Barry (HBO): Final Season Review - Lights Out for Glorious Dark Comedy

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: WATCH IT. This very dark comedy which features stellar writing, acting directing and action sequences, is as good, and as weird, as it gets.

Last week was a big one at HBO. The true crime miniseries Love and Death starring Elizabeth Olsen concluded, the prestige TV king-of-the-moment Succession unveiled its much-anticipated series finale, and the sterling streaming service HBO Max was tossed into the trash heap of history and replaced by the god-awful garbage streaming service Max. What a week! Oh…and lost amongst all that the best TV comedy series of the 21st Century and maybe the darkest comedy of all-time, Barry, came to its conclusion after four stellar seasons.

Barry, which is created by and stars Bill Hader, aired its finale on HBO right after Succession’s finale, and thus no one is talking about it which I think is a shame because while I thoroughly enjoyed Succession, I think Barry is at the very least its comedy equivalent, if not better.

If you haven’t watched Barry – and I know a lot of you haven’t, you really should. And I will make this series/season review totally spoiler free in order to encourage you to take the Barry plunge.

Barry tells the tale of Barry Berkman (Bill Hader), a former Marine war veteran who post-war works as an assassin. Barry finds himself in Los Angeles and ultimately ends up in an acting class taught by the esteemed Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). Barry gets the acting bug and tries to juggle his newfound emotional growth fueled by Cousineau’s acting classes with his rather cold-blooded occupation of killer-for-hire.

Seasons one and two of Barry were spectacular as they masterfully eviscerated the world of acting, acting classes, acting teachers and Hollywood. As someone who navigated all of those horribly inane things in real life, I found Barry to be not just insanely funny but astonishingly insightful.

Season three was a major shift for Barry as the series became much more surreal and existential. This shift at first was confusing and off-putting, but once it took hold (or I took hold of it) it elevated the show to extraordinary heights, morphing it from being an insightful comedy to a deeply and darkly profound one.

What made Barry such a remarkable viewing experience was that in addition to fantastic filmmaking, exquisite action sequences, great writing and even greater acting, every major character had a distinct and compelling dramatic arc that played out in completely unpredictable ways.

For example, Barry went from being a compliant soldier and cold-blooded killer to grappling with his conscience, his past, his mortality and God. Monroe Fuches, Barry’s murder-for-hire handler, went to hell and back and came out a considerably different man. Gene Cousineau, Barry’s self-absorbed acting teacher, went on an absurd roller coaster ride and ended up where he always wanted to be but not how he expected to be there. Barry’s self-absorbed girlfriend Sally went on a tumultuous journey but could never escape from her true, awful self. Chechen gangster NoHo Hank went from being a throwaway punchline to being a heartbreaking Shakespearean dramatic figure.

These captivating characters arcs were elevated by truly stunning performances across the board. In the first two seasons in particular, Henry Winkler as Gene Cousineau was as good as anyone has ever been in a television comedy. Winkler’s Cousineau was every acting teacher I’ve ever had…part Jesus Christ, part John Wayne Gacy, part Hitler, part Richard Simmons, part Mao and all arrogant, egotistical, insecure asshole, and Winkler’s singular, relentless brilliance made him must see tv.

Stephen Root as Fuches was incredible across all four seasons but was utterly sublime in season four. Root brought an extraordinary yet subtle sensitivity to this seemingly obtuse role and it was an absolute joy to behold.

Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank went from giving hysterical line readings in the first few seasons to giving a deeply-felt and moving turn as a broken man in season four.

Sarah Goldberg was fantastic as the narcissistic Sally from the get go but in season four she allowed the character’s narcissism to devour her from the inside out. Goldberg’s work in this series was really and truly special.

All of the acting in this series was top-notch. Obviously, Bill Hader was brilliant as the endearing sociopath Barry and carried the series in his subdued and subtle way from start to finish. But even actors in small roles rose to the occasion on Barry, like the fantastic and often under-appreciated Eddie Alfano, who was superb in a supporting role as a thoughtful but dim-witted tough guy in season four.

