Television doesn’t get much better than the hit FX comedy-drama, The Bear.

Set in Chicago, the show revolves around the central figure of Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), an award-winning chef who returns home from New York City to run his family’s struggling restaurant, following his brother’s death by suicide.

Throughout the series, Carmy is seen to wrestle with demons that stem from the dysfunctional dynamics of his family and the near-crippling obsessiveness that drives his culinary career. For Carmy—the pressure to succeed to the highest standards requires a singular, self-annihilating focus on work.

The eatery itself, originally The Original Beef of Chicagoland, is the beating heart of the story, both for its walls, within which much of action takes place, and for its loyal band of chefs and family members—who work like Trojans to keep The Beef alive, and to resurrect it in its higher incarnation, The Bear.

The most consequential character bond of the series is between Carmy and his sous-chef Sydney ‘Syd’ Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), whose devotion to The Bear project is evinced by how much stress she absorbs, and how doggedly she works to balance and counteract Carmy’s worser angels.

As they collaborate—in Season 2, Episode 2 (‘Pasta’, by Joanna Calo)—to develop recipes for The Bear’s inaugural menu, Sydney dares to ask Carmy what it felt like to hold three Michelin stars—‘panic’ and ‘dread’ are what he recalls of receiving the news. When Carmy asks her in turn if she wants a star, and she replies that she does, Carmy tells her plainly what it will take:

You’re going to have to care about everything, more than anything.

In encapsulating the perfectionism required by the restaurant industry, the line speaks to the very nature of driving creative and entrepreneurial ambition—it requires an all-encompassing and immersive fixation on the project. It requires your full attention to every last detail, and it requires you to put it first in your life for a time.

In the end, high ambition requires—at least some—obsession, to be realised. And however excessive that kind of passion may seem, we have a tendency to respect its results.