Warning: Spoilers ahead for Season 4, Episode 7 of The Bear.
Throughout The Bear’s ambitious and stress-inducing catalog of episodes, “Fishes” ranks among the most memorable. The hour-long Christmas special (if you can call it that) in Season 2—set five years before Carmen plans to open his refurbished restaurant—is one big, loud, obnoxious family gathering. How could it not be? There’s the Berzattos, the Fak brothers, Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Lee (Donna’s on-and-off boyfriend), Cousins Michelle and Steve, friends Richie and Tiffany, and Natalie’s husband Pete—a mixed-company cocktail waiting to be turned into a Molotov.
It doesn’t take long to be set aflame. At the dinner table, a conversation breaks out about the Seven Fishes tradition, but it quickly escalates from spirited to chaotic. Mikey starts a heated debate with Lee that leads to forks flying through the air. Natalie (a.k.a. Sugar) asks her mother Donna if she’s “OK,” which sets off a fight. Then, amid the disruption, Donna leaves the table and crashes her car into the dining room. It’s a drunken exclamation point on a volatile, violent night. It’s also a flashpoint for Carmen, another traumatic moment that pushes the chef to leave for New York and remove himself from the orbit of the toxic people in his life.
Often forgotten inside that overwhelming episode: a brief mention of Neil and Ted’s sister, Francie Fak. Earlier that evening, when Michelle inquires as to why she isn’t at the party, the brothers share that Francie is not allowed to be there, because Natalie refuses to be in the same room with her.
“She’s mad as hell. She’s angry,” Neil says of Natalie. “‘Cause of the thing…”
“Still, huh?” Michelle remarks, surprised.
It’s just 30 seconds of dialogue, but the lack of explanation regarding their falling-out intrigued The Bear’s diehard fans. When did this take place? What happened between them? How bad was it? And crucially: Would Francie ever make an appearance? And if so, who would play her? The questions, at least among obsessive Reddit users, lingered throughout Season 3, but the show’s ruminative, overbearing, Carmen-focused arc boxed out most of the ancillary backstories. When would we find out what happened?
A year later, the wait is over. In Season 4’s seventh episode, Francie, played by none other than Oscar winner Brie Larson, makes her grand entrance onto the show. Over the course of the hour-long duration of the episode, which takes place at the reception for Tiffany and Frank’s wedding, Natalie and Francie verbally attack each other, share a vulnerable moment together, and eventually make up, settling their years-long beef. But do we ever figure out the origins of their issue? Well, sort of.
When Francie first arrives, she greets Uncle Jimmy with a hug, much to Natalie’s dismay. Then the pair begin the first of a few shouting matches. “You can apologize whenever, you know that?” she hisses at Francie. “You f-cking bitch!” The insults soon devolve into sarcastically miming each other’s words like little kids. “No! Yeah? Well…” It feels like we might be headed toward another “Fishes” scenario.
Then the truth starts to emerge. It’s hard to decipher through the overlapping bickering, but remnants of the fateful night that turned these two into mortal enemies come into focus. Natalie gripes about what appears to have been a house party, complaining that “whipped cream was everywhere,” and that Francie was drunk, and “I didn’t know how to start the car…”
Francie claps back: “It was raining, the bus was going to leave,” before offering one more explanation. “There were no cell phones then!”
At this point, as they begin shouting another litany of profanities, Pete enters the fray to separate the two women and calm things down. Then Ted drops a small bombshell. “Pete’s in denial about these two hooking up,” he says. Pete scoffs. “You two did not hook up,” he says looking at his wife in disbelief. In the awkward silence, Natalie and Francie look at each other. “Well….” Natalie says.
It’s a funny and informative sequence, though it doesn’t give us all the details. As the episode progresses, however, showrunners Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo offer a little more insight into Francie—and why Natalie could be driven to so much hate. When she sees Neil and Ted near the bathroom, the brothers confront her and ask why she’s so mean to their girlfriends. “I’m supposed to, that’s my job,” she says, before insulting Ted’s girlfriend’s shoes. “The shoes are really bad and it says a lot about a person,” she says, practically suggesting he break up with her. “Get your head in the game.”
The scene makes Larson’s casting an inspired choice. Not what you’d expect a Fak sister to look like, she cuts against her filmography of nicer, more sympathetic characters and harnesses her beauty like an evil queen, hiding her insecurities by punching down. The choice is also in line with a show that likes to make a splash with its cameos—whether that be revered chefs, British stars, or former wrestling champs (see: John Cena as Sammy Fak).
Eventually, she and Natalie sit down together and hash things out. They express their true feelings. They think about each other a lot. They each hope the other one is happy. They hope they’re doing something great. “Francie, you wanna maybe try and be friends?” Natalie asks. When Francie responds positively, Natalie asks one more follow-up. “You won’t f-ck me over?”
The resolution—and Francie’s appearance itself—makes sense within the show’s context. The episode is effectively a spiritual sequel to “Fishes,” reconvening the entire family for another celebration. This time, the forks stay on the table. After all, Season 4 is much calmer than the preceding ones—it’s about following Carmen’s ultimate goal (“filtering out the bad, to make it good”), an intention he expresses at the end of Season 3. It’s about working through trauma, finding room for forgiveness and healing, and moving forward. And what better setting to celebrate the return of a friendship than at the union of two other friends?
It’s unclear whether we’ll ever know specifically what happened between Natalie and Francie. But at least we know the pair won’t be getting near whipped cream any time soon.