When Carmy Berzatto returned to Chicago to take over the restaurant, he and Richie immediately settled back into sibling-like squabbling. Richie is introduced as a "lovable brute who
cosplays as an Italian and gets into Worldstar-style fights with staff. 'Y'know he's not even
Italian, right? 100 percent
Polish. Fuckin' insulting,' Richie shouts at Carmen about a passerby in episode four. 'You know ''you're'' not even Italian, right?' Carmen shoots back." Richie is, simply put, an asshole, and the "most damaged, the most broken, and the most aimless [character], a miasma of resentment and condescension yelling about a changing restaurant in a changing neighborhood to hide his fear." Carmy (also an asshole, but of very different temperament) is forever annoyed by Richie's antics, but also cherishes him as the most genuine surviving relic of his brother, such that they ritually share cigarettes and memories of Mikey, and Carmy eventually empties the restaurant's cash reserve to bail out Richie after an accidental head injury to a patron results in an arrest and a night in jail. The episode where Richie stages, entitled "
Forks," introduces a number of new recurring characters and is one of the most beloved in the series, as Richie embraces hospitality as honorable work both for himself and in service of his family. Terry tells Richie that she agreed to host him because Carmy testified that "he's good with people," with which she agreed. Richie returns to the Bear with a newfound respect for the restaurant business generally and Carmy specifically. This détente between the sibling rivals lasted but two episodes before a minor kitchen crisis resulted in a Carmy breakdown. Richie saved the day by doing expo for Chef Sydney (
Ayo Edebiri) but his concern for Carmy's then-girlfriend Dr. Claire Dunlap (
Molly Gordon), who ended the night in tears, fuels a brutal and emotionally scarring argument between Carmy and Richie that in turn fuels an extended estrangement, which lasts through much of the spring and summer of that year. This sent the already irritable and stressed Carmy into orbit, and he escalated by calling Richie a loser and a leech obsessed with the Berzattos, dependent on Carmy to continue financially supporting Evie. Richie replied that unlike Carmy at least he had someone, Carmy was alone. Richie also brought up, and not for the first time, charges that Carmy had abandoned his family by leaving home and not coming back for Mikey's funeral. There was spitting and spite, many fuck yous, and Richie wrapped up the fight by yelling "I love you" multiple times. Once Carmy was cut out of the fridge, he called Richie at Syd's suggestion and left an apologetic voicemail, telling Richie that he was sorry, that he loved him, and that he would see him tomorrow. This resolved nothing. Bitter sniping, particularly from Richie, continued, however: "'Don't talk shit to me through the baby,' Carmy snaps to Richie in
Episode 5, after the latter makes a snide remark about the former, ostensibly to Carmy's infant niece. In
Episode 6, Richie calls Carmy a 'fuckin sociopath,' 'a little fuckin' narcissist bitch,' and 'Carmental'." All this came to a head in the season-four finale, "
Goodbye," when Carmy's bad communication and apparent retirement from restaurants triggered a ferocious conflict between, first, him and Sydney, and then, second, a more cathartic and confessional discourse between him and Richie. The dialogue and emotion of "Goodbye" has been described as "the conversational equivalent of a thunderstorm that brings a merciful, if furious, end to a heat wave." == Family ==