The Bear Recap: Velkommen til Danmark

The Bear Recap: Velkommen til Danmark,Marcus (Lionel Boyce) travels to Denmark to stage with Will Poulter in a lovely episode directed by Ramy Youssef. A recap of ‘Honeydew,’ episode 4 of FX’s ‘The Bear,’ now streaming on Hulu.

The Bear Recap: Velkommen til Danmark

Season 2 Episode 4 Editor’s Rating5 stars *****

Photo: Chuck Hodes/FX When “Honeydew” opens, it looks like we’re in for another hectic episode of The Bear. It’s seven weeks out from when the new place is supposed to open, but the restaurant’s calendar is covered with notes about permits and inspectors and notes to “STOP USING CREDIT CARD.” The city has rejected some of their pleas, they have to do a second deep clean, and the fire suppression team didn’t show up when they were supposed to. Beyond that, they have to pay a fine to the IRS because Mikey never properly named the restaurant on legal documents, something that really doesn’t seem like it’s the new group’s fault per se, but sure, okay.

And also, Natalie has a surprise. Given that she’s clearly visibly pregnant it doesn’t seem like much of one, but Carmy seems honestly taken aback by Sugar’s roundabout reveal, which comes couched in caveats about how she doesn’t want to be treated differently and is both terrified and excited “because of how we grew up and everything in our lives.” She also really, really doesn’t want Richie to know, a plan that falls apart almost immediately as yet another wall inside the restaurant collapses. Richie, to his credit, only gloats a little, screaming out “I FUCKING KNEW IT!” alongside some minor congratulations.

That’s about all we get to see of the Chicago-based Bear crew this episode, though, save a few phone calls. Directed by Ramy Youssef, “Honeydew” is all about Marcus, who’s off to Denmark to stage with a friend of Carmy’s played by the thoroughly enjoyable Will Poulter. He’s nervous to leave his mom, of course, but as we find out a bit later in the episode, she’s been desperately sick for about four years and was only supposed to live for two, so any bit of time he gets now is pretty much gravy. After a quick airport send-off from his ever-positive roommate, Marcus is Copenhagen-bound, where he roams the streets to the sounds of Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” which most people no doubt know as the theme to National Lampoon’s Vacation.

As it turns out, Marcus is staying on a tiny boat that makes him seem comically large, and when he’s not eating Danish hot dogs and strolling through the gardens at Noma, he’s working with Poulter’s Luca to craft wildly finicking pastry creations like shiso gelee. It’s a big swing for Marcus, who’s never even made ice cream let alone tackled a quenelle, but somehow he handles it with wonder and aplomb. Personally, I would be throwing shit at the wall after about five minutes getting picked at about my tweezer use, but clearly Marcus is a better person than me — or most of us, really.

While I’m not really sure the vibe of the Bear is going to be gelee towers and weirdly beige puddings, I love that Marcus is getting out there into the world, buying boxes and boxes of Danish pastries to pick through, and really expanding his palate. Even the best desserts can still taste like a minty Snickers, but as Luca explains, “You can spend all the time in the world in [the kitchen], but if you don’t spend enough time out” in the world, then your food genius will never really come to fruition. Luca knows this because, after getting into some trouble in his youth, he fell into restaurant life about 14 years back. He thought he was the best, but after meeting someone else at a restaurant in Copenhagen (Carmy? Carmy!), he realized that no matter what he did he could never be the best. It took a bit of pressure off, in a way, and he instead worked to become the best he could be, learning more than he could have ever hoped from the unnamed great co-worker, who Marcus jokes was the Michael Jordan to Luca’s Scottie Pippen and absolutely 100 percent has to be Carmy.

It’s a stark contrast to Marcus’s chef trajectory, which we learn began just about 18 months ago when Mikey recruited him to make bread in the restaurant. He’d been working at McDonald’s prior, where he’d landed after five years at the phone company. His real passion before that was football, and he played outside linebacker for a Division 3 school throughout college. (We don’t find out if he got a degree, which I’m curious about even though I don’t think it really matters.) He ended up at the Beef because he’d go there every day for lunch and sort of fell in with Mikey, who he says was “really tiny but also really out of his fucking mind.” Mikey, Marcus says, always wanted to open a bakery, hence how Marcus got into the bread biz.

After Marcus leaves that conversation with Luca, there’s an odd interlude where he runs into a Danish guy who’s crashed his bike into a fence. He’s pinned down by the crossbar and can’t get out. Marcus lifts the fence and tends to the guy, who seems to be either drunk or just weird and old, and then the guy takes off on his very Danish bike once again. I’m not sure what the message is here other than “Marcus is a good dude,” but it’s nice to be reminded of that all the same.

The episode ends with Marcus and Sydney on FaceTime, having a jittery delayed chat. Marcus tells her that he’s loving Copenhagen but he feels guilty for not being in the shit back in Chicago, whether that means spending time with his mom or getting yelled at by both Richie and Fak as part of whatever “alliance” they’re in. She tells him she’s happy he’s happy and reminds him that “you can’t take care of [your mom] if you’re not taking care of you,” which seems to be the theme for all of The Bear season two thus far.

I left “Honeydew” even more in love with Marcus than I already was, and really impressed with Lionel Boyce’s work in the role. He’s an island of chill calm in an ocean of roiling, nightmarishly hard times and on a show like The Bear, that kind of energy and presence is invaluable, to say the least.

Small Bites

• A random Chicago-centric thought: If Marcus was working at McDonald’s and eating lunch every day at the Original Beef on Orleans, does that then mean that he worked at the now-defunct Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s of Wesley Willis song fame? Of course, that building underwent a fancy remodel around 2018, so he may have never worked in the weird retro space, but I like to imagine him there all the same.

• We get a look at Sydney’s interviews with potential staff and they seem to be fully shitty, save SNL alum Alex Moffat, who’s hired on the spot while sporting a very cool, very fun asymmetrical haircut.

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