'Barry' is back, and we've never needed it more

Barry is back to save (or destroy) us all.

The pitch-black HBO comedy from Bill Hader and Alec Berg begins its third season on April 24 after a whopper of a cliffhanger and the extended hiatus that followed. Season 3 is every bit as high-octane, uproarious, and unhinged as ever — and the dark part of this dark comedy is slowly closing in.

Nearly three years ago, Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root) drove Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) out into the woods to show him the dead body of Janice (Paula Newsome), the woman he loved. As Gene stood there paralyzed with shock, Fuches whispered the words of one of TV's best cliffhangers: "Barry Berkman did this."

Barry is not doing great! Credit: HBO

Season 3 picks up with Barry (Hader), Gene, Fuches, and the police grappling with the revelations of that day. In true Barry fashion, the twists are swift and steady — and in true Barry fashion, best enjoyed spoiler-free.

What we can reveal is that the season tests who Barry is when he fears losing the core relationships that now define him. His partnership with Fuches fractured in Season 2; his connection to his military past and violence with purpose died with Chris (Christopher Rodriguez Marquette) in Season 1. Gene and Sally (Sarah Goldberg) represent the future Barry wants and the man he believes he can be. But the past stalks him the way he stalked so many marks over the years.

These fraying bonds give us Barry at his most broken and vulnerable. Hader is outstanding, at his most unbalanced and Emmy-worthy for both comedy and drama. Winkler is still pitch-perfect as Gene considers Barry's position in his life, while Goldberg brings new depth to Sally's personal and professional lives as her own dreams come to fruition.

Things are changing for Sally! Credit: HBO

Berg, Hader, and their writers continue to be masters of conflict escalation, pushing the story in new directions as they expand on Barry’s past and the Chechen and Bolivian crime families led by Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Cristobal (Michael Irby). Some of the threats facing Barry and his associates never even come to pass. But with each episode, we sense this widening web of danger closing in.

From the show's premiere in 2018, Barry's underlying moral dilemma was whether or not the eponymous antihero is a good man. He knows for a fact that he wants to be, but time and again Barry lashes out, kills someone, or torpedoes his own life while trying to stay the course. Season 3 pushes this further, confronting the Barry we've come to know with the man he was before Los Angeles and an increasingly blank, threatening space where his envisioned future used to be. We're still rooting for him, but we can't guarantee he'll be OK.

How to watch: All seasons of Barry are now streaming on Max.