Does May 19, 2019 ring any bells for you? That’s the last time we got a new episode of the critically acclaimed HBO dark comedy Barry. The series was co-created by Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader and comedy writer extraordinaire Alec Berg (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm), and follows Barry Berkman (Hader), a Marine-turned-hitman from Cleveland who is searching for meaning in his life. Surely, there’s more to it than just killing people, right? He reluctantly takes an assignment from his friend and criminal colleague Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root), which sends him to a Los Angeles acting class to kill one of the students. Rather than pulling the trigger, Barry ends up pulling back the curtain, and is mesmerized by acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and the work of his students, most notably the effervescent Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg).
After this moment of self-discovery, Barry questions his future as a hitman and tries to tell Fuches that he finally found his purpose: acting. But, to Barry’s frustration, Fuches’ plans don’t involve him performing Shakespeare anytime soon. Instead, Barry must find time in between working with NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), a bubbly, hospitable member of the Chechen mafia (yes, he really exists), and angry leader Goran Pazar (Glenn Fleshler), to go to class, run his lines, perform monologues, and hit the bars with his new struggling-actor friends Sally, Natalie (D’Arcy Carden), Sasha (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Jermaine (Darrell Britt-Gibson), Nick (Rightor Doyle), Antonio (Alejandro Furth), and Eric (Andy Carey). This clever actor by day, hitman by night sort of premise not only makes for unexpected and engaging storytelling, but also acts as a thought-provoking and heart-felt tale of struggle and identity.
Where Did We Leave Off?
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of Barry.]
Season 2 picks up a few weeks after the disappearance of Detective Janice Moss (Paula Newsome), who had been searching for any leads on who killed Ryan Madison, an acting student who was mixed up with a Bolivian gang. Well, we know that Barry killed Janice at Cousineau’s lake house in the Season 1 finale because she was close to piecing together Barry’s double life. But, as far as everyone else is concerned at the beginning of Season 2, she was maybe still alive.
Though Barry was adamant about being done working with Fuches and Hank, it wouldn’t be that easy to slide away. Hank started showing a more sinister side once Barry refused to help him out just as Hank once helped him. Now that Pazar is dead, Hank has a new leadership role with Bolivian mafia leader Cristobal (Michael Irby). At the same time, Hank’s authority was being threatened by Esther (Patricia Fa’asua), the Burmese gang leader brought on by Cristobal. And, Hank was expecting Barry to kill her for him. What part of “done” doesn’t Hank understand?
As teased toward the end of Season 1, Barry and Sally start dating, and Barry continues to wow his fellow actors with his vulnerability in class. In between Barry’s daydreams about what life might be like if he started a family with Sally are haunting flashbacks to his time in the Marines. Barry might’ve found his purpose as a performer, but he would have a much more difficult time shedding his past identity than he originally thought.
Fuches, concerned for his own safety, betrays Barry and agrees to work undercover with the police to try to get Barry to confess to killing Moss. Hank, frustrated that Barry won’t help him, tries to get Barry killed. On the theater side of things, Sally revisits her trauma from her abusive ex-husband in her stagework, and we meet Cousineau’s estranged son, Leo (much to Leo’s frustration).
Barry continues to open up and trust others with his past, revealing to Cousineau that he accidentally gunned down an innocent civilian during his time in Korengal. Though Cousineau is a bit disturbed by this revelation, Barry is overcome with relief. He even rushes to confide in Fuches (not realizing Fuches is trying to get that confession from him) and ends up accidentally admitting he killed Moss in front of Detective Loach. But rather than arrest Barry, Loach is willing to look the other way if Barry kills his ex-wife's lover. I know, I know. It’s a lot. As Barry blurts out at the end of Episode 4, “What!?”
Loach’s request puts Barry in a situation he never thought he’d be in: fighting a little girl. Turns out that Ronny (Daniel Bernhardt), the guy that’s now with Loach’s ex, is like, a master martial artist? This of course makes things much more difficult for Barry, who tries to reason with him and come up with a plan in which Ronny doesn’t have to die. But, things don’t run smoothly once Ronny’s daughter, Lily (Jessie Giacomazzi) gets involved, who is even more terrifying than her father. As a shaky Barry puts it to Fuches, “I don’t think she’s of this world.” An epic battle in a grocery store leaves both Ronny and Loach dead. Who knew the diaper aisle could be so fatal?
