This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit monicacardenas.substack.com This essay is adapted from one I wrote for Substack March 2024 and another for Jenny Magazine in August 2026. If you follow me here or on Instagram, you know I’m a little obsessed with Donna Berzatto from the hit television show, THE BEAR. This essay explores why she is such an intriguing character to me, an estranged daughter. Some spoilers ahead. “I hate myself for saying this, but that show is very triggering for me,” I tell some of my sisters during a Sunday group call. We’re talking about The Bear. I don’t want to be one of those people who overuse the word “triggering,” but in this case it truly does apply. And not just for the chaotic restaurant kitchen scenes. But let’s start with those. By my informal polling, anyone who has worked in a restaurant will be overcome with a familiar panic when watching the first few episodes, where absolutely everything goes wrong in the kitchen of a beloved hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop in Chicago. The oldest four of us sisters worked in diners, bars and chain restaurants from the age of fourteen. Vanessa carried on until her mid-thirties. I finally gave it up after I paid off my credit card debt from my summer abroad, three long years after graduating from college. Gina bartended until she had her first kid, and Jess refused to return to Bob Evans the second she finished school. The camaraderie – but also the anxiety and exhaustion – portrayed on the hit show are not unfamiliar to us. If these were the only triggers on the show, I could probably bear it. But the other one is a lot more insidious. It’s Carmy’s mother, Donna. Played by Jamie Lee Curtis, she doesn’t actually appear until halfway through season two, for just two episodes. But her narcissism and neglect weighs on Carmy and his sister Natalie brilliantly from episode one. Carmy is a mess. His brother recently committed suicide, and he is plagued with something like PTSD, resulting from working for a head chef who appears to be the worst person in the world. Carmy is twitchy, smokes like a chimney, and avoids all emotional connection. Natalie is more well-adjusted, but that’s only because she’s the fixer. If you’re a fixer, you already know, you look like the one who has it together, but that’s only because you’re too busy helping everyone else to resolve their own demons. Natalie hassles Carmy to talk to her and begs him to go to AA. When he finally relents, her face is the picture of relief. She has saved one brother, for now. Until S2:E6, Donna Berzatto is invisible, but her impact is deafening. It makes me squirm. When she finally appears it’s almost a relief. This is the thing that is so deeply uncomfortable. This is why I relate to but despise these characters. They are me. That kind of dysfunction seeps into every part of your life. Sure, I know the misery and elation that’s possible working in a restaurant, but I also know what it’s like to have a mother who is there one minute, gone the next. Whose love is conditional, and the conditions are a mystery.