The final season of Barry is more akin to the existentially soaked sur-reality of season three than the more straight-forward comedy of seasons one and two. Season four, like season three, is filled with much psychological symbolism and often feels like a bizarre dream.

The threat not just of death but of divine judgement hovers over season four like a funnel cloud looking for the perfect place to touch ground. All the characters feel like ghosts haunting their own lives or like dream characters unable to wake from a recurring nightmare.

This may not sound like a fun comedy to you, and in some ways, it isn’t fun despite being funny, but make no mistake, it is a comedy, an extremely dark comedy, just not like any we’ve seen before.

Barry’s finale episode was as gloriously weird as everything that preceded it, and ultimately, and this is no spoiler, you could argue that no one ended up the “winner” in Barry…except, of course, the viewer.

But I must say that I felt the finale did stumble in its final sequence. Again, I won’t give anything away, but for a series that was so exquisitely profound for its first 31 ¾ episodes, the final sequence of the series was impossibly, almost irrevocably, trite.

The ending sequence felt so beneath the philosophical profundity of everything that came before it that it felt like either a lame joke or a cheap cop out. An ending that disappointing and unsatisfying can make you question an entire series in hindsight. While I feel strongly about that sequence’s failure, I don’t feel that strongly about it, and can see the wider point Hader was trying to make…notice I didn’t say “deeper point”, but that wider point was too banal and cliched and well beneath the standard that the great Bill Hader had set with his groundbreaking series.

So, yes, I was disappointed with how Barry ended, but I wasn’t on the whole I wasn’t disappointed with season four or the series overall. To me, Barry is the best comedy series HBO has ever produced. Veep is a close second, but I felt Veep stumbled in its final season more substantially way than Barry did in its final sequence. Since I am discussing the greatest HBO comedies of all-time I know people will ask so let me be very clear, I am not a Curb Your Enthusiasm guy in any way, shape or form. I simply cannot get through a single episode of that shitty show. I just don’t understand the appeal of Larry David in the least as I find him not only actively unfunny but aggressively repulsive.

In conclusion, Barry’s final season is a strange and surreal one but is both very funny and deeply profound despite missing the mark with the last sequence in the last episode.

If you haven’t watched Barry or you bailed on during the weirdness of season three, my recommendation is to go back and watch it all from start to finish. It isn’t what you think it is and isn’t what you expect, which is why it is so worthwhile.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Barry (HBO) - Season Three: A TV Review

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Great acting, writing and directing make Barry one of the b est shows on TV.

I’ve been a huge fan of the black comedy series Barry ever since it premiered on HBO in March of 2018. The show, which is created by and stars Bill Hader, tells the story of Barry Berkman, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who becomes a hitman and then unsuccessfully tries to transition out of a life of violence by attempting to become an actor in Hollywood.

I loved Barry because of its gloriously dark humor, its insightful and incisive take on the inanity of acting classes and the pursuit of success in Hollywood, and its exquisite writing, directing and acting.

Season three of the series, which runs for eight episodes, finally premiered on HBO in late April and finished in mid-June, and I just completed watching it last night.

Season three gets off to a not-so-great start, in fact it was so not-so-great that I thought it had jumped the shark and lost its mojo entirely. But after a shaky first three episodes, Barry once again finds its rhythm and gets into an irresistible groove, so much so that the final three episodes are as good as it gets on television.

In order to avoid spoilers, I will only say that the mantra for season three of Barry is that ‘the bill has come due’. Barry spent the first two seasons being a reluctant but very good hitman (and very bad actor), but now the hunter has become the hunted as the families of his victims are out for revenge.

As Barry slips deeper and deeper into a tangled web of his own making, he simultaneously dives deeper and deeper into an existential ocean searching for answers, or meaning, or purpose.

