Pitch-black Barry doubles down on darkness

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/06/2022 (1577 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a pandemic pause, Barry (streaming on Crave, with new episodes dropping on Sundays) is back. And not just back but somehow sustaining its weird deadpan vibe.

Back in 2018, showrunners Bill Hader and Alec Berg offered up one of those elevator-pitch concepts that could easily go bad: A Midwestern hitman (Hader) comes to L.A. on a job and then decides he wants to become an actor.

A comedy with a very high body count, Barry walks a tonal tightrope. One misstep and the whole thing could fall into overcompensating sentimentality, cheap callousness or outright nihilism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx6AS0zzfGM

But here we are, and Season 3 is still simultaneously funny and dark, electric and unsettling and occasionally poignant, and now giving its characters — an oddball collection of hired killers, Chechen gangsters and washed-up or would-be actors — even more moral and emotional depth.

The show’s central joke has always been that Barry’s foray into acting, far from being an escape, is actually an extension of the violence and deception of his past. As it turns out, Hollywood’s kill-or-be-killed imperative, while (mostly) metaphorical, can be almost as emotionally destructive as murder-for-hire.

Barry, as played by Hader with gangly menace and darting, desperate eyes, sometimes seems like a “human ice machine.” A damaged military veteran, he’s fighting depression and PTSD. His criminal handler, Fuches (Stephen Root), is a manipulative father figure, while his second surrogate dad, acting coach Gene Cousineau (a completely wonderful Henry Winkler), is less lethal but turns out to have a few issues of his own.

Barry initially sees acting as a way to access some kind of genuine human experience, but while he has glints of insight, mostly he’s borrowing other people’s emotions rather than feeling his own feels. He’s not the only one with that problem, though.

The difference between Barry and his non-hitman friends is one of degree. Everybody in this town wants connection, everyone craves authenticity, everyone yearns for forgiveness, but nobody seems to understand what that really means.

As Season 3 starts, Barry is struggling with guilt over his murderous past while continuing to do hired-gun jobs on Craigslist. He’s a mess, basically, but that’s not necessarily a problem in Hollywood. “I like your intensity,” a casting director tells him. “You kind of have a not-present Joaquin Phoenix thing,”

Meanwhile, Barry’s sometime acting partner and current romantic partner, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), has become a showrunner and star. A series based on her autobiographical account of domestic abuse has been picked up by BanShe, a supposedly woman-centred streaming service, and while BanShe is not quite a Bolivian drug cartel, there are cutthroat decisions being made. And Sally, despite her glowing pledges to uplift women, is casually cruel to her assistant (D’Arcy Carden) and has created a toxic onset atmosphere for her teenaged co-star (Elsie Fisher).

Gene’s story is also being filled out in Season 3, with new revelations about his stalled career. While he’s always been seen as a little vain and opportunistic, it looks like he has been out-and-out horrible. (He once threw hot tea at an assistant on Murder, She Wrote because there were chives in his omelette. He brought a loaded gun to a Full House audition.)

Probably the only character who’s getting sunnier this season is NoHo Hank (Antony Carrigan). The leader of a Chechen mob, whose offbeat line readings and unexpected enthusiasms (Groupon coupons, Rocky Road ice cream) have made him a reliable comic presence, is now giddy in love with a criminal rival.

Add in a cameo from Joe Mantegna, the appearance of a new fan fave (“The Beignet Guy”) and an absolutely amazing motorcycle chase scene, and Barry continues to surprise in its third season.

Combining combustible crime drama with cutting showbiz satire, the show refuses both the darkness of the typical antihero narrative and the lightness of a comic Hollywood ending. Instead, Barry just keeps walking its own morose, hilarious and precarious path.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca