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

Barry started the first episode with the violence ended. Bill Hader, playing an assassin of the same name, steps forward to retrieve a gun from the nightstand next to his victim, who is lying on a bed with red marks from the bullet to the head. He removed the silencer from his pistol and shoved it into his pocket with the uneasiness of a man who quit a year ago but couldn’t help but buy a pack of menthol. He knows where the gun belongs and feels better with it there. But he doesn’t necessarily like me right now.

Beginning of the third part of Barry, which premieres on HBO this weekend, the show harks back to this moment. The series, about an assassin who decides to give up his murder career and take acting classes, is at one level a fantasy comedy about a killer who discovers a love of theater. On another level, this is one of the most thought-provoking articles about violence on mainstream television. After three years of production delays related to COVID-19, Barry come back for more jokes and thoughts about violence – especially the kind you don’t do with guns.

When season 3 returns to this moment Barry to begin with, it does so by silently expanding the scene. We see the victim receive a phone call. Clarification: This victim, like every other victim, has a family, a life. And no joke that the man uncomfortable with the gun makes throughout the show is funny enough to dismiss that.

Photo: Merrick Morton / HBO

This is a terrible way to stage a comedy, but Barry is at its best when the show’s writers are taking their protagonist through a moral spiral while also learning how to act, helping his girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg) navigate showbiz from the bottom rung and deal with frequent liberal nemesis NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), a Chechen gangster who rises through the ranks despite his distaste for violence and whose attitudes are more suited to being an influencer of some sort (but good kind). Comedy allowed BarryScreenwriters and performers deftly embody all of these complex feelings, the fact that the violence is abhorrent yet fascinating to watch, without feeling like it’s moral. Every mess is accompanied by an equally loud laugh if you wait a few beats.

Not yet BarryIts best joke is also its most dangerous: Bill Hader himself. A comic actor who exploded onto the Saturday night live thanks to his clumsy yet outrageous manners, Barry specializes in the discord that comes with casting Stefon as a cold-blooded killer. The show’s challenge, according to co-creator Hader Barry with Alec Berg, always telling the story of an assassin without making the assassin look cooler.

A 2018 GQ profile noted that Hader went as far as refusing to pose with a gun during his photo session and highlighted Barry’s displeasure in promotional posters where Hader carried a gun. The difficult thing is that, no matter how difficult it is, Barry trying to resist the glitz of that violence, people were drawn to it.

Hader confused Hader that, after filming a scene where he shot down two men, people kept telling him how hot he looked doing that scene. “A woman was interviewing me – and I’ve never had anyone say something this remotely to me in my career – but she said, ‘When you shoot those guys in the end of the pilot , it was straight forward hot. ‘ It was supposed to be very disturbing, so I failed. For the most part, though, Hader is successful (in the sense that the murders aren’t flashy, not in the sense that he’s unattractive). Barry’s job as an assassin is rote and boring because his time in acting class is hilarious.

Maybe this is why in the third season, Barry begins to get involved in the myriad of ways a person can be violent. With season 2 ending in a bloody gang conflict, Barry culminated with physical violence, and began to delve into violence of a more emotional kind, the kind most of which was contained in Barry’s acting classes. Now, at the start of season 3, Barry’s mentor and acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) learns that Barry killed his girlfriend, Detective Janice Moss (Paula Newsome) at the end of season 1.

Photo: Merrick Morton / HBO

Between BarryMuch of the visual achievement is the fact that bloodshed or not, the cast and crew always make it known – through the camera slowly creeping into the invaders, on the faces of the invaders. victimization, through ambient sounds or their lack or the blocking and staging of bystanders – when they are witnessing violence. It means that Barry be very careful when communicating this, because Barry also a very good show about the actors.

And so, as Barry has wondered since season 1, what’s the difference between performing well and being good? Six episodes into BarryIn the third season, Barry discovered that even with his considerable skills and growing performance acumen, there was still a precious little bit that could help him close that gap. There are many ways to be violent towards others. There is little precious to fix it.

Barry season 3 premieres Sunday, April 24 on HBO and HBO Max, with new episodes weekly.