Bill Hader is outstanding as he perfectly captures Barry’s increasing agitation with life in an ever-increasing pressure cooker. The fear in his eyes is palpable as he desperately tries to maintain his cool and his cover as his world crumbles around him.

Supporting characters go through their own tumultuous and tortuous journeys as well, with Barry’s girlfriend Sally (a fragile and combustible Sarah Goldberg) riding the nauseating roller coaster of the Hollywood machine for her profoundly unsatisfying 15 minutes of fame. Barry’s acting teacher, Gene Cousineau (a gloriously inimitable Henry Winkler), is stuck on the same narcissistic, self-immolating, humiliating Hollywood ride, but for the last 50 years.

Naïve dimwit Chechen gangster NoHo Hank, a truly terrific Anthony Carrigan, is navigating his own fantastically preposterous maze as well, which includes his closeted homosexuality, deadly Chechen gang politics and a love affair with Cristobal (Michael Irby), a leader in a rival Bolivian gang.

Both Carrigan and Winkler are so great in their roles that it makes me giddy. These aren’t the usual sitcom caricatures, these are well-written, multi-dimensional characters brought to life by gifted, committed actors of great skill, and the results are glorious.

The rest of the cast, from big roles to small, are top notch as well, from D’Arcy Carden as Natalie Greer, Sally’s assistant, to Elizabeth Perkins as Diane Villa the head of BanShe the network for women, to Tom Allen as Mitch the philosopher baker.  

The writing is equally as good, and in the final half of season three is just fantastic. But what is most appealing about Barry, this season in particular, is the direction. Each sequence is so well designed, both cinematically and dramatically, that it feels like a master filmmaker is behind the camera.

Bill Hader and his co-creator Alec Berg directed all the episodes in season three, and their work is jaw-droppingly impressive. From the viscerally unnerving motorcycle sequence to the podcast sound-room sequence to the FaceTime to Chechnya/police raid/Bolivian hit sequence, all of the action sequences are unique in design and execution, and it makes Barry a glory to behold. Most television directors, even the good ones, have limited visual and creative imagination, usually because their ambition is stunted by the limitations of the medium and the business of television. But Hader and Berg are not infected by any such afflictions, and their vision is so clear and their direction so crisp, that Barry feels like cinema rather than tv.

As for the comedy, season three is less aggressively funny than its predecessors, but the humor that is there works because it is so deliciously dark. For example, there’s an action sequence, the aforementioned “sound-room” scene, that is incredibly disturbing, but which made me laugh out loud at a particularly bizarre moment amongst the depravity. This is what is so great about Barry, it isn’t forcing the laughs, it just lets you marinate in the madness of its premise and then jolts you with dark absurdities that are undeniably funny even if they are barbaric, or maybe even because they are barbaric.

Due to Covid and all the rest, we had to wait three years between season two and season three of Barry. Thankfully, HBO has greenlit season four of the series, and hopefully the wait between season three and four will be considerably shorter because Barry is undeniably one of the very best things on tv, and I’d like to think we deserve good things.

©2022

2019 TV Round Up

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 5 minutes 14 seconds

Once again the Emmy Awards are upon us, and once again no one cares. But since this Sunday night is supposed to be a celebration of the best of the best in tv, I thought I would briefly share my thoughts on the 2019 television fare I was able to catch.

I rarely write about television only because there is so much of it and I am so behind in watching everything that comes out. An example of which is that I literally just started watching 30 Rock for the first time a few months ago and that show went off the air in 2013.

The advent of binge watching, thank you Netflix, has changed the tv viewing experience so that audiences no longer simultaneously digest new material, but rather do it on their own time. I prefer this method of tv viewing, but it makes writing on the topic difficult and rather useless.

So, since I rarely if ever review television, I have decided to just throw together a cheat sheet of mini-reviews for the relevant shows I have watched this year. I have no idea if any of these shows are nominated for Emmy Awards because I, like every other normal human being on the planet, do not care about the Emmys, in fact my indifference is so great I refuse to even do a google search to see the list of nominees.

