The Bear served up a ton of drama in Season 3, but the flavor was a bit off here and there. With more time jumps than ever before, there was also a lot more room to accidentally contradict some previously established character details. And two major continuity errors stood out the most.
The first involves Sydney. In a flashback to Carmy’s tenure at the super-fancy but soul-crushing restaurant in New York City, he substitutes fennel for blood orange on a dish for a customer who has a fennel allergy. It’s later revealed this patron is actually Sydney. The issue is... Sydney’s definitely cooked with fennel before. One of the first things she ever made at The Original Beef was a fennel salad. And, as an extensive Vulture investigation pointed out, she very likely ate fennel throughout the series a few times.
So, does she really have a fennel allergy or not? This one might not actually be a plot hole, since there are some potential explanations. Like, maybe Sydney lied about the allergy to see how the chefs would work around it as part of her restaurant research. Or, Carmy could have lied about the guest having a fennel allergy so he could freely add the blood orange component he thought worked better with the dish. But without any real clarity, the fennel thing just feels needlessly confusing.
The bigger plot hole revolves around Tina’s backstory. Halfway through the season, Tina gets a touching episode highlighting how she came to work at The Original Beef. Several years ago, she was suddenly fired and spent her days wandering Chicago looking for work so she could support her family. It was during this time she met Mikey. And as the two bonded over a beef sandwich, he offered her a job.
It’s a very sweet backstory... but it doesn’t really connect with what has been previously established about Tina’s life. As fans pointed out, Tina made several comments in Season 1 about how she’d been working at The Original Beef for much longer than just a few years, at one point saying she had been working there before Carmy was even born. But the new scene suggests she’s only been there for maybe around five years.
Basically, the whole new backstory for Tina seems to be a massive retcon changing what her relationship to The Original Beef and the Berzatto family was originally thought to be. At least it’s not a fennel allergy, I guess.
