Zack (and folks in the comments), I'm right there with y'all. I love love LOVE this show. It is easily my favorite directed series on television. And yet there is something about this last string of episodes that's leaving me ambivalent. On one hand, I actually find the message that redemption for someone like Barry Berkman *is* possible, so long as the movie tells the story his way. The fact that a wrongly footed "based on a true story" crime thriller can give a serial killer the final laugh is so true and pretty damning of the Hollywood system. We glamorize psychopaths and immortalize them as content. Yikes. Plus, the irony... Barry dies but gets what he wants, while Gene gets what he wants (notoriety and, even moreso, revenge for Janice) but it ends him. It's fantastic.
It's the rest of the show that leaves me scratching my head. Like so much of this season, it feels like there was 20 pounds of story shoved into a 10-pound bag. I ached for a 45-minute episode, just to give us space to breathe and contemplate and say goodbye. Sure, there's a case to be made that everyone who continues putting up a performance dies and everyone who gets real and admits their faults lives, and that's intriguing. But in general, it felt rushed and truncated. Albert, who was so crucial to Season 3, never pops back up to right any wrongs? I don't buy it. Jim Moss leaves Barry to catch Gene? We never got that explanation, leaving it feeling narratively convenient ("Jim's an idiot too. Get it?") This last-minute revelation that Fuches is a soldier rather than a mentor felt unearned and pretty flimsy. NoHo Hank dying in denial is intriguing but I don't know what it says about his arc overall. Sally gets flowers and... that becomes enough, I guess? And then we end on John, who we've never really had a relationship with?
As I write this, I feel like a wet blanket. I still adore BARRY. I'll be giving this a rewatch every couple years, for sure, because its darkly comedic sensibilities are *right* up my alley. Bill Hader will be one of the great filmmakers of his generation, no doubt. But the flip-flop nature of this show's tone and logic also brings frustration, and it's only fair to bring up that, especially since the time jump, a large slice of what we've been served has felt unearned and unsatisfying.
I really loved this series, and ultimately this season. But Gene winding up in prison for Janice's murder is stuck in my teeth. There's a cynicism to it that I don't fully understand. I couldn't ever fully get my hands around their arc for him. Him killing Barry? I'm fine with that. It's kinda perfect, really. But his taking the fall for Janice's murder? There's something overly harsh and ugly about that that I just can't quite square. I don't understand what the show wants me to think about that.
This series kinda reminds me of SEARCH PARTY, another show that continued past it's logical endpoint and, while not everything in the latter seasons worked, I appreciated the huge, crazy swings it took.
I’m mostly okay with how the show went out, but I felt unsatisfied with the final Fuches scene. I just didn’t buy him and Barry both sparing each other, and him just disappearing off into the night didn’t work for me at all; it felt like the writers couldn’t come up with an ending for him so they just didn’t give us an ending at all.
Even if this season wasn't your favorite of this show, you have to admit it moved like nothing else on TV right now. The unpredictability, the pitch-black humor (GUNS), the closeups of Hank crying, the absolute absurdity of the violence...it was the best show on TV, and that's including going up against heavyweights like Succession and Mrs. Maisel. This show was just shot better, acted better, and was gut-punchingly funnier than the rest of prestige TV, seemingly without even trying.
I knew Ted Lasso would give me a treacly-sweet moral before I started watching every episode. I knew Succession would make me sick with how much I wanted to see the pieces of shit main characters pay. But I never knew what to expect with this show. It was a godsend, and I can't wait to see what Hader does next.
Seems like in the end a lot of Barry became about perception, as in how we see ourselves and how others see us, with maybe Hollywood being the biggest distorter of that, maybe?
We started out rooting for Barry because he was the lead of the show, but the only person that cared about him in show was Fuches, mainly because he was using him. Gradually other people entered his life , Hank, Sally, Gene who also were able to value him and whom he also valued to a certain extent, and we as an audience still valued him, but we had doubts creep up on us, because he kept doing awful things, and this redemptive arc that maybe we were hoping would happen as a well conditioned audience seemed harder and harder to achieve.
