The Bear Is Not Your Therapist, and That’s Why “Fishes” Rules

The entertainment industry has spent the last few years shouting at us and calling it intimacy. Every character is grieving, every kitchen is on fire, and every dinner party ends with someone revealing a childhood trauma before the crème brûlée collapses. Usually, this is exhausting. In “Fishes,” the infamous sixth episode of The Bear, it is magnificent.

The episode works because it doesn’t turn family dysfunction into a tasteful little museum exhibit. It makes you sit at the table while the food burns, the forks multiply, and Jamie Lee Curtis weaponizes a cigarette like she’s auditioning for the role of “Mother Nature, but mean.” This is not relaxing television. It is a panic attack with excellent production design. Five stars.

Benny’s Picks

The Bear — Hulu
Start with Season 2, Episode 6, “Fishes,” then watch “Forks” immediately afterward to remind yourself that people can, in fact, improve. The show occasionally mistakes volume for profundity, but at its best it understands that love is sometimes making someone a sandwich and sometimes screaming over a broken refrigerator.

Ripley — Netflix
This is the rare prestige thriller that earns its black-and-white seriousness. Every frame looks like it was stolen from a museum, and Andrew Scott plays Tom Ripley as a man whose moral compass is not broken so much as sold for parts. It’s slow, yes—but so is a snake deciding whether you’re lunch.

Challengers — Prime Video, rental platforms
A tennis movie, a romantic triangle, and a two-hour perfume ad for bad decisions. Luca Guadagnino directs every volley like it’s a divorce proceeding, while the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross makes even a protein shake feel sexually complicated. It is ridiculous, sweaty, and completely committed to being ridiculous and sweaty.

Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future — Streaming services
For anyone whose nervous system has been rattled by too much prestige television, Lenker offers acoustic songs that feel like handwritten apologies. “Sadness as a Gift” is beautiful enough to make folding laundry seem like a meaningful spiritual practice, which is frankly more than most wellness apps can manage.

Skip It: The Idol — Max
It promised dangerous, transgressive pop-star drama and delivered a very expensive man explaining that he is dangerous. The show’s biggest plot twist is that someone approved another episode.

Sleeper Pick: How To with John Wilson — Max
Watch “How To Make Small Talk” or “How To Cover Your Furniture.” It begins as a goofy documentary about ordinary problems and ends somewhere between existential poetry and a raccoon sighting. Television has rarely been this strange, gentle, or accidentally profound.