Did you ever start a book at the wrong time and then blame the book for weeks? I did that with a long fantasy series my cousin pushed on me for a year. I finally cracked it open on a red eye flight after no sleep, read like 200 pages in a fog, and told everyone it was boring. Picked it up again six months later on a lazy Sunday and could not put it down. It was never the book. It was me being a zombie. So yeah, mood matters way more than people admit. The Bear is one of those shows that grabs you by the chest and shakes, and doing that on zero sleep sounds rough. My advice is wait a while, then rewatch it slow, one episode a night like it was meant to be. The dinner episode hits hard either way but at least you will remember it.

Honestly this sounds like normal concrete doing its thing, not some magic trick. Bare slabs shift color as they cure and dry out, that's just how it works, the gray you see on pour day isn't the final color. Sun exposure and slow curing can make a difference in how even it looks, sure, but calling it a big transformation feels like a stretch. Sealer wouldn't have anything to do with it either since you didn't put any on, so your brother in law was chasing the wrong answer. Next time it might not go the same way depending on weather, mix, and how fast it dries, so don't count on it looking the same every pour.