So with my laziness established, let’s begin our review of 2019 television!

GAME OF THRONES - HBO: 4 Stars

I watched Game of Thrones from the beginning and as a testament to my limited intellectual abilities I readily admit I didn’t what the hell was going on 90% of the time and had no clue who half the characters were, but the show had an above average amount of nudity and violence, my two favorite things, so I was on board.

Game of Thrones was one of the very few, in fact I think only, tv show I wrote about this year. As previously stated the show’s final season was a definite mixed bag and was not nearly as good as the seasons that preceded it. That said, watching King’s Landing get obliterated was as exhilarating a visual sequence as we have seen in the history of the medium.

The cast of Game of Thrones have always done solid, if not spectacular work. I think Emilia Clarke, Kit Harrington, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Peter Dinklage were among those who were the most spectacular.

THE BOYS - AMAZON: 4.5 stars

The Boys is an absolute gem of a show that is the best kept secret on tv. I seem to be the only person who has ever watched the program and have become a sort of evangelist in favor of it. I have told countless friends that they have to check this thing out.

The Boys beautifully deconstructs the corporate superhero mythology that is the dominant myth of our time. If you are sick of Marvel and Disney’s dominance of the superhero space…then watch The Boys. The show is an insightful and piercing commentary on the American corporatocracy, and it pulls no punches. It eviscerates the empty headed corporate flag waving of the media, Disney in particular, and tells more truth in its fiction than the establishment news has ever done in its reporting.

There is a sequence in the show, and I won’t give it away, but it deals with the Hegelian dialectic (problem - reaction - solution) and it is the absolute truth of our time and is brilliant.

The show stars Jack Quaid, who is the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quad. This is obvious but still kind of weird to see, but Jack is the perfect amalgam of his two famous parents. At times he looks exactly like his dad, and other times just like his mom…it is like he has his own weird famous parent morphing super power.

The rest of the cast, which includes Karl Urban, Antony Starr, Elisabeth Shue and Erin Moriarty, is top-notch and play their roles with aplomb.

The Boys is not perfect but it really is a fantastic show and a bolt of anarchist rebellious energy into the very stagnant super hero genre. This show actually made me yell in joy at one point at how subversive it is…I kid you not. Anyway, if you love super hero stuff, or are sick of superhero stuff…this is definitely the show for you.

MINDHUNTER - NETFLIX: 4.25 stars

Mindhunter is produced, and sometimes directed, by filmmaker David Fincher. One of my favorite Fincher films, and one of my favorite films period, is Zodiac. Zodiac is a rare Fincher film in that it sort of flew under the radar, in fact I didn’t even see it in the theatre. But after discovering the film a bunch of years ago, I cannot get enough of it…and even use scenes from it when I work with clients. I watch Zodiac so often it has become a running joke in my house…and probably with the FBI agents who are surveilling me.

Mindhunter is like an extended and expanded version of Zodiac, as it is set in relatively the same time frame, and shares the same visual and artistic aesthetic. Mindhunter is, not surprisingly since it is a Fincher project, beautifully shot and lit and looks great.

The acting in the show is solid and subtle, as the main cast maintain a tight lid on things. The guest stars, who play a panoply of serial killers, are creepily fantastic in bringing their famous killers to life.

Mindhunter is, at its core, an extremely well made “cop” show that is decidedly smart and mature. This show is Fincher at his best….moody, unnerving, menacing, unsafe. The show is so well- made I think it would be impossible to watch it and not end up double checking the locks own your windows and doors before going to bed at night and also not looking at the nearly invisible normal people who populate our surroundings and thinking, at least for a moment, that they might be, or are at least capable of being, super predators.

FLEABAG - Amazon: 4.5 stars

Fleabag is what feminist tv/film should be. It is not whiney and self serving with an axe to grind but aggressively funny and deeply reflective. Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote and stars in the show and her performance is remarkable and her writing, scintillating.

