Barry

Season 4 (Final Season) trailer.

Like Yoda said earlier in the thread, I like this show, but don't love it. It's worth watching, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this last season ends and the resolutions that happen for the main characters. My favorite part of this show is Henry Winkler's performance. It's nice that this show has brought a bit of a career resurgence for him as an actor.

I think these first two episodes of the final season mostly served to refresh our memories on just how screwed up all the characters are. Narcissists, hustlers, sociopaths and psychopaths. And all of them bouncing off each other like pinballs, forever altering each others trajectories. At the center is always Barry though as both catalyst and unwitting victim. But he's also the most altruistic player. I can't begin to guess how they'll wrap this up. Really looking forward to the rest of the season.

That phone call from Barry to Gene that opened the fourth season was beyond creepy. Loved the way Sally summarized her life to her mother in one sentence. Sally's little meltdown was a little over the top though. I think Fuches would sell his own mother down the river for the sweetest deal. Just for the record, I'm pretty sure iRL Sally wouldn't have been able to get her message through to Barry without accepting the charges, a small nitpick, I know. Loved the scene where Sally was watching Joplin with her parents. Hader nailed that scene in the bathroom, though the sympathetic corrections officer was a little hard to swallow. It's becoming clear that Barry doesn't do confinement too well. What the hell is going on with Gene? Solid fourth season opener but could have used a few less fantasy elements.

I was surprised that ep 2 seems to be continuing in this fantasy mode initiated in ep 1. This is a show that I always felt was grounded in reality, a deadly and violent reality but reality just the same. Didn't realize until this season that Barry and Fuches' relationship goes all the way back to when Barry was a child. Was this mentioned before and I just missed it?Fuches seems to be assuming a lot now thinking that he and Barry are friends again just because Barry said so. Barry may have a plan that involves Fuches that Fuches doesn't know about. Henry Winkler was absolutely brilliant in that scene where he acted out the story of him and Barry for that reporter. The scene where Sally visited Barry was a surprise. I knew she would visit him at some point, but I didn't think it would be so soon. Love that Hank is planning to break Barry out of jail, but Hank's another one who needs to watch his back where Barry is concerned.

Ep 3's reveal that Barry has already cut a deal came as a surprise to me...who is he going to give up that would let him walk on a murder charge? Does Barry really expect sally to go into witness protection with him? Can't believe that reporter expected Barry to talk to him. That scene with the reporter was superb. How did Fuches get hold of a cell phone in jail? That scene in the yard was strange. If guards arranged for Barry to be alone out there so he could get killed, how was he able to just walk away? If it wasn't arranged, why would he be allowed alone in the yard in the first place? Loving Stephen Tobolowsky as Gene's attorney. I liked that Sally's berating of that actress backfired on her. Why would Hank kill Gene for Barry? "Thee day you get out of prison is my f*cking birthday, man." That final shootout was awesome and so was Fred Armeson. Boy, Barry Berkman really has an angel on his shulder.

Fuches arranged the hit on Barry? Gene is a selfish prick for putting his family at risk. Really starting to hate Gene as this show progresses. Glad I was wrong about Fuches? Nice cameo by Oscar winner Sian Heder (CODA). They seem to be trying to evoke sympathy for Gene, but that ship has sailed. Mega Girl's resemblance to Chelsea Handler is uncanny. Looks like sally is going to become Mega Girl and will have no interest in running off with Barry. The sand trap was awesome but why did Hank do that? The scene with Fuches in the dining area, what was that about? The Hank/Cristobal break up scene was superb...Anthony Carrigan is amazing, how has this guy not won an Emmy yet? Not sure what Sally meant by "Let's Go", but if she meant it literally, she is out of her mind.

Don't know how to feel about the It's been used before on other shows. Remains to be seen how it'll play out here.

I think it shows backbone. But, that doesn't mean they'll stick the landing. Even so, I respect change-up.

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It just seems to be a very weird time in this story to have a flash forward. That wig on Sally is the worst. This whole flashing forward thing seems to imply that the writers are unsure of where to go with the present story. So future Barry finds religion? Why do we care? What was with the baseball videos? That scene in the restaurant bathroom...what was that all about? It's no surprise that at some point Barry would be living under witness protection but the road leading to it would be a lot more interesting than this was.

Gideon, I'm very intrigued by these posts from the previous page...

...because I find there's very little about this show that screams unanswered questions, whether in the short or long term. Many of the things you've brought up are either addressed within the same episode, set-ups for future episodes, or following up on earlier episodes' foreshadowing.

I do think the flash forward is an interesting choice because it does shake up expectations - this is technically the happy ending that Barry has dreamed of (and audiences may have wanted for him) for the entire show, but there are still another 3-4 episodes left for it to unravel and so it's now a question of how the show is really going to end.

There's also the matter of how Barry has worked to establish this perfect life for himself and all the little ways he tries to maintain control over it. So much of his new persona seems like a deliberately-constructed idea of what a loving family man should be like - it's debatable as to how much he sincerely believes in religion or just sees it as part of the image he's trying to uphold. This also explains the baseball videos - when he finds out his son is interested in baseball (something that exists outside of his immediate control and would allow his son to develop as an independent human being), his first instinct is to traumatise him into never wanting to play it again in order to regain control over him.

