HBO’s ‘Barry’ Season 3 Starring Bill Hader Is Still The Best Show On TV

In 2022, we will all be freelance. Hitmen included. The gig economy has a long reach.

It’s like a life ago when Barry premiered (2018, if we’re still very young), and in the meantime, good-natured tortured assassin aspiring actor Bill Hader has made great strides. He’s also stuck in a neutral position. At the end of last season, he was happy with his girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg) and passed an audition with a major Hollywood director. He also commits a massacre while his mentor Gene (Henry Winkler) learns that he murdered the love of his life. Baby footsteps.

It’s amazing, there’s a familiarity to Barry’s tired “I can’t believe I’m still working on this” at the beginning of the series. Barry Season 3, showing on Sunday night. It just so happens that his weary, stressed sighs relate to another quest to kill someone and his “let’s deal with it” boredom involves killing people and not sending an overdue email. That familiarity is part of Barrygenius. The other is to never feel how dire those circumstances are.

The opening scene is perfect. Barry, who is currently taking the murder job through Craigslist, is staring at the horizon and mindlessly eating a donut, completely dissociated when someone pleads for mercy off-screen. The way the killing field is framed in an enthralling cinematic contrasts with the playful banter of the man who ordered hit and his target, Jeff. The guy wanted to forgive Jeff. “He’s sorry he messed up my wife!” You’re laughing. Barry doesn’t. Then he kills them both. “Can’t forgive Jeff.” Is it heartless or pragmatic? It’s not important. You cannot go back.

That’s the lesson learned from Part 3 of Barry.

Season 1 made good on a genius, absurdist concept: a trained hitman who treats assassin work with the office drone normalcy, finds himself drawn to the lives of… an actor who struggles but, suffering from PTSD and depression, cannot let go of his former self. Then the second season of the show was a story about Cinderella. Everything is going smoothly!

Yes, there is still baggage. There are people he killed and people who want him to still kill and people who are crazy about him killing. But he is achieving the personal goals he has set for himself. The thing is, the luggage won’t disappear once you take the glass slipper. When the unshakable past comes and torments, it becomes ever more shattered. It can be ruined. In the early episodes of Season 3, Barry doesn’t want to be ruined. But he also gave in.

It’s great when a masterpiece comes back and remains a masterpiece. This is still the best show on TV.

There’s a lot to be juggled. There’s the gravity of assassin work and the stress of the aftermath, both what it takes to get out of it and the secret web involved. There is seriousness in the journey of an actor and the life of a wayward artist, but also sharp commentary on the absurdity of the entertainment industry. And there’s the portrait of a man struggling with his demons and yearning to be better, but so real that he does the things we all do and, even when he’s on momentum of success, still can not give up.

The brutality of crime is never forgotten, and it’s not just because Barry is hallucinating about killing those he loves. However, the attraction is always there, because life is funny – even if life is dominated by death. In Barryevery character is dynamic and that complexity is the deciding factor for Barry’s part.

The strain on Sally’s newfound success at running and starring in her own TV show based on her past abusive relationship isn’t just the supporting character’s arc. (A scene in which she walks through her set, making quick production decisions before acting is the best distilled description of making a TV show I’ve ever seen.) It resonates. back and forth through each of Barry’s impulses.

NoHo Hank’s bossy now that he’s a major criminal is not just fodder for the Emmy-winning Anthony Carrigan he deserves. It establishes new power dynamics that Barry cannot harness on his own. When the season started, he was the one begging Hank for the killer job. It’s cruel. And, because this is Barryhilarious—but, and this is why the show is so good, it never sparkles.

Then there’s Gene. The show’s dumbest character is now the most tragic, and Winkler’s performance on that trajectory could spur an acting workshop Gene could only dream of teaching.

“Ever since I met that punk, bad things have happened to me,” he said of Barry, a line that, when it was delivered on the show, became the case for the greatest status ever. age. He now knows that Barry, his guide and surrogate son, is responsible for his girlfriend’s murder. But Barry don’t just let him get angry or get revenge, or simply call the police. He must reconcile with his own past mistakes, navigate his own safety from being killed by Barry, and do it all amid, reluctantly, trying to get back to Hollywood on his own. .

None of it will work. But it all works. Too good.

Barry has the best comedy series on TV. It’s also the most intense thing you’ll see this year. Barry’s right decisions could not save him. Of course, his bad decisions make things worse.

What’s happening with Gene and Barry in particular, creates a choking tension that stretches from scene to scene to the point where you wonder if your heartbeat is bearable at the moment. Every person who plays excellent movies comes. For all that drama, though, it’s also a drama that understands the richness and humor that grows in the mediocrity of life. It makes the firecracker comedy the most engaging interactions, but also knows when to turn for a standout comedy moment, like when Elizabeth Perkins comes in to steal a scene showing Hollywood and the Making TV series is bullshit like.

Contains commentary on toxic masculinity and educated destructive behavior. There are questions about what true redemption means, and hopeless redemption. The undeniable humanity in Hader’s performance is rooted in everything, a description of how hard you work.

HBO

All very emotional. The murder was not fun at all. Humor is not forced. But somehow, it’s dark and scary at the same time, but also very boisterous – and not at all forced.

By the way, making movies is a dream.

When a show is this good and its fans are just as excited as they are for its return, there’s always a temptation to ask why we’re watching this show now. That seems like a difficult question to answer for a series that is, again, about an assassin who wants to leave that life behind to act.

I think Barry nailed the show’s genre elements — the gun violence, the horror of the moments before someone was killed — with the kind of escapism we crave. The distance of those extreme circumstances can help its core message arrive. It’s hard to change. You cannot leave your past. Things may be fine for you, but that doesn’t mean the world will stop putting barriers in your way or trying to drag you down. You may want to be an optimist, but that’s not the nature of the world.

It’s bleak, but there’s also something terribly funny about it. That, I think, is Barry.