Eventually the world kind of learns the "truth" about Barry and he ends up in the middle of nowhere with Sally and they're both in their own weird ways playing some distorted version of themselves to their little family unit.
Fuches and Sally both seem to come to some acceptance of themselves as they really are as opposed to some BS mental version they'd prefer to be.
John as a teenager gets sold the completely ridiculous Hollywood version of his father that I'm sure he would prefer to believe and that he probably knows from what happened as a kid isn't true.
The execution was choppy in the way they went about things, it wasn't perfect, but it made me think about it, which is really a good outcome for a piece of media, whether it fully worked or not.
Glad that Barry was taken out by Rip Torn's gun, does that count as a Checkov's gun?
I get feeling like the show didn’t totally come together at the end, but to me this finale was the perfect wrap up for what Barry has been going for. Barry the character has gone so far past the bottom of the barrel that he doesn’t truly deserve redemption, but he gets close to maybe doing the thing he should have done back in S2 and that’s enough to give him a slight uptick at the end without washing away all the terrible things he did. And Gene’s plot to me was about him finally hitting rock bottom in his addiction to fame and attention, recovering, and then trying to do one last good only to be dragged down back into a relapse that inevitably is his undoing. The movie being so stratified I thought was a great dark joke and finally brings acting and the hitman story back together at the end in the way they diverged for multiple seasons. John sees a clearly ridiculous version of the story he experienced but it’s emotionally effective because of the Hollywood-isms and the fact that he never truly knew his father. I thought it was great, but I understand ambivalence since the season was such a straightforward series of plot beats and went so damn fast. Gonna miss this show
On one hand I agree with you on almost every point, and feel that the show's incoherence undermined it's power. On the other hand, I think this analysis I saw from last season was proven largely "correct" by the final season, and that the incoherence is the point: https://twitter.com/sbodrojan/status/1537091135872671746?s=20
Nope. I disagree. Barry is mind blowingly creative and never was afraid to make seemingly horrifying choices for its characters, which in turn allowed characters to grow and evolve. I love this series, and it will soon be know as one of the greatest series of television.
Yeah, I'm pretty much with you on the finale, Zack. I just couldn't figure out the logic behind a lot of the scenes, on a plotting or a thematic level. Hank going out so anticlimactically and stupidly just didn't work... unless he was committing suicide by Fuches over Cristobal, but that didn't make a lot of sense either... really, the whole sequence just didn't track for me. Gene killing the only person who can prove his innocence is one where I guess I could come up with a rationalization after the fact, but the show shouldn't be so unclear on its characters' motives that I have to do that.
And I still don't get what they've done to Jim Moss this season. They took him from a severe interrogator into someone who literally tortures and brainwashes people-- INNOCENT people!-- and then pins a murder on the wrong guy, and... there are no consequences for any of this? He's still just one of the good guys?
Sally and Sarah Goldberg were the best part of the episode; she's probably been the most consistent character, whereas others seemed to change this season based on what was needed for the story.
I didn't mind the unpredictable when it felt plausible and when it created new stakes or came from what had happened before. Loach blackmailing Barry into killing his ex-wife's boyfriend was surprising, but creates a new set of appropriately high stakes and comes from what happened before-- Barry killing Janice Moss and his sloppiness in talking about it. It just felt like this season was muddled and the writing was less focused, either missing elements or with changes that seemed to come about without making much sense, and the finale reflected that.
I really thought the show was at its best when it was driven by necessity; the home stretch of season 1 where Barry has to start killing people just to stay free, and then that leads into season 2 where he has to kill other people even though he doesn't want to... the intensity and pace of the dramatic plotting, and making it feel necessary and not rushed there really made the show sing for me. The last two seasons it's gone slack in a lot of ways in those areas. This season in particular feels like it was more about Hader the director-- and he is a good director, but you don't want demonstrating that to come at the expense of the story.
