Television

Mission UnBearable #7

LN Lupa

14 Aug 2025 — 3 min read

evilween_baked

Season 4, Episode 7: “Bears”

This family wedding reception-themed episode was fully one entire hour long, but it felt as long as a family wedding reception actually is. It attempted to repeat the success of Season 2’s “Fishes”, which was one hour long and stuffed with family-playing guest stars. Some of those guest stars returned: Sarah Paulson, John Mulaney, Bob Odenkirk, Jamie Lee Curtis. Brie Larson joins the show. Wow, look at these actors I know from other shows. I’m so proud of you, the people who make The Bear, for knowing them personally. It’s so cool to be able to show off knowing famous actors.

If I had my own TV show, all the one-off relatives would be played by contemporary science fiction authors and interactive fiction designers.

The quantity of guest stars in "Bears" and the necessity of giving them all time to deliver their contentless back-and-forth meant there were no montages this episode. Thank heaven for small mercies.

The soundtrack continued to raise questions (hackles). The setting? A wedding reception ostensibly staged in this very year, 2025. The music? Weezer and The Decemberists. What sane person would play Weezer at a wedding reception? Weezer is a band with an actual song about being butthurt that a hot girl you know is gay. I never pictured myself taking a stand for the rights of the Wedding DJ, but my god man someone needed to get the Chicken Dance on those speakers urgently.

There were some good scenes in this episode. Carmy has a heart-to-heart with Uncle Bob Odenkirk. Gee, that Odenkirk kid is a real talent! Syd and Richie bond in bookends at the beginning and end of the episode: a beautiful way to show the depth of their development, when once they rightfully hated each other.

On the other hand: the Faks. The proliferation of the Faks from the singular scuzzy repairman into an infinite series of less and less compelling guest stars whose purpose is evidently to Waste My Time marks the arc of the show’s decline like a series of buoys on a string. They have never been funny. They will never be funny. Having every female character coo over Neil Geoff Fak as if he were an adorable baby and not a fully complete adult man is getting weirder and weirder and is still not funny.

The creators of this show do not understand the purpose or function of “realism” in art. They believe that the depiction of everyday events in a style which highlights the everydayness will lead, inevitably, to profundity. But they’re wrong. To make realism meaningful, you must already have some belief or conviction or perspective which can only be made visible by close attention to the world as it is. You must use the tools of your art to show us what you see in this world or this society or this place, so we can see it too.

All I see is somebody else’s family party, where they talk about memories that only interest them, make jokes only funny to them, and celebrate themselves as if they were unique in the same fashion every family does. This is fine when I’m doing these things with my real family. But I would not present it to the world as if it were a work of profundity, not in any length greater than a joke Tweet. I am an in-law at this party, and not one of the attendees has been drawn deep enough for me to wonder what they will do today, or how this event makes them feel.

After the party, I will go home and say “God, I should have been working today instead.”