Spoilers alert.
Two monumental HBO prestige series have ended their runs. Succession and Barry ending truly feels like an end of an era not only for HBO but TV in general. They are both bold, uncompromising shows that operate at the highest level. The tsunami that was the Succession finale and the discourse that followed its ending may have drowned out some of the noise surrounding Barry, but like its HBO sibling, Barry is an achievement whose vision, writing, performances, and execution makes it one of the greatest series of all time and worth celebrating.
Created by the series Alec Berg and Barry himself, Bill Hader, the series started as a smart comedy with a perfect idea behind it: A contract killer goes out to Los Angeles to try and make it as an actor. The series evolved from a prestige comedy with splashes of violence to a brutal thriller with splashes of comedy. The first season plays like a sitcom, in contrast to its final season, which plays like an experimental film from an Auteur. Its auteurist nature is reflected by Bill Hader directing the final eight episodes, taking bold creative leaps, staying true to the vision he and the writers behind the show had for its characters, and shrugging off any form of audience expectations while remaining one of the funniest shows on TV despite the dark turn.
Barry’s end was inevitable, both thematically and realistically. He killed many people and altered the lives of everyone he has had a relationship with. Barry starts Season 4 in prison, being arrested for the murder of Janice Moss (Paula Newsome), the detective who was investigating the murder Barry committed in season 1, who was uncovering who Barry really was and who became the lover of his acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler).
Looking back, the murder of Janice was the series’ turning point. It was the creators firmly telling us that there is no redemption or hope of normalcy for the series’s titular character. The series continued to get darker as Barry’s world started closing in, and his relationships and fake life became inextricable from his life as a mass-murdering hitman.
Barry escapes prison after a botched assassination attempt on him by NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), triggering one of the if not boldest creative decisions of the series. At the end of episode four, there is a time skip. Barry has escaped to the middle of nowhere with Sally (Sarah Goldberg), and they now have a young son John. The time skip allows for an exploration of how the show’s characters have dealt with the disappearance of Barry and all the events that took place, and how the cycle of violence that they were caught up in has ultimately changed them. In its final set of episodes, the final season focuses significantly less on Barry (he is used sparsely throughout the later half of the season) instead of looking at the characters that have evolved throughout the show’s run.
One of the show’s major themes that they continually go back to is the idea of the lies people tell themselves. In the eight years that have been skipped, NoHo Hank has become a businessman, graduating from crimelord to legitimacy, using the idea his lover Cristobal dreamed of. Hank essentially killed Cristobal, the person he loved the most in the world, after lying to him and securing their safety from Barry and any other threats from the Chechen mob. He has blocked out what he has done, making a hilarious solid gold statue of love in his swank office building lobby. When confronted with the fact that he has been lying about what happened to Cristobal by Fuches (Stephen Root), he lashes out and sets off the chain of events that will end up with him dead, holding hands with the statue of his lover he killed.
Sally is the series’ breakout character, with an incredible performance from Sarah Goldberg. Starting as Barry’s crush, she has been a look at someone going through the Hollywood grind, trying to get their big break suffering massive rejection who finally gets her opportunity to tell her story but ultimately fails, gets labeled as a toxic creative, and is right back to square one, all while dating a delusional and dangerous killer.
The final season is a real showcase for Goldberg. She becomes an alcoholic mother who is back, living in the middle of nowhere, wearing a wig and pretending to be someone else because she is on the run with Barry and her son. She has completely dissociated, is an unequipped mother dealing with her son, and is partnered with an even more delusional and sociopathic partner who is getting all of his life views on morality from YouTube and podcasts. She ultimately ends up with Barry because of the idea of safety her relationship with him makes her feel. All she had was that twisted feeling that Barry gave her of safety and comfort through all the terrible things he had done and that she had done as a result. She escapes Barry alive after finally realizing that safety isn’t worth being with a real monster who is beyond help.
Cousineau’s undoing, in the end, was no matter the stakes. The temptation of fame and having his name in lights was too much to pass up. Before the time skip, he almost ruins the investigation of Barry’s murder of Janice with a big expose in Variety, where he performs a dramatic retelling of the entire show for a reporter. He spent eight years in hiding, reflecting on his mistakes and seemingly turning over a new leaf.
That is until more truths about his relationship with Barry get revealed, and a fake agent tempts him into meeting about the biopic that is set to be made by Warner Bros. about him and Barry. He is pegged as the mastermind behind Janice’s killing, and the evidence matches up, but if he weren’t so thirsty for fame, he would have never been in that position in the first place. Cousineau tragically becomes the fall guy, the villain in the terrible movie adaption of the events that actually took place, immortalized as the man who killed the “war hero” Barry Berkman.
In the post-time skip episodes, Barry is wholly transformed into a new version of himself as he and Sally are on the run. He is educating himself and his son on youtube, hilariously being thrilled about figures like Abraham Lincoln but then subsequently being pulled down rabbit holes as to why Lincon is “actually bad.” He is at the height of his delusion, using god and religion to fuel his decisions going through Christian podcasts to find out if he is doing the right thing. When he resigns himself to kill Cousineau after he comes out of hiding, he is trying to justify the killing he is about to do and hilariously finally gets his blessing from a Bill Burr-voiced Christian podcast.
The show’s climatic confrontation never happens. Barry doesn’t get to be the hero, and it fits the show. The hero always shows up on time, but Barry makes it at the end. His mentor/abuser/uncle Fuches AKA The Raven (Stephen Root), is there waiting for him, having saved his son from the bloody and brief exchange with Hank and his henchmen. Fuches, along with Sally, are the only characters who accept who they are at their cores. Fuches’s big speech to Hank explains that he was telling himself lies his whole life and to what end other than keeping himself from looking at who he really was, something that Barry was never going to be able to do. Fuches’ last gesture was as much an apology to Barry as well as a goodbye.
Barry meets his end suddenly and without warning, with Cousineau pulling the trigger. The writing has been on the wall since the beginning, and the ending scene, like the final season, subverts our expectations, abruptly killing its titular character brutally and quickly. The series skips ahead a few more years and ends with a teenage John, Barry’s son, watching the adaption of His father and mother’s story. This ridiculous made-for-TV lie paints Barry as the hero of the story who was gunned down by the mastermind Jean Couisneau. It’s a commentary on how entertainment works; the truth isn’t entertaining, and tragic stories have their facts twisted into fiction for the sake of making it a digestible bite for its audience.
The series is a unique and singular creative endeavor that didn’t drag its story (it could have gone on for many more seasons), but that wouldn’t be true to who the characters were and what the show was trying to accomplish. It featured career-best performances from its entire main cast while introducing us to amazing actors like Sarah Goldberg and Anthony Carrigan. Although it was second-billed in a special night of farewells for series and characters and performers, creatively, it is neck and neck with its more celebrated and discoursed HBO sibling.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
