Barry - Finishing the Second Season

I was thinking to myself, with a bit of a smirk as it came to mind, that the second season of Barry, this year in 2019 was often sort of a relief after each episode of Game of Thrones: The Final Season. There were episodes I did miss because I was writing bits and pieces about GoT so it served more or less as background noise, but when I did just need to unwind the intensity of the GoT episodic experience, Barry helped in that regard. I needed to wrap up several “loose threads” on the blog, regarding series sort of left hanging unfinished. Barry is one of several. October coming up, it was just time to try and shore up several of these shows that I have written about but not completed. The second season of Barry has been quite a ride, too.

What?! allows us to see Sally’s former abusive beau, the way his manipulation does have its control and hold over her as Barry plans to kill him. Sam yaps with this happy-go-lucky smile, seemingly innocuous and doesn’t carry any appearance of some monster. And Sally agreed to a dinner with current boyfriend, Barry, fuming and just ready to strike at any moment. Sam’s façade is clear, especially when he brags to Barry later when told to leave Cousineau’s theater after spotting Sally practicing her rehearsal about their history, even as it was false. Sally just unloading to Barry that her telling Sam off and aggressively ending their volatile relationship was a lie reveals that she left in the dark of night while he was asleep. There was no confrontation; in fact, Sally cops to sleeping next to him, even telling him she loved him after many abusive episodes, a vicious cycle that seemed to never end. The episode further emphasizes the point of secrets, and how not everything from the past—the skeletons that are holed away in the closet—should be told aloud. So Sally kvetches about whether or not to play the scene out as she has it or cop to what really happened. Meanwhile, Barry nearly shoots Sally when she reluctantly agrees to meet Sam in his hotel room before he leaves for home, only in LA until the early evening. We see how Sam truly is, the charm of someone who doesn’t seem harmful, as the façade withers to reveal the true colors that often resulted in Sally being black and blue. He would seem soft and gooey, before the rage erupts and his hand slams against the wall near her head as she plans to leave the room. Sally’s fear is evident, all that time she was so weak as a young woman barely twenty sort of reprising the past. Sally, to her credit, does leave him behind and Barry pulls into a corner where she can’t see him, later moving back to his car to beat himself up over nearly using violence against another due to the violent urges inside. And Barry’s past in Korengal, when he was a soldier, is truly spilled to Cousineau—in the episode, his estranged son does agree to have lunch with him, a sort of olive branch between both sides making an effort seems to be a second chance at somewhat healing a fractured father/son relationship. Cousineau does convince him not to reveal that to anyone ever again, instead speaking to him about how he was such a shitty father, that both of them can repair their damaged lives and be better if they own up to their mistakes and work on themselves. Of course, then after a hug, Cousineau speaks about charging him for the talk!!! Prior to Sam and Sally meeting in his hotel room for another intense encounter, Barry warned him to leave the theater and we see the darkness that is Sam bragging about how he fucked Sally first when she was “tight”. Yeah, he’s a real peach. The ongoing crisis for Fuches regarding betraying Barry due to Detective Loach’s pressure reaches a new twist…Loach will bury what he has against Barry regarding his partner’s murder (it is recorded, Barry not listening to Fuches’ pleas not to come to his hotel room, he arrives with pleasant news that he would be “owning his shit”, no longer allowing the past murder of a civilian he thought was a sniper that killed his buddy in Korengal to rule over his life) if he does a hit for him! The next episode is about that hit…Ronny is the target, Loach’s wife’s lover! Great acting, especially by the gem of the series, Goldberg (although others have gotten awards, she is much deserved of the Emmy for her 2019 work on this series), gives his episode so much shine. 4.5/5

I guess what makes ronny/lilly so entertaining is that it goes off-script, sort of functioning as its own standalone within the second season. I functions as a “day in the life” of Barry when a hit goes completely haywire, leaving him a bloodied mess while Fuches tries to patch him up as a target’s daughter makes their lives especially difficult. Ronny is Loach’s bitter rival, having taken up with the detective’s ex-wife. Loach is obsessively hellbent on Ronny being dead, seeing him as the main reason his marriage is over. Barry sees all the Taekwondo trophies in Ronny’s room, getting to see firsthand just how effective a martial artist he can be. Barry finally gets a direct shot to Ronny’s windpipe, crushing it, allowing him eventually to catch a breath before Lilly, Ronny’s equally dangerous little girl, arrives from class to further cause damage and wreak havoc. Eventually after hurling pots and pans and any other objects in the house at Barry, a couple of quick stabs with meat knives leaves the hitman-turned-thespian quite worse for wear. Fuches will be needed to help stitch Barry up after Lilly drops her knives and flees her home in an emotional upheaval. The episode is just absurd enough to show Lilly floating in air like a monkey when not growling at Barry for what he did to her father. At the beginning, Barry requests Ronny to leave for Chicago to relatives for a year until “it all blows over” but Ronny isn’t about to tuck tail and run. So the scuffle ensues, with Ronny getting plenty of shots in before Barry crushes his windpipe with one well-placed blow. ronny/lilly follows the infamous Night King episode of Game of Thrones when the Walkers descended on Winterfell, and it certainly, for me, was a comedown episode that allowed me to laugh and roll my eyes a bit. It was indeed exactly what it needed to be as I exhaled after and absorbed the lengthy Game of Thrones mini-movie. Barry tries to smooth things over but Ronny and Lilly would have none of it…he wasn’t about to get out of this situation in one piece. Loach, of course, sort of reneges on his deal with Barry, more than willing to betray Barry and Fuches despite his promise to let them off the hook for his partner’s murder. Loach tries to seize upon the “crush two birds with one stone” opportunity, having both Ronny and Barry in one place, a supermarket. While Barry is there to get paint thinner to free Fuches’ hands from the steering wheel of the SUV when he used super glue to close the gaping knife wound on Barry’s back, Ronny isn’t dead as thought to be. With gauze around his neck, Ronny resumes his fight with Barry despite being truly undermined by his main injury, literally tossing his body oftentimes at him and throwing kicks all over the place, knocking down displays and hurling items on the floor. This eventually has customers running out of the building and the cops called to the scene (especially when Ronny pummels an employee of the store). Loach arrives to shoot Ronny (still not enough to kill him!!!) and reveal his plans to arrest Barry, with Barry on the floor wondering what to do next, shocked that this guy broke his promise. Barry, once granted a route away from capture due to fate, Ronny throttles Loach with one giant kick that sends him to the floor with a snapped neck, killing him instantly and the police take him out with bulletfire. Barry flees from the store, as Fuches awaits. The episode briefly leaves the absurd situation as Barry fades in and out due to his loss of blood, returning home to no one as other soldiers embrace family, with Fuches giving him a nod to join him. That same nod in the SUV reminds Barry of what his life has become thanks to Fuches. So the episode sort of leaves us there as the sirens and red/blue lights arrive at the store, with Barry once again (as well as Fuches) left to contemplate the latest chapter in his violent saga. Lilly attaching herself to Fuches’ face and landing on the roof of the SUV (…maybe it was an acorn, says Fuches with hope), climbing trees and rooftops of houses in the episode (directed by Hader, funnily enough), is the cherry on top. The entire episode is almost too ridiculous but truth is often stranger than fiction. 5/5

The Truth Has a Ring to It sort of gets us back to the everyday difficulties of Barry’s life, having to secure the items that Loach had that would implicate/incriminate him, cut ties with Fuches for betraying him, approach Cousineau about using his experience in Korengal as inspiration for the part of Sam (instead of having his own bit which would have incriminated him on stage), and finishing up (or so he thought) with the training of NoHo Hank’s Chechen once-very-unprepared underlings. What Barry doesn’t anticipate is Fuches’ determination to find the car and Janice’s dead body. Spending the night in the wilderness, falling accidentally down hills into creeks, and essentially following the breadcrumbs of how Barry would conceal a crime. Fuches is also fueled by his severe dislike for Cousineau simply because Barry considers the latter more of a positive role model and influence on his life. So Fuches eyes Cousineau after finding the car and body, while Barry and Sally rehearse the “big scene” and eventually perform it for the theater audience and Gene. Barry is, at first, a wet rag, no real investment, essentially reading lines from the script. But when he finds that rage that drives him to kill the civilian in Korengal and Janice at Gene’s cabin deck, Barry occupies Sam in a way never seen by the theater troupe or Sally. Sally has the proper Sam to play off of, returning to that horrible time when she was weak, the “hostage” in the drama where he gains her sympathy after abusing her. It hits a homerun and both Barry and Sally are considered successes. Sally’s own agent is there, having been discarded for a bit because Sally was deep into the theater project, scoring a homerun which she was there to behold. And Barry is constantly reminded in conversation with Gene about getting away with murder and remembering that so he would never mention to anyone else…not that Barry would. Barry reminded by Gene, who can’t help but bring it up over and over is a line that never gets old because he shouldn’t not remember it. And he has done far worse than Korengal, which is another knife edge stab when talking to Gene Cousineau. He killed Gene’s beloved, too, so he is always reminded of that. The editing in that stage scene, where Korengal and Janice emerge in Barry’s mind while he prepares to “be Sam” is essential to the power of how he occupies the part and pivots Sally into her own “performance”. The truth is on stage even as Barry fails to reveal his. And Fuches’ motivation is obvious…Barry is his meal ticket and he won’t just give up without a fight. As far as NoHo Hank goes, his efforts to take out Esther and her Burmese mob is undermined by the accordion player…how ironic is that? The accordion player who ruined his “big dramatic moment” with Barry when the two would part as the plan for NoHo Hank to be Esther’s replacement is set in motion. And that motion is derailed by the accordion player..HA! 5/5

The Audition really had me howling and yet also in awe. There are just small sequences that had me just exhilarated. Like Goldberg in her scene when her Sally just explodes on Barry, without him realizing a lot of what she’s saying because it is a lot of unload, about his easily securing an audition for a very minor lifeguard spot that has like one or two lines involving shitting in and subsequently eating a pie. It is such a part that many struggling actors fall on the sword for just to find a route into feature films. Barry isn’t the kind who sees it for anything more than it is while Gene and Sally are struck as if they were hit by a lightning bolt because of how easy it was for him to get it. He is waiting on Sally as she learns from Lindsay, her agent, that a part will be available for a big television producer, meeting with others at the Gersh Firm about the project, which ultimately revealed is about vengeful abusive wives murdering husbands in various ways! In the previous episode, Sally had a big moment on stage before her peers with Barry and Lindsay was there to see it. Sally has been empowered by all of this, seeing the truth and finding a real voice. Goldberg, in a venting session that I absolutely fell head over heels for, just relinquishes some pent up animosity towards poor Barry, who is just going over the lines to try to figure out how to play the character. Sally cannot grasp that all because Barry was tall and had a potential look he got an audition with little-to-no effort. The way Hader plays Barry is often aloof and lost on the struggles of actors to get an audition much less the part in a big show or film. He is there to learn, more or less, and try to build a different life for himself away from the whole hitman-killer thing that has engulfed him for quite some time. Meanwhile, Fuches is driven to fuck Barry over, not willing to just let bygones be bygones and discover a different career path. Instead, Fuches eyes implicating Gene for the death of Janice, having Cousineau call up Barry just to let him know what is up. Fuches continues to be a source of comedy and yet a real bastard. Barry learns of what Fuches is doing with Gene during his audition, so when Barry goes before Jay Roach and his producers he’s intense and focused on what is happening elsewhere. Roach, how he responds to Barry “not giving a shit” (and he’s over six foot…quite a big deal to them!), as he exits the audition to go after Fuches, just left me in ribbons. This series is just so damn good. So fucking good. Anyway, while Fuches and Cousineau are at the cabin, Gene goes on about how Barry had no direction when he arrived at the theater, serving as father figure to him. Fuches isn’t at all pleased with how Gene takes credit for rebuilding Barry’s life and serving as father…Fuches had thought he had given Barry direction, a purpose. Not only did Fuches pretend to be a detective showing Cousineau where the car is, he called up the police using Gene’s phone, even telling them he was responsible! The closing fade to black had Fuches on the verge of putting a bullet in the back of Gene’s head, revealing how ruthless he could be. Prior to this Barry was racing in his car to get to the area, hoping to stop Fuches before he could doing anything criminal to Gene. Fuches’ dogged inability to allow Barry to live a different kind of life and leave him behind is quite a showcase. He just won’t give an inch, this guy. And I haven’t even mentioned NoHo Hank, and how a member of his crew, Mayrbeck, finds a way out of their being gasolined and burned alive while bound in a bus. NoHo is clearly losing the respect of his guys while Mayrbeck, who learned a great deal from Barry during the field training to be a killer, has won them all over with his quick thinking and timing and ability to get them all out of one hell of a jam. Before long, Mayrbeck, with help from the guys once he pulls away the bar from the seat holding his tied hands and frees them, leads a machine-gun charge, saving the day. NoHo going on and on about failure to lead them, waxing about the end of life and their unfortunate situation, not knowing how Mayrbeck has led them out of the bus and into a gunfight they are