Barry convinces Sally that she should tell the ugly truth in class, not the one she manufactured that paints her as the “hero” in her abusive relationship with her ex-husband, Sam. In doing so, she’s able to access untapped emotion in her performance, which catches the eye of a talent agent. Barry is relieved for several reasons: his debt is paid to Hank, he’s done with Fuches, and he, too, manages to use his devastating past to channel new emotion in his scene with Sally. But, Fuches wasn’t going to get out of Barry’s life that quickly. He was actually searching the woods for the car with Moss’s body, and by golly, he found it. Oh and remember that accordion player that Hank cursed out for interrupting his “tender” moment with Barry? Well, he told Cristobal about Hank’s plans to attack him, and Cristobal and Esther stole Hank’s army.
Sally finally gets what she’s been after for years: a legitimate meeting with an agency. However, they set her up with a big-shot television producer who is more interested in exploiting and monetizing her pain for a new series instead of helping her grow as an artist. Does she give in to what she considers “revenge porn” or listen to her heart? While she’s grappling with this major career decision, Barry is offered an audition for a Jay Roach movie. Understandably, Sally is furious. (After all, Barry doesn't even realize that “movie” and “feature” are the exact same thing.) Fortunately, Lindsay, Sally’s new agent, sees potential in Sally’s theater work and encourages her to pursue that instead of the television show. She even gives Sally and her acting friends the chance to perform their emotional scenes in a 400 seat theater. On the “barbecue bus,” Hank admits to his men, who are about to be set on fire by Cristobal, that he wasn’t destined to be their leader. Instead, he sees himself more as an optometrist or, say, a manager of a hotel chain. (Come to think of it, Hank would be a great hotel manager...)
Barry ends up leaving mid-audition when he gets a call from Cousineau, who is with Fuches (who’s pretending to be a private investigator). After showing Cosuineau Moss’s body, Fuches calls the police and confesses to the murder as Cousineau. And just like that, Cosuineau’s in custody.
At the scene of the crime, Barry puts something in the trunk of the car next to Moss’s body, but we don’t know what it is...yet. Right before his big performance with Sally, in which he’ll play her ex-husband, he sneaks a call to Fuches and threatens to kill him, but Fuches is more confident than ever. During the performance, Sally goes off book and reverts back to the original version of her scene. Barry is completely caught off guard when Sally screams and stands up to his Sam. What happened to the authentic scene they’ve been rehearsing? Sally immediately feels guilty for lying in her performance and is mad at herself for not being able to confront how she really handled Sam. She barely has time to even process what happened, because she’s inundated with theatergoers praising her for standing up to her ex-husband. Will the accolades and fame go to her head? Will she lose sight of what made her fall in love with acting in the first place? (Ah, speculation.)
Hank heads to the Buddhist monastery to prepare for battle with the Bolivian and Burmese gangs, but Fuches manages to get everyone to put their differences aside and unite as one mega-gang. (Hank and Fuches in cahoots? Gulp.) Earlier, Barry told Hank he wasn't going to help him out anymore, but when Hank texts him that he doesn’t need him anymore because Fuches is there, Barry is filled with a burning rage. He speeds to the monastery and guns down practically everyone, but Fuches escapes. On the bright side, Cousineau is off the hook for the murder of Moss becasuse the cops found a Chechen pin (the pin that Hank gave Barry as a token of appreciation) next to her body, and concluded that he was no longer a suspect. (So that’s what Barry put in the trunk…) Okay, well, that’s good, right? Welp, before the credits roll, Cousineau remembers something that Fuches whispered in his ear: “Barry Berkman did this.” And, scene.
Season 3: What We Know So Far
While the release date for Season 3 remains unknown, there’s still plenty of exciting nuggets of information available about the future of Barry. As of a mid-October chat Collider’s Steve Weintraub had with Hader, Season 3 had roughly a month left of shooting and would, like the previous seasons, consist of 8 episodes. Last January, we reported that Barry’s Season 4 scripts were already complete, but as Hader explained in his conversation with Steve, the pandemic changed things quite a bit. “We mapped out Season 4, and then went back and started laying stuff in Season 3 that could be in Season 4, and it was really helpful. Season 3 we end up kind of fully overhauling a lot of elements of it because we had written [Season] 4,” during the pandemic. While it might’ve been more work, Hader said going back and laying parts of the foundation for Season 4 in Season 3 really helped the flow of the story in the end.
In just 2 seasons, the crime comedy has earned an impressive 30 Emmy nominations. Hader won twice for Outstanding Lead Actor and Winkler won for Outstanding Supporting Actor. The show has also been recognized for its Outstanding Sound Mixing. It’s safe to say that there’s plenty more awards to be won.
All episodes of Barry are available on HBO and HBO Max. And yes, you should watch them.