The Bear, season three (Disney+/Hulu)
Yun Huiseong: What causes us to fail? The Bear follows the hardships of a young chef who returns home following the death of his brother to take over the sandwich shop passed down by their father, and the show repeatedly revisits and revises the answer to this agonizing question. In the first season, Carmy, the chef, believes he’s found the answer: it’s all about control. Worried as he is over his lack of equipment and funds, he tries a carrot-and-stick approach to those of his employees who don’t meet his standards, apparently seeing failure as something that can be fixed. His experience whipping himself into a chef capable of standing the heat of a fast-moving kitchen through rigorous training and endurance became a source of both hope and agony for him. Someone who sees success as an absolute necessity can’t help but live every day as if heading into battle. In the second season, Carmy comes to chalk failure up to fate. He falls in love as though destined to, and then a cruel twist of fate takes that love away from him, leaving Carmy no choice but to accept how little control he has over his life. Suddenly, everything—work, life, love—seems like a trap set up by fate from which escape is impossible and failure is the only possible outcome. The very first scene that opened the series depicts a bear—referencing Carmy’s nickname, Bear, derived from his last name, Berzatto—attacking him in a nightmare, showing the audience exactly where he’s anchored: With no choice but to return home, his family’s name seals his fate like a kind of prophecy, and all he has to show for his backbreaking effort is failure that keeps circling back to him every which way.

The Bear has been lauded for its highly realistic depictions of life in the kitchen, the way the soundtrack and editing are perfectly in step with the characters’ mental states, and the actors’ talent for making viewers genuinely care for characters who, though out of the ordinary, are neither heroes nor villains. However, the real value of this show lies not in its clear strengths but rather in its repeated return to the struggle to answer the question. Really, what causes us to fail? Why, despite repeating the same routine every day, sticking to a set of rigid principles, and posting signs everywhere demanding others follow just as strict a regimen, do some meals still end up lackluster and some of the plates they’re served on end up broken? By the third season, the show sheds light on another clue. For Carmy, failure begins with the very fact that he decides to push himself to the absolute limit to transform the aging sandwich shop into a fine dining restaurant. People who thrive on anxiety don’t make decisions based on the likelihood of success but rather whatever can make them feel like they’re moving forward. Giving up on the kitchen, having children, sticking with a restaurant that’s clearly a money pit—they all share something in common: It’s impossible to know the true scale of your failures until you reach the final chapters of your life, but when what you’re doing never reaches an end point, it doesn’t count as defeat. With its characters who never properly face the fallout of their repeated poor decisions—who are never victorious, but always moving forward—The Bear sticks with you, like when a friend should wish you luck but reveals a shameful secret instead. Maybe what it leaves behind is an inkling of comfort.

Fly Me to the Moon
Jeong Seohui (Cinema Journalist): Apollo 11: humanity’s first successful Moon landing. In 1969, the United States wrote the long sought after headline into the history books. While the US sought to move beyond simply framing the landing as crowning them the victors over the Soviet Union in the Space Race and share what this unparalleled achievement meant in the context of the wider world, there’s no doubt that Fly Me to the Moon is a film that sings its country’s praises. But rather than a syrupy victory lap, it dredges up age-old conspiracy theories and skeptic fuel, cleverly mixing science, marketing, and political intrigue that expand all the way to the Moon. Whiz marketer Kelly (Scarlett Johansson) is brought into NASA by top-level government official Moe (Woody Harrelson). A master of marketing, Kelly sells the romanticism of the Moon exploration project in order to make it a reality.  She pulls off her assignment without a hitch, inspiring the public, securing sponsorship, and winning over politicians who can support research and development—all thanks to being able to put on a show. NASA director Cole (Channing Tatum), meanwhile, is tasked with portraying Apollo 11 not as something glitzy but as the vessel that will carry the first humans into space and to the Moon that it is. An unfaltering, principle-driven man, Cole feels Kelly is perverting the values behind the mission until he realizes she has her eyes on the same goal as he does and is pursuing it with just as much passion, just from a different angle. Though the powers that be pressure Kelly to create backup footage to use in the event that something goes wrong, video of people hanging from wires above a dusty mock lunar surface luckily never has to go to air—thanks, of course, to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins making it to the Moon in one piece. In an effort to stamp out lies and misconceptions, Kelly and Cole tackle conspiracy theories, and the two characters—though pitted against one another—are more swayed by each other’s desire for truth than by the truth itself, and a romance blossoms between them. There’s something picturesque about sharing a kiss on the set of a fake Moon landing—serving as the first, and last, important moment to grace the expensive soundstage before it’s hastily dismantled.

