‘The Bear’s Record-Breaking Season 2 Leaves Viewers Angry About Writer’s Living Conditions
To say that Hulu’s hit series The Bear had a triumphant sophomore season would be quite the understatement.
The series follows Carmy, an award-winning chef, as he travels back to Chicago to take over his brother’s sandwich shop. The first season, which held a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, followed Carmy and his rag-tag group of chefs as they grappled with intense personal issues while trying to turn the restaurant around to make it more profitable. The second season focused on The Bear crew as they put their blood, sweat, tears, and heart into opening a new place—the eponymous restaurant—and all of the highs and lows that come with starting a new business.
Season 2 also became an instant hit, but its success wasn’t equally enjoyed behind the scenes, according to one series writer.
The Bear‘s staff are left behind as the show celebrates its success
According to Variety, FX and Hulu announced that The Bear Season 2 saw a “70% increase in total hours streamed in the first four days following its June 22 launch—when compared to the FX comedy’s Season 1 stats over that same post-premiere time period.”
While the companies didn’t reveal the actual streaming viewership figures for the show’s premiere, they did say that it became the most-watched premiere of any FX series on Hulu. Hulu also revealed that the first season of The Bear was the most-watched single season of a comedy series in FX history.
These figures are definitely a huge win for The Bear, Hulu, and FX, but it seems like that success didn’t trickle down to those who matter most of all: the show’s writers.
Alex O’Keefe, one of seven writers for the comedy starring Jeremy Allen White, credited on 8 episodes, spoke to The New Yorker about his experience working as a writer and said it was a “regular-degular, working-class existence.” He revealed that he lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn without heat, wrote at a public library when the power was out, and was never flown to the set. O’Keefe also tweeted that he wrote The Bear’s eighth episode from a library when his power went out, which is absolutely wild.
The hits kept coming for O’Keefe as the show was nominated at the Writers Guild of America Awards in March and he ended up attending the ceremony with a negative bank account, dressed in a bowtie purchased with credit. The Bear ended up winning the Best Comedy Series award, beating Abbott Elementary and Barry.
O’Keefe is just one of many TV writers who are constantly underpaid and overworked. It’s one of the reasons why the WGA is currently on strike, as writers are tired of not being valued for their hard work. Asking for a livable wage when the shows you’re working on are breaking records and making millions of dollars shouldn’t be such a tough ask. And, until studio executives get that through their heads, we’ll all have to keep fighting for better working conditions for the people who entertain us every day.
(featured image: FX on Hulu)
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that O’Keefe wrote 8 episodes from a library. He is credited on 8 episodes but only said that he did his work on episode 8 from a library.
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