The rest of the cast, which include Sian Clifford, Andrew Scott and the glorious Olivia Colman, give superb performances across the board.

What makes this show such an intrepid piece of feminist comedy is that the female lead has absolute agency, she is not a victim but an active participant in the mess that is her life. The plot of Fleabag is fueled by Waller-Bridge’s character’s actions, not by her responding to other people’s actions. If she is a victim it is of her own bad decisions, not of other people’s.

BLACK MIRROR - NETFLIX: 4 stars

Black Mirror really is a Twilight Zone for the 21st century. The show never fails to be unique, original, challenging and insightful and also never fails to surprise. Black Mirror boasts terrific writing, top notch direction and stellar casts.

What is great about Black Mirror is that all of the episodes are stand alone so you can watch them at your leisure. This season there are, at least so far, only three episodes and they are fantastic. The best of the bunch is “Striking Vipers” which is both shocking and funny.

I can’t remember being underwhelmed by any episodes of Black Mirror, but I can recall being completely freaked out by more than a few of them. (The one with the dog like hunting drones is stellar!)

THE HANDMAID’S TALE - HULU: 1.5 stars

The Handmaid’s Tale’s first season was an electric piece of television. The fact that the show was in production prior to Trump’s election but spoke so eloquently about women’s anxiety after he won, is a testament to the artistry and craftsmanship that went into making it. The problem though is that the show, which was so compelling in season 1, quickly jumped the shark in season 2, and in season 3 has gone full Evel Knevel on a tricycle over Jaws in a kiddie pool.

It is difficult to overstate what a heinous piece of crap this show has become. The only equivalent I can think of is the precipitous fall of House of Cards which was like a speeding train falling off a cliff after its first few seasons.

Just like House of Cards downfall, what saps The Handmaid’s Tale of drama is that there is no longer any genuine threat to the main character June. June has become an avatar for the girl power people in her audience and thus is given no genuine obstacles to overcome, just manufactured ones, by the fan servicing producers.

At one point while watching one of the episodes in season 3 I said out loud to no one in particular…”I hate this show”…and I really have grown to hate it, which is frustrating because the show in the first season, and Elizabeth Moss’ acting in that season, were just mesmerizing. But now the show really has devolved into a pointless, rambling, dramatically incoherent, self-reverential mess and Moss’ acting little more than her not blinking in order to cry and acting faux tough. The bottom line is this, if Gilead were as awful and authoritarian as it is supposed to be, then June would have been swinging from the wall a long time ago. At this point I watch the show praying she gets hung and puts us all out of our misery.

The show is just so…stupid and frustrating…and the characters equally stupid and frustrating. In season’s 2 and 3 The Handmaid’s Tale has abandoned any semblance of a coherent internal logic and now just seems to be winging it. It is safe to say I will not be returning to Gilead for season 4.

WHEN THEY SEE US - NETFLIX: 1 Star

This show, which is about the very relevant and important story of the Central Park Five, is produced by Oprah and directed by Ava DuVernay….and it shows. That is not a compliment. This mini-series is just God awful. It is embarrassingly maudlin, shmaltzy and unconscionably ham handed.

This show will no doubt win a bunch of Emmys, but that is only because it is the sort of anti-Trump, anti-racist screed that Hollywood dipshits gobble up like Xanax. But do not be deceived, this show is atrociously poorly made. The cast, most notably Jharrel Jerome, are abysmal. Jerome sets the craft of acting back decades, if not millennia, with his corny performance as Korey Wise, one of the Central Park Five.

What frustrated me so much about this mini-series was that it is based on what should be a dramatically potent true story, and a story that is so vital and relevant to our times. But in the hands of DuVernay, this story is sapped of any meaning, and instead turns out to be an emotionally manipulative piece of garbage better suited to the Lifetime channel than Netflix.

Sadly, this story of the Central Park Five is as true to life as the Central Perk Five of Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe. Yikes.

