THE BEAR Series | Official Trailer (HD) FX

The remainder of the cast is ace, too, both in the kitchen (Liza Colón-Zayas as a skeptic who’s been slinging sandwiches at the Beef for decades, and consulting producer, chef, and Vice personality Matty Matheson, who’s a not-quite-on-the-payroll handman) and out of it (Abby Elliott as Carmy’s concerned sister and Chris Witaske as her awkwardly nice-Midwestern-guy husband).

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One warning, though: Do yourself a favor and give The Bear at least two episodes before passing judgment. That’s hardly a knock on the pilot, but it dumps you into a working environment that’s so intense and chaotic and cramped that it takes a bit of time to get your bearings and see the show and its characters beyond the chaos and flashbacks. Once you’re acclimated, The Bear becomes something of a marvel, a show with its own rhythm and with characters you generally want to be around, even as they’re losing it. That penultimate episode, the one with the montage intro set to Sufjan, boasts one of the most impressive directing feats I’ve seen on television this year: a 17-minute single shot that snakes through the constricted kitchen and builds to everything falling apart and characters coming to blows, this one also soundtracked by Wilco (a live jam of “Spiders [Kidsmoke]”), which is perhaps fitting: This show, like that band, like that humble sandwich, can contain multitudes.