The bleak, blis­ter­ing end of Bill Hader’s Barry

After four sea­sons, HBO’s Emmy win­ning com­e­dy Bar­ry, has come to an end, final­ly answer­ing the ques­tion that has run through­out its four sea­sons: Can you change your nature? Bill Hader’s answer is yes – but unfor­tu­nate­ly Hol­ly­wood doesn’t care.

Come­di­an and actor Had­er cre­at­ed the show with Alec Berg (Sein­feld, Curb Your Enthu­si­asm), as well as star­ring as the tit­u­lar Bar­ry Berk­man, and direct­ing eigh­teen of the show’s 32 episodes. Jostling with the likes of Suc­ces­sion for view­ers and col­umn inch­es, the show has proven a crit­i­cal­ly beloved cult hit, par­tic­u­lar­ly with cinephiles, which Had­er attrib­ut­es part­ly to his own view­ing habits – he’s very into movies but doesn’t watch a lot of TV, and loves true crime – and his own tra­jec­to­ry (he moved to LA in his 20s to become a direc­tor and suf­fered from debil­i­tat­ing anx­i­ety dur­ing his eight-year stint on Amer­i­can sketch show Sat­ur­day Night Live).

When we meet Bar­ry in the show’s first sea­son, he’s a depressed and eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed ex-marine turned hit­man, han­dled by Munroe Fuch­es (Stephen Root), an exploita­tive father fig­ure and old fam­i­ly friend. When Bar­ry winds up at Gene Cousineau’s (Hen­ry Win­kler) act­ing class after fol­low­ing a tar­get, he decides to pur­sue a new life path as an actor and almost instan­ta­neous­ly falls in love with Sarah Goldberg’s Sal­ly Reed. Sally’s arc is the most trag­ic and ful­ly realised for a woman on TV since Skyler White on Break­ing Bad, and – no dis­re­spect to Anna Gunn – Gold­berg blows every actor on both shows total­ly out of the water.

A dec­o­rat­ed vet­er­an who was dis­charged for shoot­ing civil­ians in Afghanistan, Bar­ry had embraced the nar­ra­tive pushed by the Unit­ed States dur­ing the War on Ter­ror: that he was the good guy, excelling in his mis­sion of killing the bad guys. In the first few episodes Bar­ry and his fel­low act­ing stu­dents are told by Gene to ​“cre­ate the real­i­ty and let the audi­ence live there”. With this new direc­tive, Bar­ry believes he can recre­ate his life. The ten­sion between what you’re good at and what you desire, or what you’re told to do ver­sus what you want to do, are evi­dent in Hader’s own jour­ney and his SNL detour.

The hilar­i­ty of the show’s premise and the jux­ta­po­si­tion of one man strad­dling life in the shad­ows and in the lit­er­al spot­light imme­di­ate­ly lends itself to an elas­tic tone that snaps back to the reli­able twen­ty minute com­e­dy for­mu­la even after scenes of sheer hor­ror. On social media fans have debat­ed whether Bar­ry can still be con­sid­ered a com­e­dy, when on the awards cir­cuit it shares cat­e­go­ry space with the sac­cha­rine Ted Las­so and the heart­felt sit­com Abbott Ele­men­tary. But the humour exist­ed through to the bit­ing end, though with less of Bar­ry imi­tat­ing a Lon­don accent dur­ing a shift at Lul­uLe­mon, and more in dystopi­an bill­boards from the near future dis­play­ing social media han­dles in lieu of actors names.

Across its 32 episodes, Bar­ry suc­cess­ful­ly exam­ines a myr­i­ad of com­plex issues such as cycles of abuse, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and – above all – human nature and the ego, while main­tain­ing its nov­el dual for­mat of a TV crime pro­ce­dur­al and a show­biz satire. Ini­tial­ly meta­tex­tu­al by virtue of being a tele­vi­sion show about Hol­ly­wood, Barry’s plot being equal­ly crime dri­ven means that the series becomes con­cerned with TV prop­er­ties that tell sto­ries like Barry’s, exam­in­ing the way crim­i­nal­i­ty and vio­lence is depict­ed on screen.