victorious, is another of those brilliant, funny, typical Barry series scenes. He has nothing to do with their victory, and then tries to rebound with a victory speech they will have nothing of. But to me this is really at its absolute best when Sally is onscreen. Her unwillingness to be a lead in a series that doesn’t take seriously her voice and what her stage life experience truly means might rub the agents wrong, but Lindsay, to her credit, reaffirms Sally that she will try harder. In fact, a stage performance for Cousineau’s troop is moved to a much larger venue thanks to strings pulled by a determined Lindsay. I think the Sally of season one, episode one, is quite a different person—the very great actresses are able to truly develop a character out of just being a narcissistic, selfish character into someone willing to sacrifice for the good of the work—than what we see standing proud and assured before the male agents at the Gersh Firm, with Lindsay, clearly seeing her point despite being disappointed her client couldn’t relent to work with such a high powered producer, coming to terms with her stance. Sally of season one would have taken the lead in the series probably without much fight. But realizing that her past experience with Sam has opened something deeper as an actress, Sally isn’t just willing to take whatever is thrown at her. She wants the part to be something more than an archetype visualized by men as “revenge porn”. That scene where Sally is unloading on Barry about getting such an easy audition, admitting that there is frustration inside because of the struggles she has had, while also recognizing that if she can bring her experience to the screen in a character overcoming abuse and serving as an example for others in similar relationships, we see someone with so much on the mind, trying to balance it all. I swoon about Goldberg because she can speed off all of this in quick succession and it all isn’t just blather…you see Sally’s mind trying to process and make it all make sense. I LOVE that. 5/5

I could see the final episode of the second season clearly renamed The Lie. Lying sometimes seems to be the preferred option. The truth, will it set you free? Will it? I guess this is what was on my mind when I was watching this. Gene Cousineau is told by Fuches that Barry Berkman was responsible for the death of Janice…the love of Gene’s life. Barry should pay for his sins. He tries to call the sheriff’s department and turn himself in, but instead learns from Leo, Gene’s son, that Gene will be released from jail, since a Chechen pin was found in the trunk located near the body. The Chechen pin that NoHo Hank gave to Barry as a token of friendship and a “release of any debts”. So Janice’s death looks like a Chechen hit, as Barry learns that his planting of the pin worked in getting Gene off. But Fuches left behind that nugget of knowledge regarding Barry that leads into the next season with quite a lot to unpack. What will Gene do? What will Barry do after he literally serves as a one-man killing machine taking out all of Cristobal and Esther’s (and NoHo Hank’s!) entire weaponized arsenal of gun-toting killers at the Buddhist monstery, even executing Mayrbeck without realizing it due to wanting to find and kill Fuches? Fuches might have slipped away from the monastery in the nick of time, but how far can he run before Barry gets to him? Or will Barry be able to get to him with Gene knowing about what he done to Janice? Lots of possibilities which is why a cliffhanger should be this fucking good. Sally, lying in front of that 400-seat crowd during her performance with a lack-of-focus Barry, instead of reinacting with truth about what happened to her with Sam, empowering her “character” with a response of strength and fiery indignation, equipping the abuse victim with dignity, courage, and resolve…a lie that the audience eats up, much to the dismay of both Sally and Lindsay. So Sally’s career might just take off on that lie but Sam knows the truth. But that kind of truth would serve as a stumbling block for Sally’s life going forward, right? I guess we shall see! And NoHo hiding away while Barry was obliterating all of the folks he had been associating, only to emerge when his boss arrives from Chechnya leaves him with potential at staying in LA instead of “going home” is the perfect visual to describe his character…stay alive by ducking for cover and inadvertently remaining viable when the competition is removed by others, particularly Barry! I think, besides Goldberg’s sterling work (Yes, I go on and on about it, but so what?!), Barry looking down after he comes to his senses at a dead Mayrbeck, a tear in his eye as he realizes what he’s done, with all the bodies displayed after the carnage, is the best scene. Triggered by a slap from Sally to shake him out of his fog and rage towards Fuches for continuing his goading, all that happens at the monastery seems to be borne from those provocations. Sally’s was obviously to wake him up, but when she “updates” the play to halt anything Sam could do to make her a victim, instead lying on stage in favor of being a woman rising out of abuse to be heroic, Barry leaves, seemingly clear focused on what lies ahead…killing Fuches. 4.5/5