Me not sure it possible to come up with completely satisfying ending of show, given Barry himself has gone far past deserving any absolution, but me at least liked that everyone come face-to-face with their actions. Fuches forces Hank to grapple with culpability in Cristobal's death by dwelling on own refusal to take responsibility for twisting Barry into being killer. Sally unload guilt she still carrying on killing her attacker (fact that most justified murder in entire run of show have her feeling more guilt than every other character just underscore why Sally one person who deserve happy ending).
And Gene? Gene not really deserve what he got. Sure, he took money from Barry, but that seem like such minor offense in grand scheme of *Barry*, and me not sure punishment fit crime there. Me feel like it would have been enough for him to lose relationship with son, and for movie to be killed so he not get attention he craves. Or maybe ambiguity as to whether he was involved or not — he not get punished for Barry's crimes, but he also not have clean reputation either. Me not know. Endings are tough.
I kinda loved it? I get what you mean on themes. But putting out 30 minute episodes where I have no clue what’s going to happen next, and it’s directed beautifully and the cast is top rate ... well, that’s pretty great actually! I do think there is this notion that our veterans have to be heroes and we can’t handle when they’re not. So Gene Couisenau became an easy way to maintain that fairy tale. I only wonder how they could have convicted him of Janice’s murder. But obviously he was guilty of killing Barry. The movie was just amazing. A good summary of how Hollywood whitewashes uncomfortable truths. By the way, when is the true crime podcast coming out, showing Gene’s innocence??? Anyway, great show. It needed to end but I enjoyed it throughout.
Even if Gene hadn't walked in, would Barry have really turned himself in? Telling the agent "you should call the cops" isn't anywhere near definitive enough for me to assume he'd actually do it. Hell, he'd see a caterpillar on the ground and justify that was a sign for him to leave.
The fake movie went on forever and a day and mainly just gave me time to go "okay, so that's basically the last we're seeing of everyone" as the run time slowly bled out.
Zack (and folks in the comments), I'm right there with y'all. I love love LOVE this show. It is easily my favorite directed series on television. And yet there is something about this last string of episodes that's leaving me ambivalent. On one hand, I actually find the message that redemption for someone like Barry Berkman *is* possible, so long as the movie tells the story his way. The fact that a wrongly footed "based on a true story" crime thriller can give a serial killer the final laugh is so true and pretty damning of the Hollywood system. We glamorize psychopaths and immortalize them as content. Yikes. Plus, the irony... Barry dies but gets what he wants, while Gene gets what he wants (notoriety and, even moreso, revenge for Janice) but it ends him. It's fantastic.
It's the rest of the show that leaves me scratching my head. Like so much of this season, it feels like there was 20 pounds of story shoved into a 10-pound bag. I ached for a 45-minute episode, just to give us space to breathe and contemplate and say goodbye. Sure, there's a case to be made that everyone who continues putting up a performance dies and everyone who gets real and admits their faults lives, and that's intriguing. But in general, it felt rushed and truncated. Albert, who was so crucial to Season 3, never pops back up to right any wrongs? I don't buy it. Jim Moss leaves Barry to catch Gene? We never got that explanation, leaving it feeling narratively convenient ("Jim's an idiot too. Get it?") This last-minute revelation that Fuches is a soldier rather than a mentor felt unearned and pretty flimsy. NoHo Hank dying in denial is intriguing but I don't know what it says about his arc overall. Sally gets flowers and... that becomes enough, I guess? And then we end on John, who we've never really had a relationship with?
As I write this, I feel like a wet blanket. I still adore BARRY. I'll be giving this a rewatch every couple years, for sure, because its darkly comedic sensibilities are *right* up my alley. Bill Hader will be one of the great filmmakers of his generation, no doubt. But the flip-flop nature of this show's tone and logic also brings frustration, and it's only fair to bring up that, especially since the time jump, a large slice of what we've been served has felt unearned and unsatisfying.
