Spoiler alert: I don’t reveal everything, but if you want to be fresh when you watch this series, beware.

This was a painful watch. If I hadn’t invested my time in the previous seasons, I would have stopped.

This is what happens when art supersedes plot. You see this most in literature today. Which tend not to sell anyway. So the intelligentsia, those with MFAs, try to impress each other by rewriting to the point that the prose is nearly incomprehensible and story becomes secondary. As if usage of words and analogies and similes make a great book. They don’t.

And historically this has been the great thing about TV, it’s cheap and therefore fast. The quintessential example being soap operas, which are almost all plot.

So the problem with most of this latest season of “The Bear” is NOTHING HAPPENS!

You get these artistic images, moments of no dialogue which are supposed to represent the pathos of the actors but just bores us to death.

So what we’ve got here is one complete day at the Bear, the fine dining restaurant. Except for the last episode, which is a coda. Wrapping things up, but not really. Where was Claire during all the previous episodes? And is Carmy really going to be an intern for an architectural firm?

I mean you can quit your job, but at this age you don’t become an intern, never mind you need education to be an architect. I mean take a time out, but…

And did I miss a memo? How come when the restaurant gets two stars Sydney gets the accolades? Wasn’t it Carmy’s restaurant?

Oliver Platt as Uncle Jimmy is the best thing about the show. But we’re supposed to believe he’s lost all his money? The financially-savvy relative who everybody goes to for advice? He’s going to put all his money at risk at once? I don’t think so.

As for Jamie Lee Curtis as mom Donna… A little goes a very long way. Her frenzied approach demonstrated the character’s craziness in that holiday episode in season 2, but now you just wince when she gets screen time, she’s overacting.

So with all the odds against them, the rain outside, the burst pipes, the lack of food as a result of being cut off by suppliers for lack of cash, is the assembled multitude, this ragtag bunch of misfits, going to be able to serve dinner tonight?

It’s akin to the Little Rascals putting on a show.

And you feel like you were in the restaurant all day.

And why were those customers in the kitchen so long? Yes, Richie got them to give up their table, but now they’re in the kitchen for hours?

Of course it all works out, this is TV and this is the final season!

However… They’d have been better off not making this season at all. Letting the series lie fallow until everybody was hyped up again. That’s what they do in the U.K.

I’m completely flummoxed (my word of the week) how all the critics are giving this latest season kudos. Not only is it the worst one, it’s almost unwatchable. Watching it is like being locked up in prison for a day.

Yes, the series does start to heat up a bit a little over halfway through, and the actual service of dinner at least flows, it’s watchable, but…

They were so busy trying to create prestige TV that they lost touch with the fundamentals. First and foremost people have to want to watch a show, and this was my most painful watch in memory. I mean speed it up, have more happen. Enough silence with facial expressions. I get it, you’re conveying heaviness, if not gravitas, but it shouldn’t go on for episode after episode.

This series was once great.

But it’s gone off the rails. As if the hosannas got to the creators.

Television is not that complicated. On the comparatively small screen it’s all about plot, story supersedes image. I wish someone had enforced this obvious truth during the production of the last season of this series.