‘The Bear’ Episode 7 Delivers ‘Uncut Gems’ Levels of Anxiety

FX’s The Bear, now streaming on Hulu, is a dark comedy centered on Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), a professional chef who returns home to Chicago to run The Original Beef of Chicagoland, the family restaurant his dead brother left him. In attempting to revamp the Italian sandwich shop and manage a culinary team comprised of his “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), sous-chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), pastry tinkerer Marcus (Lionel Boyce), steadfast mom Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), and more, Carmy loses control of his temper, his sanity, and his kitchen.

The fast-paced eight episode season routinely dials up the tension with help from Jeffrey “JQ” Quinn’s edgy original score; chaotic camerawork; and intense, immersive performances. But The Bear’s most stressful showpiece is indisputably Episode 7, “Review.”

If you’d have told me Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago” would play atop one of the year’s most nerve-racking TV episodes, I likely would have laughed in your face. The title is relevant to the series, but as a relatively peppy, comforting track it’s not my first pick to pregame a bad day. Yet, exactly 20 minutes after The Bear’s opening credits rolled out to the hopeful pomp of instruments and Stevens’ emotive musical whisper, I felt like I’d just survived an anxiety attack.

Episode 7 opens with “Chicago” (the song) playing over a montage of Chicago (the city) transportation, architecture, streets, monuments, local eateries, and historical clips. We catch glimpses of chefs Syd and Carmy commuting to work, and before the track fades we’re taken inside the kitchen, where chef Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) is reading a restaurant review aloud. The piece is a rave, there’s just one problem: The reviewer favored Syd’s experimental risotto dish, which isn’t on the menu.

Carmy enters, pissed, and tells Ebra to stop reading. “We’ve got a lot to do today! We open in 20! To-gos live in 20! Let’s fucking go!” he shouts. But Ebra drones on and the soothing sounds of Sufjan Stevens subside, ominously foreshadowing conflict. Tina arrives with her son Louie, who got suspended from school. A screaming Richie enters to stoke risotto review flames. Carmy screams, “15 MINUTES TO OPEN!” And all the while, the camera swirls, whips, and bounces between subjects and rooms, ensuring the painfully fraught 20-minute shot never breaks. With 10 minutes until to-go orders are live, Richie asks Syd if she’s “blowing somebody down at The Telegraph” and she verbally dismantles him. Instead of focusing on the restaurant’s new system, these chefs — who’ve been simmering for six straight episodes — finally boil over.

Halfway through “Review,” it’s clear everything that can go wrong, will. But once we learn Sydney accidentally left the pre-order option open, The Bear crosses over into familiar — albeit rarely experienced — territory and delivers Uncut Gems levels of anxiety. Like Adam Sandler’s 2019 high-stakes thriller, “Review” features constant activity, a restless camera, and relentless dialogue. Both offer adrenaline-pumping looks at men who seem intent on testing the limits of themselves and those around them, along with frantic time crunches that pile on pressure and heighten stakes. As a full length film, Uncut Gems may be considered a main course, but the succinct “Review” is certainly a worthy Michelin star appetizer.

As the to-go tablet projectile vomits an endless string of order receipts, Carmy morphs into an unrecognizable version of himself, shouting, “78 slices of chocolate cake! 99 French fries! 54 chickens! 38 salads! And 255 beef sandwiches! Due up in eight minutes!” Richie and Sydney inch closer to exchanging unforgivable words, momentarily pausing to watch Carmy holler, “WHY ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME” not one but four times in Marcus’ face. Need a breather? Same. But tough beef, we don’t get one. Instead, Richie backs straight into Syd’s knife, Marcus throws his tray of gourmet donuts down, and Carmy dares ask Syd if everything’s good.

With a crazed, dazed look in her eyes, she smiles maniacally. “We are not good, Chef. I quit,” she laughs. “You are an excellent chef. You are also a piece of shit. This isn’t on me. Good Luck!” With a violent Sharpie toss, Carmy paces, bends down, and copes by eating a donut off! the! floor! Richie screams, “Yo cousin there’s a fucking line, are we open or not?” and the overwhelmed chef smashes the to-go order machine. The camera pans to a list of rules hanging on the wall, all of which has likely been broken in this single episode, and the end credits roll. Phew.

“Review” is a remarkable, anxiety-inducing feat that harnesses tension as an art form. The performances are raw, ripe with passive aggression, and at times hard to watch — an especially disturbing truth, since the show has been praised for authentic depictions of abusive culinary workplaces. The dialogue is damning and seamlessly flows like a piping hot plate making its way through a kitchen. And the choice to capture the mayhem in a single shot both dazzles and disorients.

In the end, pivoting from the smooth stylings of Sufjan Stevens to the bowels of culinary hell helped make these scenes more jarring. Like Stevens’ lyrics, Carmy “made a lot of mistakes,” but “all things grow” — even The Original Beef of Chicagoland after this hellish day.