Why Episode 7 Of The Bear Was Completely Rewritten At The Last Minute

Ah, the glorious one-shot. A difficult technique that involves continuously filming an entire sequence, episode, or film in one take with no perceivable cuts, the unique format has risen in popularity over recent years, thanks in no small part to groundbreaking properties like 2014's comedy-drama movie "Birdman" and 2019's gritty historical film "1917." Now, FX's hit new culinary drama series "The Bear" is the latest project to take a crack at a one-take installment. The seventh episode of its debut season, titled "Review," stunned viewers as the episode chronicled the busiest, most chaotic day yet for the employees of The Beef in a single continuous shot from start to finish.

Though "Review" was an impressive accomplishment both for "The Bear" in itself and across the greater TV landscape, the episode wasn't always meant to be structured how it was. In fact, the episode actually had a completely different script a mere few weeks before it was filmed (via Indiewire). Though the timing couldn't have been further down to the wire, series creator Christopher Storer and executive producer Joanna Calo elected to rewrite "Review" for one compelling reason.

According to series lead Jeremy Allen White (who plays Carmy Berzatto in the show), "Review" wasn't redone in this unique style for its own sake. "I'll say from my perspective in film and television, oftentimes, I don't know how much a single shot actually lends itself to the story," White said in an interview with Indiewire. "It's kind of like: We've got a lot of money, we've got a lot of time, we can do this, it will be really impressive."

The actor went on to explain that "Review" was reformatted into a single take because the unrelenting filming style fit into and even amplified the intensity of the episode's story. "I think in our case, it really lends itself to the story and where the characters are at because the tension is building so quickly we don't give the audience a break from it," White said. "There's no reprieve — it's consistent."

Even outside of "Review," "The Bear" has excelled at crafting a near-constant feeling of tension throughout each episode. According to White in a separate interview with Uproxx, constantly hitting those notes was key to the creative team's vision for the show. The actor even mentioned Adam Sandler's notoriously thrilling 2019 film "Uncut Gems" as one source of tonal inspiration. "We wanted to kind of feel that anxiety throughout," White said. "The energy [is] really, really high."