There is much to be said about FX on Hulu’s new show, The Bear. The series revolves around a world-renowned chef who moves back home to Chicago after his brother dies by suicide and leaves him his sandwich shop in his will. But besides nerding out over its very Chicago-centric soundtrack (yes, it’s 90 percent Wilco songs), the thing many people can’t stop talking about is just what a dirtbag sleaze Jeremy Allen White looks like as the main character, Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto.
Naturally, stills of White from the show are reminding women online of their messiest hookups with men who share Carmy’s vibe. With his disheveled light brown hair, arms covered in tattoos and a face that perpetually looks like he’s either stoned or exhausted, Carmy fits the description of some of the terrible yet ridiculously hot men every big city has to offer.
After all, White has played that kind of guy before as Lip Gallagher on Shameless, so it’s not far-fetched to assume that Carmy operates the same way.
In her viral tweet, Alex Zaragoza shared a picture from the show, captioned, “I’m too scared to watch The Bear because I’m actively in therapy to stop falling in love with men who look like this.” She added, “By falling in love I mean wasting my time,” and “Unfortunately for me I’m now Jeremy Allen Wet.”
I asked Zaragoza what it is about men who look like Carmy that drive us crazy even though they’re bad news. “These were exactly the dudes I sat next to watching Big Brother skate videos and drinking Mad Dog 20/20 in my most formative years, so there’s a bit of that there for myself and other people who have stick-and-poke tattoos and have had a crush on Johnny Knoxville for 20-plus years,” she explains. “But also, these dudes, while often unable to pay rent, own more than one towel or find a goddamn condom at the adequate time tend to be fun and hot in that sexy, boyish way. This is a dude who will eat you out in a porta-potty at Warped Tour.”
It’s not that every shaggy-haired man with tattoos is automatically going to be skeezy, but there’s something about that particular screengrab from the trailer that evokes memories of fun-yet-questionable hookups. If I hadn’t spent all my free time over the weekend watching the show, I’d think Carmy is exactly the kind of guy who’d fuck me by a dumpster after closing out the restaurant at 2 a.m., sans condom.
The irony is, the actual character, Carmy, doesn’t fuck. He’s so traumatized from previously working in an extremely toxic kitchen and dealing with the death of his brother that he has no energy for love. He can barely call his sister to check in on how she’s doing. It’s likely that the last thing he’s thinking about is getting laid. But it’s understandable why, by looking at him, you’d think he’s Chicago’s hottest scumbag.
Either way, a ton of other people (read: not just Zaragoza) have tweeted about being horny as fuck for this man, while knowing full well that he’s the type who’d ruin their lives.
Case in point: TV writer, comedian, critic and former Chicago resident Ashley Ray added to the tweet, “Man has a face like he is asking you to do coke and fuck in a slippery slope private bathroom and they keep him in River North? They did us a disservice you see.”
Ray went on to provide eerily detailed descriptions about the kind of guy you’d be dealing with: “This man is okay with fucking in the patch of grass next to your building’s garage because your roommate is home and your place is a fucking mess, this man is making out in the walk in, he is FINGERING ME ON THE BLUE LINE. I am licking his forehead and wondering how it tastes like PBR, he is leaving Coles to get coke, getting arrested on his way back and texting me a dick pic with his inmate number written in sharpie on his hand when he gets out of county.”
Again, people who are just discovering now how hot White is may be disappointed when they watch The Bear and learn that Carmy’s not a fuckboy, but rather an overly ambitious man who is putting in the work to better his life and make amends with those he’s hurt along the way. Carmy might not be the guy these women are projecting onto him, but admittedly, there’s something hot about a man who is trying to get his shit together, too.
Tatiana Tenreyro
Tatiana Tenreyro is a contributing writer at MEL and has written for the A.V. Club and SPIN, living the dream of every plaid-shirted boy she had a crush on in high school.
