THE BEAR and Time: Absence Makes The Heart Take Notice

The Bear 3.06 "Napkins" uses time imagery to track Tina's journey not merely with a repeating clocks, which were also constant in Season 2, but Tina’s actions; she’s constantly checking her alarm clock, watch, bus arrival updates, timesheets, spreadsheets.

Tina spends the first half of the episode waking up early to pack lunch and get dinner in the slow cooker, running to catch the bus, clocking in and out at work, showing up early to interviews . . .

But everything changes the moment Tina sees The Original Beef.

From this moment in the episode there’s a distinct lack of clocks: no watches, no closeups of red digital radio alarms, nobody’s phone flashing the time, no bus delay notifications.

The lack of ticking time allows Tina and Mikey talk with no intrusion or rush, but more specifically and thematically it takes the pressure off Tina.

For the first time all episode (which spans a few weeks), she can relax and stop checking the clock. Because the prevalence of clocks was almost omnipresent in the first half, the relief, the distinct absence of a certain pressure, is distinctly noticeable.

Takeaways

Whether it be a certain colour, the score, or a running motif such as time represented a dozen different ways, if you want something’s absence to be felt, first you have to make its presence known.

Once you do establish the thing, you can make its absence meaningful without making a ‘big deal’ or drawing special attention to it. Even if they don’t actively notice in the moment, your audience will feel the impact.