Olivia Colman wears a Rolex Submariner

In The Bear, Olivia Colman plays Chef Andrea Terry, who runs Ever, a fine-dining restaurant in Chicago and the place Richie is sent to learn from in the show's second season. The camera finds her in the kitchen in chef's blacks, hands working something small and precise, a steel watch with a black dial on her wrist.

It is a Rolex Submariner Date, steel, with a black dial and black bezel, a dive watch rated to three hundred meters. The choice was deliberate. By the account of the show's prop master, Laura Roeper, a watch in fine-dining culture is two things at once, a status symbol and a tool, the thing a chef checks all day because every second on a tasting menu counts. Terry's does both.

None of what makes a Submariner a Submariner is any use to her. The bezel for timing a dive, the case sealed against pressure at depth, the rating to three hundred meters: dead weight, all of it, at a kitchen pass. What the show keeps is the badge. Carmy, its lead and its most serious cook, wears a Submariner too, an older and well-worn one, so the Rolex becomes the mark The Bear pins on the people who can really cook.