Barry: Season Four (2023) | REVIEW

Be aware that the following review of the final season of HBO’s BARRY discusses details from episode 5 which would be considered spoilers for those who have not yet seen the season.

A lot has happened since this dark comedy started back in 2018. Five years and four seasons later, now the show has reached its conclusion on its own terms. Back when it premiered, I described it as a blend of “James Manos Jr.’s Dexter and, well, Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is probably the closest comparison — a film where a criminal, who is hiding from the police, ends up running into an acting audition that he somehow knocks out of the park.” The dark comedy about a hitman who tries to fulfill his potential, and sort of disguise himself, as a wannabe actor has come a long way, and, in season three, it genuinely felt like Bill Hader — the series’ star, co-creator, and frequent director — was experimenting with the show, but in a way that made the show more engaged in the kind of deep reflection on guilt, redemption, and responsibility that half-hour comedies only rarely have the time and consideration to dwell on. In my review of season three, I noted that the show had gotten more depressing than outright funny as it progressed and that its focus on acting and the entertainment industries had changed (though it was still very much there). In the final season, I think the blend of dark and depressing themes and laugh-out-loud comedy is handled much smoother, and the result is arguably the best season of the show.

The fourth and final season of Barry takes place soon after the events of the conclusion of the third season. After being tricked by Gene Cousineau (played by Henry Winkler), Barry Berkman (played by Bill Hader) is imprisoned in the same prison where Fuches (played by Stephen Root) is also an inmate. Meanwhile, Gene is praised as a hero because of his involvement in Barry’s arrest, and Gene wants as much notoriety as he may get, even though Jim Moss (played by Robert Wisdom) insists they should not talk to reporters. Elsewhere, NoHo Hank (played by Anthony Carrigan) and Cristobal (played by Michael Irby) try to start a life together as honorable citizens, while Sally (played by Sarah Goldberg) has gone home to her parents to escape the Hollywood backlash that has ruined her career. Hoping to live a life with Sally, Barry intends to make a deal with the FBI in exchange for special housing witness protection, thus angering NoHo Hank and Fuches.

The previous season of the show took the series and its titular character in a direction that seriously altered what I perceived the show to be. It was bold and significantly more experimental in its tonal balancing act between the comedic and the dark material. This balancing act didn’t always work fully for me, and I noted how I thought the comedy was ‘dryer’ and ‘darker’ and not as outright funny as it had often been previously. However, the fourth season manages to be both deeply funny, quite dark (the dark figure following Sally around in her own house was straight out of a horror film, and it was punctuated by comedy in a great way), and even more ambitious than previously. I would say that all plot threads this season has comedy as a permanent feature, but that its fixed inclusion does not limit the ultimate dramatic potential of the dark narrative.

Any true discussion of the final season must acknowledge and discuss what happens around halfway point of the season, at which point Bill Hader and Alec Berg have taken a page out of Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan’s book by, like their Better Call Saul, having a significant chunk of the final season take place after an all-important time jump. At the end of the equally tense, funny, and sad fourth episode “it takes a psycho,” the show jumps forward eight years, and in the very next episode, the series starts to truly reintroduce us to the characters that we left as they were all on the verge of a new type of existence.

This is a show that has spent a lot of time focusing on themes such as guilt and responsibility, as well as the idea of moving on from past trauma and wrongdoing. Such themes still reverberate in the series, and the actors always rise to the occasion. This season, with the time jump, the show actually plays around with the idea of moving on in a real way, and the performances that come out of that decision are quite strong. On both sides of the time jump, we see some of the best performances in the entire show. Bill Hader gets to flex some real intensity in the season premiere scene built around him trying to be punished for his actions and forcing a reaction out of a prison guard. In the other half of the season, Hader gets to work with the kind of repressed emotionality of a reformed Christian who has succeeded in escaping his past. To me, it is in that second half of the season that Sarah Goldberg, especially shines. Don’t get me wrong, she does great work in the first half of the season (great comedic work about someone trying to supersede their student at an audition), but, once we find her Sally playing a character to keep up appearances all the while dealing with an alcohol problem and being dissatisfied with her life, Goldberg is outstanding.

The transformation of Fuches and the lack thereof of Gene Cousineau is also the source of great comedy, and Root and Winkler are in strong form here. I think the biggest highlight among the supporting cast comes from Anthony Carrigan this time around. His character’s arc is honestly very similar to Barry’s, in that he struggles to escape his past, but the way we leave NoHo Hank prior to the time jump is excruciatingly sad and Carrigan’s tortured performance here is one of the things that I will remember the season the most for.

Final seasons are often defined by their series finales, and Barry‘s excellent series finale was very fitting, in my opinion. My only negative notes for the series finale are that I thought the central events of the episode felt slightly too fast-paced (I do think the final episode ought to have abandoned the half-hour format) and that one scene included an overabundance of close-up shots. But I do want to make it clear that I was both impressed by the final note that they want to leave us on. Without going into specifics, I thought the ending doubled as both a comedic but nonetheless clear criticism of the way the entertainment industry can smooth out the edges of real-life individuals and sometimes deify them, even when it isn’t appropriate, but, at the same time, it also works as this reaction shot that speaks to whether or not the titular character is ultimately redeemed (and, again, whether that is appropriate or not). I thought it was a very complex final scene, and it was quite moving to me.

Bill Hader and Alec Berg’s Barry goes out on a high with arguably the best season of the entire series, as the tonal balancing act has rarely if ever been better in the hitman-centered half-hour dark comedy. Intensely funny and undeniably dark, the final season elicited outstanding final performances from the entire cast but especially from Hader, Goldberg, and Carrigan. Its complex final scenes — though likely quite divisive — do what the show has always aimed to do, i.e. function as fun satire and scathing criticism, and, at the same time, speak to one of the series’ central themes — redemption — in a thoughtful manner.

A

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.