Barry season 3 keeps killing it, and that’s the problem

Barry The violence was already over when the first episode aired. Bill Hader plays the role of the hitman. He walks up to the victim and grabs his gun from his nightstand. The bullet is still in his head. He unscrews the silencer from his pistol and pockets it with the discomfort of a man who quit smoking a year ago yet couldn’t help but buy a pack of menthols. The gun is his and he feels more at ease with it. But he doesn’t necessarily like himself at the moment.

Halfway through season three BarryThis weekend’s HBO premiere of a new series, titled “The Killer” will mark the return of this show. This series is about a hitman that decides to quit his job and study acting. It’s a comedy about a murderer who discovers a passion for theater. On another level, it’s among prestige TV’s most thoughtful ruminations on violence. Following a delay of three years due to COVID-19, production finally resumed. Barry returns to continue cracking jokes and contemplating violence — especially the sort you don’t do with a gun.

Season 3 will return to the present Barry It expands the scene by slowly expanding it from where it started. It shows the victim making a telephone call. It is clear that this victim was like all victims. He had a loved one, and lived a full life. The jokes that the man holding the gun makes on the show don’t seem funny enough to erase this fact.

Photo by Merrick Morton/HBO

Although this is an insipid way to introduce comedy, it’s a good one. Barry is at its best when the show’s writers are putting their protagonist through the moral wringer while also learning how to act, help his girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg) navigate showbiz from its bottom rung, and deal with frequent frenemy NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), a Chechen gangster who rises through the ranks despite a distaste for violence and a demeanor more suited to being an influencer of some sort (but the good kind). Let’s laugh! Barry’s writers and performers deftly field all of these complex feelings, the fact that violence is abhorrent and yet compelling to watch, without feeling like it’s moralizing. You’ll find every squirm has a great laugh, if you just wait.

But Barry’s best joke is also its most dangerous one: Bill Hader himself. An actor comic who burst onto the scene on Saturday Night Live thanks to his awkward-yet-outrageous demeanor, BarryHe has carefully considered the dissonance of casting Stefon, the cold-blooded killer. Hader, co-creator of the show says this was the biggest challenge. BarryAlec Berg has been sharing the story of a hitman with his audience without ever making him look cool.

A 2018 GQ profile noted that Hader went so far as refusing to pose with a gun in his photo shoot, and emphasized Barry’s discomfort in promo posters where Hader does carry a firearm. It doesn’t matter how difficult it is. BarryAlthough I tried my best to avoid glorifying violence, many people found themselves drawn to it.

Hader found it troubling that after shooting the scene in which two men are shot down, many people were telling him how gorgeous he looked while doing so. “A woman was interviewing me—and I’ve never had anyone say something remotely like this to me in my career—but she said, ‘When you gun those guys down at the end of the pilot, it was straight-up Hot.’ It’s supposed to be crazy disturbing, so I’ve failed.” Mostly, though, Hader succeeds (in the sense that the killings are not glamorized, not in the sense that he’s unattractive). Barry’s work as a hitman is as rote and depressing as his time in acting class is hilarious.

This may be why it is in its third series. BarryIt begins to narrow in on the many ways someone can become violent. Season 2 ends in bloody, gang-fueled violence. Barry has reached an extreme with its physical violence, and begins to dive deep into violence of a more emotional sort, the kind that had been contained, mostly, to Barry’s acting classes. Now, at the start of season 3, Barry’s mentor and acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) knows that Barry killed his girlfriend, Detective Janice Moss (Paula Newsome) at the end of season 1.

Photo: Merrick Moron/HBO

The Best Barry’s many visual achievements is the fact that whether or not blood is spilled, its cast and crew always make it so the viewer knows — through the camera slowly creeping in on aggressors, in the always-visible faces of victims, through ambient sound or lack thereof or the blocking and staging of passersby — when they are witnessing violence. That makes sense. BarryIt is important to be clear about this because BarryAlso, it’s a great show that focuses on actors.

And so, as Barry has wondered since season 1, what’s the difference between performing good and being good? Six episodes into Barry’s third season, Barry is discovering that even with his considerable skills and growing performance acumen, there is precious little that will help him bridge that gap. Many ways can be used to bring about violence. You can’t repair violence.

Barry Season 3 will premiere on Sunday April 24, on HBO Max and HBO. New episodes are added weekly.