# Bears (The Bear)
**"Bears"** is the seventh episode of the fourth season of the American comedy-drama series *The Bear*, written by Joanna Calo and Catherine Schetina and directed by series creator Christopher Storer. It aired on June 25, 2025, on Hulu with a runtime of 1 hour and 10 minutes, and its premise is summarized by IMDb in a single line: "The wedding."[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Season and episode | Season 4, Episode 7 of *The Bear*[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) |
| Original air date | June 25, 2025 (Hulu, US)[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) |
| Runtime and rating | TV-MA; 1 hour 10 minutes[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) |
| Director and writers | Christopher Storer (director); Joanna Calo and Catherine Schetina (writers)[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) |
| Premise | "The wedding"[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) |
| IMDb score | 9.2/10 from about 8.6K episode ratings[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) |
| Notable music | Taylor Swift's "Style" is the episode's featured track[2](https://www.documentarytube.com/blog/the-bear-season-4-full-soundtrack-every-song-from-taylor-swift-to-led-zeppelin/) |
## Place in the series
*The Bear* follows Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto ([Jeremy Allen White](https://www.edgepedia.org/jeremy-allen-white)), a chef from the fine-dining world who returns to Chicago to run the sandwich shop left by his late brother Mikey, and who later converts it into an ambitious restaurant.[3](https://epguides.com/Bear/) Season 4 consists of ten episodes, and "Bears" falls near the end of that run.[3](https://epguides.com/Bear/) The episode takes place almost entirely away from the restaurant, at a wedding reception; TVLine counts the Season 4 wedding reception among the show's best moments outside the kitchen, alongside Season 2's holiday flashback.[4](https://www.tvline.com/2201750/the-bear-season-5-review-fx-hulu-real-time-one-day-grade-it/)
The cast assembled for the episode is unusually large for the series. IMDb credits, among others, Jeremy Allen White as Carmy, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as [Richie Jerimovich](https://www.edgepedia.org/richie-jerimovich), Ayo Edebiri as [Sydney Adamu](https://www.edgepedia.org/sydney-adamu), Abby Elliott as Natalie "Sugar" Berzatto, [Jamie Lee Curtis](https://www.edgepedia.org/jamie-lee-curtis) as Donna Berzatto, Josh Hartnett as Frank, Gillian Jacobs as Tiffany Jerimovich, Brie Larson as Francie Fak, Molly Gordon as Claire Dunlap, and John Mulaney as the Director.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/)
## Production
**A compressed shooting schedule.** Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays the Berzatto siblings' mother Donna, explained in a 2025 interview that Seasons 3 and 4 were shot simultaneously. She filmed the Season 3 hospital scene with Sugar, then shot her part at the wedding two days later, and the next day filmed her scene with Jeremy Allen White at the house.[5](https://time.com/7298374/the-bear-jamie-lee-curtis/) The same interview describes Curtis's framing of Donna as newly sober and aware of the instability she creates around her family, a reading she developed with creator Chris Storer during the Season 2 restaurant-opening scene.[5](https://time.com/7298374/the-bear-jamie-lee-curtis/)
The episode's soundtrack includes [Taylor Swift](https://www.edgepedia.org/taylor-swift)'s "Style," which a season-wide song list identifies as the season's Swift track and places specifically in Episode 7, "Bears."[2](https://www.documentarytube.com/blog/the-bear-season-4-full-soundtrack-every-song-from-taylor-swift-to-led-zeppelin/)
## Content and interpretation
The wedding at the center of the episode is the marriage of Tiffany, Richie's ex-wife, to Frank ([Josh Hartnett](https://www.edgepedia.org/josh-hartnett)), an event that gathers the extended Berzatto family and their circle in one place, including figures such as Francie Fak.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) • [8](https://www.theringer.com/2025/06/30/the-bear/the-bear-season-4-episode-7-bears-wedding)
The title also carries a literal note inside the episode. A scholarly analysis of the series notes that "Bears" acknowledges that 98% of grizzly bear attacks are, in fact, on hunters, a detail folded into the episode's treatment of the show's bear imagery.[6](https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/pdf/12446)
## Reception
On IMDb the episode holds a 9.2/10 rating from roughly 8.6K user votes, with 50 user reviews and 3 critic reviews listed, one of the higher-rated episodes of the season on that platform.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/) Season 4 as a whole carries a Metacritic score of 72, lower than the 92 of Season 2, the 88 of Season 1, and the 80 of Season 3.[7](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-bear/)
## References
1. ["The Bear" Bears (TV Episode 2025), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36944003/)
2. [The Bear Season 4 Soundtrack: Full Song List by Episode, DocumentaryTube](https://www.documentarytube.com/blog/the-bear-season-4-full-soundtrack-every-song-from-taylor-swift-to-led-zeppelin/)
3. [The Bear: a Titles & Air Dates Guide, epguides.com](https://epguides.com/Bear/)
4. [The Bear Season 5 Review: Final Season Takes Place In One Day, TVLine](https://www.tvline.com/2201750/the-bear-season-5-review-fx-hulu-real-time-one-day-grade-it/)
5. [Jamie Lee Curtis Breaks Down Donna's Big Moment in The Bear Season 4, TIME](https://time.com/7298374/the-bear-jamie-lee-curtis/)
6. [A Fork in the Road? The Bear in Popular Culture, European Journal of American Studies](https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/pdf/12446)
7. [The Bear Reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-bear/)
8. [Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue: The Very Special Wedding Episode of ‘The Bear’](https://www.theringer.com/2025/06/30/the-bear/the-bear-season-4-episode-7-bears-wedding)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Seasons, episodes, and installments › Episodes and serial chapters › Individual episode articles › General episode articles › Comedy and comedy-drama episodes*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license