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.

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