I waited for The Bear Season 4 like a good girl. You know the kind – the kind you become when you desperately want your mom to buy you something from the store and she gives you that look. So you sit still. Ankles crossed. Breathing shallow. Practicing telepathy with Jesus and every saint you remember from CCD. You don’t make a sound. You don’t blink too loud. You just hope.

And when it finally comes – this thing you’ve begged for, the season you swore would fix everything – you hold it in your hands, feel it warming your chest, and then watch it slip through your fingers like steam from a broken espresso machine. And somewhere deep inside, the inner child nods like, fucking figures.

That’s The Bear Season 4.

Gone is the beautiful chaos, the tightly wound pacing that used to spike your cortisol and make you feel alive. Remember “Forks”? Remember “Fishes”? Remember watching this show with one hand on your chest and the other texting your therapist, “I think I need to unpack my relationship with ambition”?

Season 4 hits different. The tension is gone, like someone left the back door open and all the heat escaped. The restaurant’s struggling, the team is spiraling, and sure, that all tracks. Real life is burnout and grief and “what now?” But this felt less like a simmer and more like a long sigh.

Even the camera is tired. The edits are slower. The chaos is swapped for quiet conversations in empty spaces, like the show is grieving its own momentum. If the earlier seasons were about survival, this one is about surrender.

I kept waiting for the moment where it would punch me in the gut. Where someone would scream so hard you could smell the sweat through the screen. Where a plate would shatter and so would I. But instead, it just… wandered. Everyone looks lost, and not in the beautifully tortured way they used to be. More like they’ve accepted defeat, and so has the show.

And can we talk about Liza Colón-Zayas for a second? Because what in the bistec encebollado is going on here? Season 4 gives us a family reunion-style wedding, and Tina is MIA? The one who’s been in the kitchen with them since before the foie gras and the Food & Wine articles? The woman who’s fed them, mothered them, yelled at them with a kind of love only Boricua women know how to deliver? You mean to tell me she couldn’t be there to dance, to drink, to scream “¡ay bendito!” when shit hit the fan?

Nah. That’s disrespectful.

And the writers had the nerve to sprinkle in some flashbacks to remind us of what we used to have, like seasoning a bland dish with a single grain of salt. It’s worse than forgetting – it’s teasing. It’s like they know we’re starving and offered us a bite of nostalgia instead of a full plate.

And that’s the thing – Season 4 felt like it forgot what made The Bear matter. The anxiety, the stakes, the way it held up a mirror to the immigrant hustle, to inherited trauma, to the way we turn kitchens into both battlefields and family tables.

This season? It steps back. It turns inward. Maybe too far inward. It’s trying to be meditative, but ends up meandering. And for a show that taught us to care about every second, wasting time feels like betrayal.

This season mourns. And maybe that’s the point. It’s about coming to terms with the possibility that the dream – the restaurant – might die. But it also lets the fire go out. And without the fire, The Bear is just a bunch of people standing around in a room full of broken dreams and half-used garnishes.

The performances are still stellar. The cinematography is still gorgeous. The show hasn’t lost its soul. It’s just too tired to cook. I’m not saying it needs to be chaos porn every season, but if I wanted muted tension and existential dread, I’d just open my inbox on a Monday.

Do I still love this show? Yes. Like I love the cousin who never calls back but shows up with Coquito at Christmas. But do I want a Season 5 that feels like this? Baby, keep that shit. Wrap it in butcher paper and send it out the back door. Because right now? It’s cold. And not in the cool, edgy way – just cold, like leftovers you forgot to reheat. But if this is how The Bear goes out? Then fine. Let it close the doors, hang the apron, and dim the lights. But don’t serve me a plate of sorrow and call it art. I came for the fire. I came for the chaos. I came hungry. And Season 4? It left me with a mouth full of ashes.