No Home by WaNan
Baek Seolhui (Writer, Columnist): What is a home, exactly? The Standard Korean Language Dictionary defines it as a building constructed for people or animals to live in and to have shelter from the cold, heat, wind, rain, and so on, but clearly, home is more than just a building to us. After all, it’s so important that it’s one of the three basic needs, along with food and clothing. Even if homes are mainly seen today as an investment, to those of us who don’t own one, we’ll always be wandering around restlessly to find a place to get some rest. And then, along came a webtoon about kids who themselves have no place rest.

No Home, published on the Korean site Naver WEBTOON since 2018, will soon be coming to an end after a six-year run. The webtoon’s author, WaNan, published their first webtoon, Welcome to Room 305!, in 2008, and their second long-running webtoon, HANA, was serialized for four years starting in 2013. No Home is WaNan’s third webtoon. The author previously examined the social construct of “home” in Welcome to Room 305!, which centers around LGBTQ characters, and in HANA, which tells the story of children who were test subjects before being completely abandoned. In No Home, WaNan looks at painful experiences in a somewhat smaller-scale home: the family.

The story follows six different socially awkward children who, because they get into fights from time to time due to their difficulty in forming relationships, end up forming a new home just for them where they’re able to help one another. There’s Ko Haejun, whose mother—his only family—passes away, leaving him with nowhere to go; Baek Eunyeong, who repeatedly runs away from the violence at home; Park Juwan, who can’t relax even in his own home due to his mother’s meddling; Kim Mari, who’s burdened with taking care of all the household chores merely on the basis of being a girl; Kang Hara, who quietly walks her own path despite constant gaslighting by her mom; and Gong Minju, who grew up wanting for nothing because of her mother’s dreams of having the perfect family.

The characters in No Home deal with a kind of day in, day out misery that’s all too commonplace. It’s exactly that familiarity that’s guaranteed to move readers to tears. Anyone who grew up in South Korea will empathize with at least one of the family issues explored in the webtoon. Did we really have a place we could confidently call home back when our families’ homes were our whole world? And where can we call home now? WaNan continues to make webtoons that attempt to find the answer.

Witches by Brenda Lozano
Kim Boksung (Writer): The Mexican novel Witches by author Brenda Lozano is told in true memoir style from two perspectives. The first is the young, modern, city-dweller Zoe, who, as a journalist, relays her story in a more familiar, matter-of-fact style. The second, and likely less familiar for the reader, is the older, traditional Feliciana living in the village of San Felipe, who speaks more poetically, in long, wandering sentences. Though the two would sound at first to have little in common, the underlying realities of their stories are inextricably interlinked. In fact, you may have to make your way through this book with a careful eye to be sure whose narration you’re reading during any given section. This may even be intentional on the part of the author: Readers are likely to gravitate more toward Feliciana’s less familiar story of traditional Mexican life—her character even speaks in the local language of her village, though the book is originally in Spanish—and want to hear more from Paloma, her mentor, but we still get so much of the book from the more privileged view of urbanite Zoe. With parallels to a real-life Mexican healer who faced persecution for their beliefs in the mid-20th century, Feliciana’s story is more immediately impactful, but both characters, and the many women and nonconforming people in their lives, grapple with living under the same hostile patriarchy. The beautiful language of this loosely plotted novel reminds us of the power that stories, both individual and collective, have in the face of adversity.