'Barry' Season 4 review: A ruthless end to a brilliant show
Throughout its first three seasons, HBO's Barry pulled off a magic trick.
Step one: Lure us in with the screwball promise of SNL legend Bill Hader as the titular assassin-turned-actor. Step two: Masterfully modulate tone until we're left with an unflinching examination of how characters justify their worst impulses. The final result: a brilliant show that will leave you wondering who, if anyone, can earn redemption.
That magic continues in Season 4, which steers the bloody saga of Barry Berkman toward a brutal conclusion. Co-creators Hader and Alec Berg fully embrace the darkness of "dark comedy" in a way that even the previous seasons haven't, delivering a relentless set of episodes that push Barry and everyone around him to their limits.
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Barry Season 4 picks up with Barry in jail.
The consequences of the past finally caught up to Barry in the Season 3 finale, when he was arrested for murdering Janice Moss (Paula Newsome) way back in Season 1. Now in prison, Barry seeks forgiveness from those he has wronged, like acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and ex Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg).
Unlike its main character, Barry knows that the road to forgiveness is longer than one phone call from jail. It also knows that in Barry's case, forgiveness and redemption are forever out of reach. Hader's work this season reveals Barry at his most desperate, his most angry, and even at his most frightening, as he continues to try to defend his own actions to himself.
Outside the prison walls, Gene and Janice's father Jim (Robert Wisdom) have differing ideas on how to honor Janice's memory, a storyline that puts the heights of Gene's ego on hilarious, cringe-inducing display. It also cements Wisdom's Jim as one of the most fascinating and enigmatic additions to Barry's cast of characters.
While Barry is trapped in jail — with former handler Fuches (Stephen Root), no less — NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Cristobal (Michael Irby) set out on a new venture with some unlikely criminal allies. What ensues are some of Barry's most laugh-out-loud moments yet — I will never look at Dave & Buster's the same way again — as well as many of its most harrowing.
Of course, it wouldn't be Barry without some sharp showbiz satire thrown in the mix: After a disastrous stint back home in Missouri, Sally returns to Los Angeles to teach an acting class of her own. Barry packs in some quality gags about tentpole franchises, but it also keeps a close eye on Sally's reaction to Barry's arrest, her past traumas, and her own monstrous qualities. A scene in which Sally breaks a student down over the course of an acting class is a reminder of just how ruthless she's become, and how phenomenal Goldberg is in this role. Barry's cast has always been killer, but in Season 4, everyone ups their game.
Barry Season 4 delivers series-best sequences.
Alongside excellent writing and acting, this season of Barry continues the show's trend of creating some of the most stunning, impactful visuals on TV today. Season 4 is Barry at its most surreal. While in jail, Barry's past bleeds into his present: He sees Sally and his acting class friends running lines in the prison yard. Later, in a similar vein to his beach hallucination in Season 3, he recalls his childhood in an endless field somewhere in the Midwest.
Hader, who directed every episode this season, and director of photography Carl Herse thrive in these darker, dreamier sequences. Barry may be more easily described as a dark comedy or dramedy, but these episodes are so tinged with horror, dread, and the bizarre that they escape classification. More than once, they'll leave you questioning reality.
Barry's destabilizing quality is perhaps what I'll miss most about it. This is the rare series that can leap from gut-busting gag to gut-wrenching moral dilemma and always stick the landing. Moments like Season 2's "ronny/lily" fight or Season 3's "710N" motorcycle chase deliver a mix of the surreal and the mundane, the grounded and the heightened, all helping make Barry the force it is and the force it continues to be as it heads into its final season. Luckily for us, Season 4 gifts us many such sequences, at times even outdoing itself in terms of sheer storytelling boldness. It's Barry's final magic trick: a mad blaze of self-destructive glory from all characters that will knock you off your feet.
The first two episodes of Barry premiere at 10 p.m. ET on April 16 on HBO and HBO Max, with new episodes airing weekly.
Topics HBO
Belen Edwards is an Entertainment Reporter at Mashable. She covers movies and TV with a focus on fantasy and science fiction, adaptations, animation, and more nerdy goodness. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Television Critics Association, as well as a Tomatometer-approved critic.
