‘Barry’ Closes Series with Expert Balancing Act of Comedy, Drama, Thrills

Bill Hader’s Barry comes to close starting Sunday night.

The HBO series served up an amusing first season with its initial story of an ex-marine turned hitman (Hader) who becomes an unlikely acting student under failed actor turned acting coach Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). Barry‘s initial season explored Barry’s untreated PTSD through Cousineau’s unconventional acting methods while also juxtaposing the cutthroat world of Hollywood with a literal cutthroat hitman. Often very funny, the first season rose to something special thanks to Hader’s fantastic core performance for which he received two Emmy awards.

What could have been a redundant exercise evolved into a broader, nearly ensemble comedy about how much people really can change and how people relate to and deal with personal trauma. Through Hader and team’s increasingly cinematic vision, we grew to love the heavily flawed cast including Hader’s Barry, Stephen Root’s Fuches, Sarah Goldberg’s Sally, Anthony Carrigan’s NoHo Hank, and Winkler’s Cousineau. While the story thankfully evolved beyond the initial acting class setting, Hader never completely abandoned the lacerating Hollywood satire, culminating in Sally’s hilariously real season three press junket.

Sunday night, Hader and team return for Barry‘s fourth and final season, and the series loses none of its bite.

Arrested at the end of season three, Barry begins season four in prison, and he essentially doesn’t care about his own fate. Instead, he spends his free call and subsequent collect calls reaching out to the people he loved the most on the outside: Cousineau (a key player in the plot to arrest him) and Sally (who fled Los Angeles to escape what she finally recognized as a ludicrously toxic relationship). He reconnects with the also incarcerated Fuches who wants to strike a deal with the FBI by pinning several other murders on Barry. On the outside, NoHo Hank and lover Cristobal (Michael Irby) develop a plan to return to Los Angeles and legally funnel sand back to Mexico to sell for building needs.

Of course all of that goes incredibly, comically, brutally wrong as most things in Barry do.

Season four progresses with the typical high confidence, cinematic visuals, complex themes, and brilliant performances to which we’ve become accustomed. Hader takes full ownership of the final season by directing all episodes, giving the series an inescapable sense of coherence. It’s as if the final season were really a 4-hour film. While I’ll of course miss the uniqueness and dark, twisted comedy of the series, it does feel like Barry exits at the right time. Further stretching disbelief with this or that character escaping near-death experiences or certain incarceration would eventually prove frustrating and damaging to the greatness the series thus far obtained.

What I didn’t expect was the unique twist the series takes as it approaches the end. I won’t spoil it here, but it yet again gives the audience new perspectives on the characters, new themes to consider, and — I suspect — the final word in the series finale (which I have not seen) about the lasting effects of generational trauma. And, yes, the series still remains very, very funny thanks to the casts’ uniform dedication to the excellent material. I particularly loved Winkler and Goldberg’s work as they evolved their characters beyond their previous work.

Barry was always a high-wire act that never actually faltered despite increasingly heightened degrees of difficulty. As we say goodbye, let’s celebrate Barry and Bill Hader and the entire ensemble for sticking the landing. They’ve delivered a final season that brings stiff competition to an increasingly complex comedy Emmy race.

We should all be here for it.

Barry season four premieres Sunday night on HBO and will be available to stream immediately on HBO Max.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4lf2LKZwoY