I really loved this series, and ultimately this season. But Gene winding up in prison for Janice's murder is stuck in my teeth. There's a cynicism to it that I don't fully understand. I couldn't ever fully get my hands around their arc for him. Him killing Barry? I'm fine with that. It's kinda perfect, really. But his taking the fall for Janice's murder? There's something overly harsh and ugly about that that I just can't quite square. I don't understand what the show wants me to think about that.
This series kinda reminds me of SEARCH PARTY, another show that continued past it's logical endpoint and, while not everything in the latter seasons worked, I appreciated the huge, crazy swings it took.
i really wish it would have ended after “oh wow” and the cut to black – that would have been the funniest final scene of all time.
I’m mostly okay with how the show went out, but I felt unsatisfied with the final Fuches scene. I just didn’t buy him and Barry both sparing each other, and him just disappearing off into the night didn’t work for me at all; it felt like the writers couldn’t come up with an ending for him so they just didn’t give us an ending at all.
You captured my ambivalence so well.
Even if this season wasn't your favorite of this show, you have to admit it moved like nothing else on TV right now. The unpredictability, the pitch-black humor (GUNS), the closeups of Hank crying, the absolute absurdity of the violence...it was the best show on TV, and that's including going up against heavyweights like Succession and Mrs. Maisel. This show was just shot better, acted better, and was gut-punchingly funnier than the rest of prestige TV, seemingly without even trying.
I knew Ted Lasso would give me a treacly-sweet moral before I started watching every episode. I knew Succession would make me sick with how much I wanted to see the pieces of shit main characters pay. But I never knew what to expect with this show. It was a godsend, and I can't wait to see what Hader does next.
Thanks for the reviews Zack!
Yeah not sure what to think either.
Seems like in the end a lot of Barry became about perception, as in how we see ourselves and how others see us, with maybe Hollywood being the biggest distorter of that, maybe?
We started out rooting for Barry because he was the lead of the show, but the only person that cared about him in show was Fuches, mainly because he was using him. Gradually other people entered his life , Hank, Sally, Gene who also were able to value him and whom he also valued to a certain extent, and we as an audience still valued him, but we had doubts creep up on us, because he kept doing awful things, and this redemptive arc that maybe we were hoping would happen as a well conditioned audience seemed harder and harder to achieve.
Eventually the world kind of learns the "truth" about Barry and he ends up in the middle of nowhere with Sally and they're both in their own weird ways playing some distorted version of themselves to their little family unit.
Fuches and Sally both seem to come to some acceptance of themselves as they really are as opposed to some BS mental version they'd prefer to be.
John as a teenager gets sold the completely ridiculous Hollywood version of his father that I'm sure he would prefer to believe and that he probably knows from what happened as a kid isn't true.
The execution was choppy in the way they went about things, it wasn't perfect, but it made me think about it, which is really a good outcome for a piece of media, whether it fully worked or not.
Glad that Barry was taken out by Rip Torn's gun, does that count as a Checkov's gun?
I get feeling like the show didn’t totally come together at the end, but to me this finale was the perfect wrap up for what Barry has been going for. Barry the character has gone so far past the bottom of the barrel that he doesn’t truly deserve redemption, but he gets close to maybe doing the thing he should have done back in S2 and that’s enough to give him a slight uptick at the end without washing away all the terrible things he did. And Gene’s plot to me was about him finally hitting rock bottom in his addiction to fame and attention, recovering, and then trying to do one last good only to be dragged down back into a relapse that inevitably is his undoing. The movie being so stratified I thought was a great dark joke and finally brings acting and the hitman story back together at the end in the way they diverged for multiple seasons. John sees a clearly ridiculous version of the story he experienced but it’s emotionally effective because of the Hollywood-isms and the fact that he never truly knew his father. I thought it was great, but I understand ambivalence since the season was such a straightforward series of plot beats and went so damn fast. Gonna miss this show
On one hand I agree with you on almost every point, and feel that the show's incoherence undermined it's power. On the other hand, I think this analysis I saw from last season was proven largely "correct" by the final season, and that the incoherence is the point: https://twitter.com/sbodrojan/status/1537091135872671746?s=20
Nope. I disagree. Barry is mind blowingly creative and never was afraid to make seemingly horrifying choices for its characters, which in turn allowed characters to grow and evolve. I love this series, and it will soon be know as one of the greatest series of television.