In sea­son one, we are intro­duced to the crim­i­nal under­bel­ly of Los Ange­les. Chechan gang­sters (such as fan favourite NoHo Hank played by Antho­ny Car­ri­g­an), Boli­vian gang­sters and Burmese gang­sters are locked in a turf war – that is to say, for­eign­ers con­trol the crime in Amer­i­ca – while Bar­ry Berk­man of course, forged and unleashed by the US mil­i­tary, is more lethal than all of them. Is this an indict­ment of US impe­ri­al­ism or an exer­cise of it?

Had­er, Berg and the writ­ers (Duffy Boudreau, Taofik Kolade, Emma Bar­rie and Nicky Hirschhorn amongst oth­ers) show no rev­er­ence for the crim­i­nals or police alike, all are depict­ed as self serv­ing idiots. Bar­ry him­self is devoid of a per­son­al­i­ty, an anony­mous white man with a gun. While Barry’s actions always catal­yse the crim­i­nal plot, his scenes and lines seem to dimin­ish over the sea­sons – pos­si­bly a side effect of Hader’s direct­ing duties, as well as poten­tial­ly an uncom­fort­able reac­tion to women find­ing Bar­ry attrac­tive and by exten­sion, his ruth­less­ly ambi­tious actress girl­friend intol­er­a­ble.

At the end of sea­son one, Bar­ry kills Jan­ice Moss (Paula New­some), Cousineau’s girl­friend and the detec­tive assigned to inves­ti­gate the mur­der of Barry’s orig­i­nal act­ing class mark. By the end of sea­son two, Fuch­es shows Cousineau where Bar­ry dumped Moss’ body, in a pow­er move to stop Bar­ry from leav­ing his lucra­tive hit­man career behind him. Through­out the sec­ond sea­son, the writ­ers draw par­al­lels between Sally’s abu­sive rela­tion­ship with her ex-hus­band Sam and the dynam­ic between Bar­ry and Fuch­es. ​“Every­one is the hero of their own sto­ry right?” Sam and Fuch­es mock­ing­ly chime at their respec­tive prey.

Before sea­son three start­ed shoot­ing, the pan­dem­ic struck and the writ­ers regrouped in Sum­mer 2020 to write sea­son four and sub­se­quent­ly rewrite sea­son three, organ­is­ing the sto­ry like a fea­ture film as opposed to a TV show. The over­ar­ch­ing plot (among a lot of plot) for these two sea­sons is Bar­ry get­ting caught and charged with Moss’ mur­der. It most like­ly made sense plot wise and as a com­ment on the way Amer­i­ca val­ues human life, that Bar­ry is final­ly caught for being a cop killer. But I have always won­dered if in the heat of Sum­mer 2020, the writ­ers decid­ed Bar­ry should face con­se­quences for killing a Black woman.

Would the orig­i­nal sea­son three scripts extend the sto­ry­line of Jan­ice Moss by intro­duc­ing her father, Jim Moss (Robert Wis­dom)? Jim Moss is also ex-mil­i­tary, an expert in psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare and often depict­ed as the only intel­li­gent char­ac­ter, fuelled by an unwa­ver­ing white hot rage. The final shot of sea­son three isn’t of Bar­ry tak­en away in cuffs or Cousineau’s expres­sion of shal­low sat­is­fac­tion, but of Jim stand­ing on his front lawn, watch­ing Barry’s arrest, and a framed pho­to of Jan­ice by the win­dow inside.

Racial arche­types are so well defined in Amer­i­can copa­gan­da TV pro­ce­du­rals and slick crime films alike, it’s per­haps gen­er­ous to assume the writ­ers are com­ment­ing on these tropes rather than retread­ing them. But the beau­ty of Bar­ry is how it ele­vat­ed the crime pro­ce­dur­al ele­ments through its incred­i­ble stunt coor­di­na­tion and direct­ing, with the sea­son three motor­cy­cle chase being one of the most thrilling pieces of tele­vi­sion in years.

