Early in “The Bear’s” fourth season, a digital clock is placed in the kitchen to count down the minutes over the next two months. If the restaurant’s finances don’t improve by the time it reaches zero, The Bear will close for good.

There’s something a little shameless but also on-point about introducing a literal ticking clock to the proceedings, emulating the world of reality TV cooking shows. Everything is riding on the next eight weeks. Can the team rise to the moment and fend off defeat?

To an extent, that’s been the overriding question of the entire series: Will this Chicago endeavor — be it a humble and disorganized Italian beef sandwich shop or an ambitious fine dining establishment — stay in business with so many headwinds threatening demise?

It’s a painstaking, sometimes precious, sometimes absurdist process, often captured in abstract montages. After a disastrous review of the restaurant from the Tribune that includes descriptors like “confusing” and “showoff-y,” the staff at The Bear are holding out hope that, together, they can save the day. One of the show’s strengths is that you’re always rooting for these misfits to find a way.

Over the years, the series has become more of a character study with only occasional nods to plot. Season 4 is an extension of that and could have been condensed to fit into Season 3 to make room for more propulsive storytelling this time out. But creator Christopher Storer and co-showrunner Joanna Calo want you to luxuriate in the experience and are taking their time. It’s fair to ask if they’ve used that time wisely.

Chef and owner Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) has been mired in a funk ever since the gang agreed to go all-in on the venture, vacillating between angry outbursts, stubborn self-sabotage and a sad-eyed mopiness, and it’s kept him from making more meaningful connections with the people in his life, professionally and personally. He’s recreated the same toxic workplace conditions that he disliked so much at the height of his career before coming back to Chicago, and I wish the show had committed to exploring that irony, and whether it was worth pursuing over the idea of serving high quality affordable food to the masses.

The extended Berzatto family may be given pride of place in the show, but it’s the restaurant’s family that has been where the most compelling stories lie. Gradually, Carmy tries to be less of a pill. Still, nothing seems to bring him joy or a sense of fulfillment. What does he want out of life? When he first returned home to run The Beef, that seemed clearer: Trying to connect with the legacy of a brother who died by suicide, and to honor him in a way that also reflected his own talents. Now that Carmy’s opened the restaurant of his dreams, everything is fuzzier. Even if The Bear becomes a wild success, it may not fill the gnawing hole in his soul.

Maybe, though, it will be enough to ensure that his creative partner Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) also becomes his business partner. Or maybe she will be seduced away to open a new restaurant with someone else. Even she isn’t sure what she wants. Carmy is an agent of chaos — a Berzatto family tradition! — but both The Beef and The Bear are where Sydney found her footing as a chef again. She has a love-hate relationship with the place. Or maybe hate isn’t the right word; “long sigh” might be a better phrase. Individually and together, Sydney and Carmy are working through remnants of old regret and new fears and also so much yearning.

At its best, “The Bear” (a Hulu series produced by FX) explores the idea of aspirations that are both specific and illusory. What does success look and feel like? The staff have achieved so much already. The biggest evolution has come from Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), transforming himself from a jagoff into, quite simply, a better man. Even so, he still has a way with words: That tough Tribune review, he says, “kicked me in the 'nards.” Never change, Richie.

Sweeps (Corey Hendrix) is solidifying his knowledge of wines and growing more confident (master sommelier Alpana Singh appears in a cameo). As the manager of the lunchtime Italian beef service, Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) is exploring ways to generate more money to help sustain The Bear through uncertainty. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) has quietly become a pastry chef with real chops (and gets an assist from a fan favorite who returns this season). Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) remains the heart of the show as the sous chef who realized, much to her surprise, she has the talent to merit working in the kitchen of this caliber.

Colón-Zayas won an Emmy for her performance last year, and deservedly so. This time out, she gets fewer emotional beats to play. Storer and Calo gave her one terrific episode that detailed her backstory last season, but they seem stymied when it comes to building on that going forward. It almost doesn’t matter because she’s played by a fantastic actress, but Colón-Zayas — and we, the audience — deserve more complexity from the role. That’s true of all The Bear’s employees.

Though we get glimpses of these characters pursuing their goals, there’s not enough of them knocking around together as a group. That feels conspicuous, because “The Bear” likes to romanticize restaurants while also digging into the intense work and precision that goes into making them actually run. The latter is gripping (if sometimes stress-inducing) but the former is where the show has consistently been weaker. On his day off, Carmy visits Frank Lloyd Wright’s former home and studio in Oak Park, and it’s in these moments that the show is striving for something that offers little payoff. Later, someone is rushed to the same hospital where Carmy’s ex-girlfriend works and you think, what is this, an episode of “Chicago Med”? But I love that Tina still affectionately calls Carmy “Jeffery,” a formalization of Jeff, which is her jokey version of “chef,” a title everyone uses when addressing one another in the kitchen.

Finally, Sydney gets a sequence that situates her within a Black community that extends beyond her father, which is something the show has been missing up to this point. It’s a reminder that she had a social life and other meaningful connections in Chicago before The Bear took over her every waking moment. Director and screenwriter Brian Koppelman returns as the wonderfully impassive numbers man to Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), a guy everyone simply refers to as Computer. There are yet again celebrity cameos, but they feel less distracting this time.

The world of “The Bear” is insular, so much so that it has all but forgotten about the vague notion of neighborhood regulars who kept The Beef in business. That it was once a fixture of the community and priced to be accessible to everyone. The show prefers to spend time with the Berzattos and their hangers-on, creating a sprawling orbit of people who remain drawn to one another despite their dysfunction, including Matty Matheson’s character, who is elaborately infantilized by the women in his life this season in ways that don’t really sync with past portrayals.

He and the other Faks exist to bring levity. Even so, the show is telling serious stories. That’s OK. But it’s also why “The Bear” and its performances have been mislabeled as comedy for awards purposes. Carmy is grieving, maladjusted, uncollaborative, selfish and a terrible communicator — the kind of guy who screams “I’m trying to say I’m sorry!” without actually formulating an apology — then gives his puppy-eyed stare when he’s called on it. That’s not a funny premise, nor one exploring life’s absurdities, but a knottier one filled with drama.

I miss the ragtag, kinetic, blue-collar energy established in the first season, when it was a collection of sweaty, frazzled, oddball personalities banging around in that grease-stained, beef juice-spattered kitchen and trying like hell to figure out a way to work together. Here’s how Richie remembers the old place: “At the beef stand? You walked in, and that place was rockin’, alright? It was alive and you were part of it and it was a vibe in there.” And there was a dark comedy coursing through so much of it. Or as the Tribune’s food and dining writer Ahmed Ali Akbar told me last year: The show was originally a story about “Carmy’s big head trying to fit itself in that small kitchen and every individual having their own reasons for resisting him. But ultimately, they can’t, because he owns the place.”

Stories have to evolve, and the show has followed a path that leaves much of that behind. Season 4 ends on a note that could be construed as a conclusion; whether that’s merely the end of one chapter or if it signals the end of the series altogether is unclear.

Over the course of the season, the denizens of “The Bear” tend to sound like they’re reading words of wisdom off a fortune cookie, but you can’t deny the sentiment undergirding at least one exchange. Think we’ll make it, someone asks? “I can only think about today,” comes the reply. Given the world at the moment, a truer sentiment was never spoken.

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'THE BEAR' SEASON 4

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Hulu

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