Yeah, I'm pretty much with you on the finale, Zack. I just couldn't figure out the logic behind a lot of the scenes, on a plotting or a thematic level. Hank going out so anticlimactically and stupidly just didn't work... unless he was committing suicide by Fuches over Cristobal, but that didn't make a lot of sense either... really, the whole sequence just didn't track for me. Gene killing the only person who can prove his innocence is one where I guess I could come up with a rationalization after the fact, but the show shouldn't be so unclear on its characters' motives that I have to do that.
And I still don't get what they've done to Jim Moss this season. They took him from a severe interrogator into someone who literally tortures and brainwashes people-- INNOCENT people!-- and then pins a murder on the wrong guy, and... there are no consequences for any of this? He's still just one of the good guys?
Sally and Sarah Goldberg were the best part of the episode; she's probably been the most consistent character, whereas others seemed to change this season based on what was needed for the story.
I didn't mind the unpredictable when it felt plausible and when it created new stakes or came from what had happened before. Loach blackmailing Barry into killing his ex-wife's boyfriend was surprising, but creates a new set of appropriately high stakes and comes from what happened before-- Barry killing Janice Moss and his sloppiness in talking about it. It just felt like this season was muddled and the writing was less focused, either missing elements or with changes that seemed to come about without making much sense, and the finale reflected that.
I really thought the show was at its best when it was driven by necessity; the home stretch of season 1 where Barry has to start killing people just to stay free, and then that leads into season 2 where he has to kill other people even though he doesn't want to... the intensity and pace of the dramatic plotting, and making it feel necessary and not rushed there really made the show sing for me. The last two seasons it's gone slack in a lot of ways in those areas. This season in particular feels like it was more about Hader the director-- and he is a good director, but you don't want demonstrating that to come at the expense of the story.
Me not sure it possible to come up with completely satisfying ending of show, given Barry himself has gone far past deserving any absolution, but me at least liked that everyone come face-to-face with their actions. Fuches forces Hank to grapple with culpability in Cristobal's death by dwelling on own refusal to take responsibility for twisting Barry into being killer. Sally unload guilt she still carrying on killing her attacker (fact that most justified murder in entire run of show have her feeling more guilt than every other character just underscore why Sally one person who deserve happy ending).
And Gene? Gene not really deserve what he got. Sure, he took money from Barry, but that seem like such minor offense in grand scheme of *Barry*, and me not sure punishment fit crime there. Me feel like it would have been enough for him to lose relationship with son, and for movie to be killed so he not get attention he craves. Or maybe ambiguity as to whether he was involved or not — he not get punished for Barry's crimes, but he also not have clean reputation either. Me not know. Endings are tough.
I kinda loved it? I get what you mean on themes. But putting out 30 minute episodes where I have no clue what’s going to happen next, and it’s directed beautifully and the cast is top rate ... well, that’s pretty great actually! I do think there is this notion that our veterans have to be heroes and we can’t handle when they’re not. So Gene Couisenau became an easy way to maintain that fairy tale. I only wonder how they could have convicted him of Janice’s murder. But obviously he was guilty of killing Barry. The movie was just amazing. A good summary of how Hollywood whitewashes uncomfortable truths. By the way, when is the true crime podcast coming out, showing Gene’s innocence??? Anyway, great show. It needed to end but I enjoyed it throughout.
Even if Gene hadn't walked in, would Barry have really turned himself in? Telling the agent "you should call the cops" isn't anywhere near definitive enough for me to assume he'd actually do it. Hell, he'd see a caterpillar on the ground and justify that was a sign for him to leave.
The fake movie went on forever and a day and mainly just gave me time to go "okay, so that's basically the last we're seeing of everyone" as the run time slowly bled out.
So after 3.5 riveting seasons of television, it was all just a giant SNL sketch?