously, it’s hard for this franchise to get sex scenes just right. When they aren’t offensive, they’re just downright goofy, like the time Dr. Crusher boned down with the Scottish bad boy that lived in her mother’s sex toy candle. Understandably, Star Trek: The Next Generation showrunner Michael Piller was worried about how audiences would react to a sex scene with Deanna Troi in “The Price” because fans kept writing in complaints before the episode even aired. But he didn’t get a single complaint after the episode, proving that audiences secretly loved seeing everyone’s favorite Betazed getting shagged!

In “The Price,” the Enterprise is hosting a number of intergalactic dignitaries who are negotiating for the rights to a major prize: access to a seemingly stable wormhole from the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant. One of the negotiators is secretly empathic, so it’s no surprise when he hits it off with empathic Counselor Deanna Troi. The two form a hot and heavy sexual relationship, one that only comes to an end when Troi must reluctantly reveal how her new lover has been secretly using his own Betazed abilities to manipulate negotiations from the beginning.

When previews for “The Price” first aired, the fandom collectively decided they were going to hate the scene where Troi takes Ral (her new bad-boy boyfriend) to bed. There are many possible reasons for this. Some fans hated to see Troi hook up with anyone but Riker, her fellow officer and one true Imzadi. Meanwhile, some fans hated to see Troi hook up with anyone but themselves. Whatever their motivation, more than a few fans decided to write to the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew to complain about the impending onscreen erotica. 

“I’m Sensing Great Thickness, Captain”

This information comes to us courtesy of Michael Piller. As written in Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, the TNG showrunner later lamented that “It was never meant to be outrageous television.” Despite this, “We got quite a few letters from outraged people before it aired.” Obviously, these fans thought Star Trek was about to get downright salacious. However, this story has an unexpected punchline: Piller noted that “nobody wrote after it aired.” The implication here is that nobody, even the fans who thought they would despise it, actually hated this sci-fi sex scene.

By today’s standards, the sex scene is relatively mild. There isn’t any nudity or simulated sex onscreen, and the whole thing was more sensual than anything else. Ral gives her a hot oil foot massage, she ends up straddling him, and the two spend plenty of time baring their souls while staring into each other’s eyes. Sure, it’s not as explicit as something you might find over on GornHub (what are you doing, step-reptile?!?), but by the standards of early ‘90s TV, this scene was downright smoking.

Judging from the complete and utter lack of complaints, it seems like the fandom really enjoyed this sensual scene. The franchise might have had trouble getting things just right over the years, but it seems like the TNG writers and producers finally found the right recipe for a successful Star Trek sex scene. Just take half a cup of foot stuff, eight ounces of diaphonous clothing, and three cloves of Marina Sirtis on top. Throw in a spandex-clad exercise scene as an appetizer and baby, you’ve got yourself one hell of a meal!

By Chris Sawin
| Published 11 seconds ago

The Last Viking has an opening and an ending that feels like a hand-painted fairy tale revolving around a Viking clan where everyone remains equal; young and old, fat and skinny, ugly or beautiful – everyone is treated the same. But one day, during a battle, a young Viking loses one of his arms.

In comparison to everyone else, he feels ugly and less than everyone else. His father, the chieftain, witnessed this and ordered every male in the clan, toddler, adult, or elderly, and everything in between, to chop off one of their arms. Part of it was to help his son feel better, but it was also to keep the clan equal among themselves.

In the present day, Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) has just committed robbery and murdered someone in the process. He takes a duffel bag full of money and locks it in a locker. He instructs his brother, Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen), to swallow the key and retrieve the bag only once everything has died down. He then gives Manfred specific instructions to bury the bag in a designated place near their mother’s house.

Anker is sentenced to 15 years in prison. Once he gets out, Manfred refers to himself as John W. Lennon and has no memory of where he buried the loot. As Manfred is going through something irregular, Anker is forced to help him in some capacity so he can be well enough to remember where the money is.

Life After The Heist

Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice, Men and Chicken), The Last Viking is a crime drama with some dark comedy thrown in for good measure. Manfred flips out whenever someone still calls him Manfred. He’s been stealing the neighbor’s dogs and stabbing their sister, Freja (Bodil Jorgensen), in the thigh because she didn’t call him John. Manfred also likes to jump out of moving cars, and he threatens to kill himself by shoving a fondue fork in his head. Both he and Anker have terrible tempers, as well.

The film follows Anker as he tries to shake some sense into Manfred. He wants his money so he can get away from his brother forever. Manfred has experienced some sort of severe trauma that has resulted in him having dissociative identity disorder. While we all exist as one identity in one reality, Manfred has several personalities that exist in different realities. They find this out after Manfred is committed to a psych ward.

Manfred’s psychologist, Lothar (Lars Brygmann), who is obsessed with IKEA, believes that, since Manfred believes he is one of The Beatles, he needs to unite with others who share his condition and believe they are the other Beatles. Once united, they can play Beatles songs together and, hopefully, regain some sense of normalcy.

Lothar tracks down a mute who believes he’s Ringo and Anton (Peter During), who has more than 40 personalities, including Bjorn from ABBA, Heinrich Himmler, and Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Anker and Manfred’s mother’s house is now owned by a couple who rent it out as an Airbnb; a former hand model named Margrethe (Sofie Grabol) and her much older husband, Werner (Soren Malling). Werner has been trying to write and illustrate a children’s book for the past five years, but has never finished it.

Lastly, there’s Flemming (Nicolas Bro), the flat owner and maintenance man to the flat Anker, Manfred, and Freja live in. Flemming wants all of the money that Anker has been hiding. He was paid before Anker went to prison, but he spent it all and now wants whatever is left. He basically hunts Anker the entire film and has a nasty streak despite his calm demeanor.

Drama And Trauma With A Side Of Humor

Anders Thomas Jensen makes this eclectic cast of characters feel necessary in the grand scheme of things. The Last Viking may centrally be about Anker and Manfred, but the way the story incorporates everyone else is extraordinary. There is humor in the film, but the drama and trauma keep your interest. Why Manfred decided to change his name and why Anker can’t remember certain things about his past is explained, and it’s devastating.

There’s a broken mentality to every character in the film, but the concept of either feeling less broken or being a bit more whole as a group is explored in The Last Viking. Every question you might have, like how the film’s title factors into the story, is explored to meaningful satisfaction. The one issue is that I wish the humor hit harder. For a film that is so serious, the comedy is extremely subtle and lighthearted. Maybe devoting more of the film to humor would have taken away from the overall story, which is already so well-connected and has a solid conclusion.

The Last Viking is stupidly sentimental and surprisingly sweet. It’s a film about a bunch of individuals who are completely and totally dysfunctional on their own but somewhat functional together.

The Last Viking hits theaters and digital/on-demand on May 29.