As for Sally, I think it's a matter of her having had to put up with life on the run with Barry for years and being sick of it. The bathroom scene is interesting because on the one hand it would make sense in the abstract for her to cheat on Barry with her co-worker but he's just another in a long line of abusive men and her instinct is no longer to passively endure it like with Barry or her ex-husband but to actually try to choke him herself. It seems to be foreshadowing that she's going to break away from Barry at some point in the next few episodes, which is bound to have consequences.

In any case, I don't see the case for witness protection being a more interesting direction than Barry becoming a fugitive. That might end up being too neat and conclusive for him, whereas if he's still a fugitive like this then there's an added level of tension that threatens him at every turn (case in point - the scene of him standing outside all night with a gun after hearing a knock on the door) and also pushes the story forward much more efficiently.

I think that because of the COVID pandemic there are many shows that are ending before they may have originally planned to do so. I think given the delay, for the actors and creators, they are likely ready to do something else, so even though it feels like we're just getting back to normalcy as audiences watching these shows, for those making the shows, they've been in limbo for several years. I think given that the shows are ending before they were originally intended, many of these last seasons feel compressed and rushing towards the end. It feels like they are trying to tell the same story they always wanted to for the series, but in a much shorter period of time. Sometimes it feels like these stories could be season-long arcs. I think the use of flash forwards is a device to accomplish the goal of speeding up the story so they can get to where they want to go, and end the show in the time they have left to tell the story.

That's a solid theory. But then this show has always gotten a kick out of confounding viewer's expectations. I still think it's a got a lot of twists and turns left and that the culmination will leave us satisfied.

I definitely got the sense that Hader was looking to move onto other projects since he had managed to finish writing seasons 3 and 4 during the pandemic with that in mind, but I'm inclined to think that this is a feature more than a bug. Barry is a show that made brevity a strength and that's only becoming clearer as it finally approaches an endgame. You could definitely see the ending of S4E4 as a season finale cliffhanger on its own, but it wouldn't really be worth an extra four episodes of Barry being stuck in prison just to get to that point (nor, I suspect, would you really need extra episodes of him in exile like in S4E5).

Show seems to be cribbing from Breaking Bad a bit with the King in Exile thing. Instead of the natural result being "He lived unhappily ever after in prison" or the sudden snap of a rope or bang of a gun ending things with an exclamation point, we journey with the character into the underworld and we find the shade of Achilles finding a faded world of food without flavor: I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead. Walt scramble back from his death shack to close his story. And it appears Barry will also go out with a bang. The point seems to be that even if they got what they wanted they'd still lose. Walt is dying of cancer anyway you cut it. And Barry is so broken that he can't really make the family thing work.

Six episodes down two to go. There will be no happy endings for anyone. I don't envy Bill Hader. His show will ultimately be judged on how creatively he doles out a fitting end to all involved. I'm thinking he'll just go Old Testament on everyone's ass.

Does Barry really think killing Gene is going to give him the closure he really wants? If the truth be told, my mind is still reeling that sally agreed to run off with Barry. Fuches out of prison is definitely a changed man. "Gene Cusineau...the DA would like to see you. Take two bites of that salad and come with me." Kind of scary that it would be that easy to buy a gun in the future. The "murder is not a sin" theme of this episode was kind of disturbing. A little backstory on how Hank got where he is would have been nice. Gene is just now apologizing to his son? I liked that the arrival of Gene's grandson stopped Barry cold. Not sure whether that scene with sally and the house getting hit by a truck was a dream or not. Stephen Root was excellent in this episode. All I can say about the final scene is WTF?

It goes back to what I was saying before about Barry needing to maintain his delusions by any means necessary - in episode 3 he even tries to convince Hank to kill Gene simply out of revenge for telling his side of the story to the reporter. Besides, the scene where Gene meets the studio exec and tells her not to do the movie anyway is meant to underline the futility of Barry's mission - the movie is slated to go ahead with or without Gene's involvement so killing him wouldn't change anything. Even so, Barry does feel conflicted enough that his favourite religious podcast is advocating against it (and him switching to a different podcast and waiting for its clearly-unhinged host to give even the slightest justification for murder before making his move is a dark little joke all its own).

I don't think we needed any more backstory on Hank's new business - it was basically what he and Cristobal would've built if the Chechens hadn't intervened, and the scene of Fuches getting a tour of the company is meant to underline how much of it was down to Hank feeling guilty about what happened to Cristobal.

I think the scene with Sally is mostly a dream - she's also been having her own creeping delusions (the man she killed at the end of season 3 shows up at least once or twice before this) so that would explain the man in black, though the truck could just be the diner guy from last week.

OK, we're getting flashforwards and we still didn't find out what happened to Cristobal? Did Fuches have something to do with his death? Daniel Day Lewis wants to play Gene Cusineau in the movie? Yeah, right. Those guys went after Fuches and ended up headless? Mark Wahlberg as Barry? I believe that before Daniel Day Lewis. Hank attempting to blow up Fuches' compound had me on the floor. Is Gene going to go down for Janice's murder? Barry is on the egde...not sure of what, but he's definitely on the edge.