How­ev­er damn­ing the vio­lence is in Bar­ry, the sur­re­al yet painful­ly authen­tic Hol­ly­wood satire match­es its bleak­ness. Through Sally’s arc, we see the var­i­ous ways the effects of vio­lence man­i­fest with­in a per­son, and we watch as she nav­i­gates Hol­ly­wood. In sea­son three, Sally’s stream­er show based on her the­atre piece about her abu­sive mar­riage is can­celled the day of release. The net­work told her that the algo­rithm object­ed to the lack of dessert in the first thir­ty sec­onds of the show; it didn’t hit the right ​“taste clus­ters”. Natal­ie (D’arcy Car­den), Sally’s act­ing class lack­ey and lat­er her assis­tant, soon after lands a show about a dessert shop, and is cor­nered by Sal­ly in an ele­va­tor and repeat­ed­ly called an ​“enti­tled cunt”. Sally’s rant goes viral, and she los­es every­thing, cul­mi­nat­ing in a fatal­ly vio­lent act of her own.

In the fifth episode of sea­son four, we are eight years into the future, after a series of Lynchi­an dream sequences. Sal­ly and Bar­ry have assumed new iden­ti­ties and have a child togeth­er. Their ply­wood house in the mid­dle of nowhere feels like a doll’s house or movie set, and Sal­ly resumes the role of actress com­plete with accent and wig, while Bar­ry gets to rein­vent him­self as a good man, lis­ten­ing to Chris­t­ian pod­casts and pro­tect­ing his son John from all kinds of vio­lence, includ­ing the per­ils of play­ing base­ball. Bar­ry now has grad­u­at­ed to manip­u­la­tor, stag­ing inti­mate moments with his son (“actu­al­ly, this should take place on the swing”) and recast­ing him­self as an army medic.

Mean­while Cousineau is back in LA and his dor­mant nar­cis­sism is goad­ed by the idea that Daniel Day Lewis wants to play him in a biopic about the mur­der of Jan­ice Moss. Cousineau’s desire to be the lead char­ac­ter in this sto­ry leads him to talk about Bar­ry incon­se­quen­tial­ly and sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly, which in turn leads Cousineau’s own son and Jim Moss to believe Bar­ry was a vic­tim of his manipulation.

Through a moun­tain of sophis­ti­cat­ed plot that had the poten­tial for a dozen loose ends, the finale wraps up mas­ter­ful­ly. NoHo Hank, whose arc deserves an explo­ration of its own, con­fronts the evil he has done and gets a heart­break­ing Tony Mon­tana style death. Fuch­es, the most con­sis­tent vil­lain of the show, is the only one who gets a sem­blance of true redemp­tion, while Bar­ry final­ly choos­es to do the right thing and turn him­self in before he is shot dead by Cousineau. Jim Moss believes he has jus­tice for his daugh­ter now that Gene Cousineau is spend­ing life in prison, and Sal­ly Reed is an act­ing teacher, liv­ing her authen­tic life with her son.

The final few min­utes of Bar­ry show John Berk­man watch­ing a schlocky true crime recre­ation of his father’s life as a war hero – the kind of show Bar­ry could have been, and one that has exist­ed for decades on Amer­i­can TV. Cousineau is played by a ham­my Eng­lish actor and Jim Cum­mings plays heart-of-gold ex-marine Bar­ry Berk­man, tasked with pro­tect­ing LA from Cousineau’s crim­i­nal deal­ings with Russ­ian gang­sters. Noth­ing, espe­cial­ly not the truth, gets in the way of Hollywood’s com­pul­sive desire to hero­ical­ly mythol­o­gise the vio­lent white Amer­i­can male.

The blis­ter­ing final sea­son speaks to a con­sis­tent truth: Bar­ry is an angry show. It seethes with rage at how unre­mark­able vio­lence has seem­ing­ly become in Amer­i­ca and Amer­i­can media, and how resigned film­mak­ing is to the whims of big tech, artistry now sec­ond to the algo­rithm. It’s a show about writ­ing, act­ing and direct­ing, all of which rely on a lev­el of dis­hon­est rein­ven­tion and nar­cis­sis­tic con­trol. While the show has faith that even the most vio­lent among us can change for the bet­ter, it has no such faith in Hollywood.