Barry season 4 review: How the hit HBO show dropped the ball

BarryIt hurt to be so close.

HBO’s dark comedy is, by design, almost unrecognizable from the show it started as. What began as the quirky story of a hitman (Bill Hader) who wanted to turn his life around by becoming an actor (though he couldn’t fully shake his assassin ties) is now, in its final season, a harrowing exploration of the damage wrought by the delusions of one bad man. In some ways, it’s always been that. This time it’s just much less funny about it.

It’s fascinating to untangle the ways Barry The show may be in its current state. Season 3 spent a considerable amount of time wrestling with Barry’s delusions about what it meant to be a good person, going to great lengths to demonstrate that even when he was trying to protect people like his girlfriend, actor Sally Reid (Sarah Goldberg), he was motivated by a monstrous selfishness and barely concealed fury that began to infect those around him as well as harm them.

The final episode of the series, BarryThis film continues the journey that Barry Berkman started for all of us. Barry has been captured and is now in prison. His former acting instructor Gene Cousineau, played by Henry Winkler in the sting, agreed to serve as bait. Gene Cousineau, who was a washed up actor in the first season when Barry encountered him, has now become an overly self-centered dolderer, convinced that everyone must know his story. Sally — barely coping with the shame of her relationship with Barry, a moment of rage that went viral, and the PTSD of killing a man in season 3 — has given up her career in Hollywood to become an acting teacher who still sees herself as her greatest student. And NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), the hapless Chechen mobster who can’t quite disentangle himself from Barry’s life, attempts to go legit with his boyfriend Crístobal (Michael Irby), only to find himself enveloped in the criminal element yet again.

Even though there are plenty of great jokes, Barry — an extended bit about how loud the Fast & Furious movies are here, a gag about CODA there — the show is very clear that it’s not operating in a comedic space anymore. The big, brassy musical sting that always accompanied the show’s title card is gone; silence takes its place. Characters suffer brutal beatings and make ugly decisions, sometimes in a manner so jarring that it feels inconsistent with the show’s prior seasons. It’s never so big that it makes the characters morality questionable.

All of it is impeccably depicted by the show’s first-rate cinematographers and directors, lately including co-creator Hader himself (who directed all the episodes of the final season). BarryThe film has a distinctive visual language which makes it difficult to turn away, even when it is making upsetting or frustrating story choices: A dispassionate, smooth camera, that moves back and forth as characters enter and exit a scene, the tendency to put dramatic violence in the background, while mundane events unfold in the front, and blocking, that gives actors plenty of room to express how they feel in and about their space. Barry’s camera conspires with the viewer, asking them if they noticed the same thing, when one character lies to another.

The best way to describe this? Barry’s fatal flaw: It has an answer for its questions, and those questions aren’t given new dimension via its characters. Can a cat change its color? Is starting over impossible once you’ve crossed a certain threshold? How does one possibly account for the damage they wreak on another’s life?

Retrospectively, tightrope walking is a very dangerous activity Barry It was an incredible feat to walk more effectively in the earlier seasons. This series’ heightened humor and its grounded violence have always been at odds. That it managed two fantastic years of TV is amazing. Hader, and the other cast members of Barry’s writers The actors had to choose between focusing on the comedic aspects of their character studies or answering serious questions regarding the widespread toxicity caused by violent men.

Barry’s last season is relentlessly driven to answer these questions. This admirably awful yet frustrating series of episodes is a testament to the power and beauty that can be found in film. BarryHader’s moral universe, as he and his collaborators constructed it, is not a good one. The same goes for the other way around. The story is strong and its characters serve it. Barry Berkman plays the role of villain in Barry. He was charming for a bit, but there’s no taking back what he’s done — and now we’re all on this miserable path with him, to the very end.