In the United States, they are warming up for the premiere of the second season of The Bear. It doesn’t help that, with the writers’ strike underway, promotion in Hollywood is at a low ebb. But the point is that ten new episodes will be available this Thursday in the Hulu catalogue, the content platform owned by Disney where the company usually sends the projects it produces with a more adult profile to the US. However, in Spain we still have to wait two months to see these same chapters.
The press release, which arrived precisely this afternoon at the emails of the newsrooms of the media, informs that it will arrive “exclusively on August 16 at Disney. As anticipated, the new episodes will focus on how Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) reform the sandwich restaurant from top to bottom. Each one will have their own existential crisis as they discover that opening a restaurant is hell between bureaucratic permits, agreements with suppliers and menu planning.
How can it be, however, that the second season of The Bear arrives so late with respect to the United States when it is integrated into the Mickey Mouse conglomerate? Well, for the same reason that other series of subsidiary companies of The Walt Disney Company such as Grey’s Anatomy, Abbott School, How I Met Your Father or the recent Fleishman is in trouble are not broadcast simultaneously: almost the only series that Disney broadcasts at the same rate as the United States are those fictions developed specifically for the service. Those that belong to the ABC channel, the Hulu platform or the FX channel, also from Disney, have to wait.
It is an often inexplicable situation although the factors that affect these emissions can be understood. For example, Grey’s Anatomy suffers multiple stoppages during the broadcast of the season on the American grid and its production is very close to the broadcast rhythm. Of course, when it was broadcast on Fox or Fox Life, although these channels offered the episodes in the original version with subtitles a few hours after the broadcast in the US and, if any viewer preferred to wait for the dubbing to be produced, they had to wait about a week to see the medical case of the week.
But, when it comes to Hulu and FX productions, it’s generally not a very close-to-broadcast production, which would make it difficult to have subtitles and dubbing ready for listing. This does not prevent that, even in the case of critically acclaimed series such as The Bear, the subscriber is forced to wait, leaving them in a vulnerable position due to possible spoilers derived from pirated consumption and the American media.
It is still unusual that, while HBO Max, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video or Netflix watch their production from the world premiere, series like The Bear premiere late as if Disney did not consider them as an integral part of its offer in Spain. It is clear that they do not have priority status in comparison, for example, with the productions of Marvel, Star Wars or Willow, which has already disappeared from the catalog after its premiere in the fall in an operation to save costs. Well, there is a series that does have it: Only murders in the building with Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, produced by 20th Television for Hulu (both from Disney), will premiere its third season on August 8 both in Spain and in the US .