CHERNOBYL- HBO: 4 stars

This mini-series which recounts the 1989 nuclear disaster, starts out great but loses some dramatic momentum late as it staggers to the finish line. Chernobyl looks great from start to finish and is elevated by some great acting, most notably from Jared Harris.

The weak link with the show is the script, as it falls into the tired Boris and Natasha evil Soviet caricature too often. The historical accuracy of the show has been called into question as well, but that is somewhat excusable, but the tired cliches of Soviet inhumanity are not.

The first few episodes of the mini-series were as good as anything on television this year, but the finale was decidedly disappointing and underwhelming. That said, I enjoyed it for the great cast and for how well it was shot.

ESCAPE AT DONNEMARA - SHOWTIME: 2.5 stars

Escape At Donnemara, which was directed by Ben Stiller, is a wholly uneven enterprise. Just like Chernobyl it starts off strong, then there’s a lull and then a significant dramatic and artistic spike in the second to last episode…but then it finishes with a whimper.

Stiller certainly puts some artistic bows on the show, using music and sound and fading to black to nice effect, but ultimately the show only stays on the surface of things and there is never a sense that we are getting at any semblance of the truth.

One of the odd things about the show is that it can feel incredible slow, bordering on dull, and yet that leisurely pace pays no dramatic benefits because the narrative ultimately seems so rushed at the end of the day.

That said, I thought Paul Dano’s performance as Sweat was really phenomenal. Dano makes Sweat a real person, not some caricature. Dano’s Sweat is conflicted, with a vivid and pulsating inner life that is compelling to watch. The show would have been better served with more Paul Dano and not less.

Patricia Arquette’s performance is all show. Arquette’s Tilly is nothing more than a monotonous and endless droning on, and the acting never once reveals anything of use or honesty about Tilly.

Benicia del Toro gives what I would deem a rather lazy del Toro performance…we’ve seen this act before and it has grown tired.

Ultimately, this mini-series has its moments but ended up being unsatisfying.

VEEP - HBO: 4 Stars

Veep was good this season but not great. Of course, Veep had set the bar ridiculously high with its first six seasons, so topping it in the finale was always going to be a tough job.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of the wonders of the world, and her performance as Selena Meyer was so great as to be iconic. The rest of the cast were their usual stellar selves as well.

That said, season 7 felt like the show had definitely run its course and in the age of Trump, where reality is much stranger than fiction, seemed a bit, dare I say it…tame.

I liked season 7, but I think it was the weakest of all the Veep seasons.

BARRY - HBO: 4.5 Stars

Barry is awesome. This show perfectly captures the absurdity of the Hollywood experience for any actor trying to scratch out an existence and chase a dream. The acting class scenes are spot on and poignantly painful for their depiction of the shit show that is acting class in Hollywood.

What is so great about Barry is that it wonderfully mixes shocking violence with exquisitely subtle comedy. Few shows are ever able to do one or the other, but Barry is able to do both and do them extraordinarily well.

The straw that stirs the drink of Barry, is Bill Hader, who is a god send as assassin turned wannabe actor, Barry. Hader’s comedic timing and energy are exquisite, but it is his transformation into the ruthless assassin that makes the show real enough to be worthwhile. Hader is not just a funny man, he is a genuinely gifted dramatic actor, and his versatility is a rare trait indeed.

The rest of the cast, particularly Henry Winkler, are gloriously good. Winkler’s scene stealing work as Gene Cousineau is a stake through the heart of the ghost of Fonzie (hey, second Fonzie reference of this article!). Winkler perfectly captures the insincerity, dishonesty and desperation of those unfortunate souls who become acting teachers…I would know.

Barry is appointment viewing in my household.

Thus concludes my brief foray into television criticism, I hope you found it useful. My top picks this year are The Boys, Mindhunter, Fleabag, Black Mirror and Barry. None of those shows are for the feint of heart, so know that going in. I have no idea if any of these shows are nominated or will win at The Emmys on Sunday night…and more importantly, I don’t care…and neither should you.

©2019