[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Barry” Season 4, Episode 7, “A Nice Meal.”]
For all of the reveals that “Barry” shares DNA with — crime dramas, black comedies, metaphysical treatises on morality — as the tip nears, it’s best to see “Barry” as principally a extra harmful model of “The Different Two.” Hollywood satire, over-confident narcissists plummeting to depths of their very own digging, relationships shredded in a heartbeat. Add just a few further corpses to the Dubek family’s peaks and valleys and also you get one thing roughly approximating the place “Barry” finds itself now: desperation, loss of life, and jokes.
Author Liz Sarnoff has lengthy been serving to “Barry” ship some laborious truths and troublesome fates in second-to-last episodes of seasons (very like George Pelecanos did for “The Wire”). Right here, she returns for “A Good Meal,” a fourth and ultimate Episode 7 to place a bow on these time bounce transformations — to not present that every one these characters are essentially proper again the place they began, however that every of them has ambitions and impulses that they will’t shake.
“Barry” has dangled some endgame concepts of who would possibly find yourself discovering that elusive happiness and who will nearly actually find yourself dealing with a brutal punishment. There’s a faint glimmer when it seems like Gene (Henry Winkler) could be heading for the previous. Seemingly rewarded for his persistence and being motivated by good intentions, a random cellphone name from a UTA agent tells him this new Barry Berkman mission could be luring Daniel Day-Lewis out of retirement. With that tantalizing ray of hope, Gene talks himself into being justified in accepting the highlight. However he makes a “Barry” rookie mistake: Everybody on this present ought to know by now to not anticipate unconditional good issues.
We’ve talked lots this season about performances of all kinds, however haven’t but actually addressed how legislation enforcement levels deception. FBI brokers have pitted former pals in opposition to one another for plea offers and (proper earlier than being executed by a roof-hiding assassin) performed alongside at letting Barry (Bill Hader) suppose Sally was coming with him on a witness safety deal. For anybody who could have missed that undercurrent, right here’s Nate Corddry’s character to make it extra obvious than ever.
It’s one of many final in an infinite line of Gene’s Almosts, tragedies large and small that he may have averted with only one slight change from his inherent methods. Just a bit little bit of empathy with Leo may have helped their relationship with out having to resort to an help from strawberries. Somewhat little bit of diligence may have helped him understand his son was really nonetheless alive after the unintentional capturing that triggered him to flee the nation. A tiny ounce of humility approach again when may have triggered him to pay nearer consideration to his college students in order that one posing as a Hollywood dealmaker would have set off an alarm bell. It’s Gene’s personal private “for wont of a nail” that’s now ended up with him being the sufferer of his personal self-righteousness. His dream lodge room lunch assembly with Mark Wahlberg is definitely a sting operation, and Gene’s the one holding the metaphorical bag (after taking the bodily one full of a quarter-million {dollars} final season). If nobody believes him now, it’s solely as a result of he did too good a job at portray himself as the final word, chameleon-like manipulator. (This line about Barry from Gene’s one-man show to Lon stands proud much more now: “I understand how to press these buttons. Hey, I put in them!”)
In “Barry’s” series-long seesaw between penalties and absurdity, Hank (Anthony Carrigan) has so typically been proper on the fulcrum. He’s successfully slid into the spot that Barry left. (Are you able to think about Season 4 Barry delivering the “Glengarry Glen Ross” monologue the identical approach now? In fact not. You understand who would fortunately whip that out as a celebration trick or as a approach to move time ready for a henchman to select him up from the home of a kindly resident someplace close to Beachwood Canyon? This guy.) Carrigan has excelled this season in delivering the hammer-blow emotional moments, however this episode actually reveals off his capability to toggle between chuckling and dropping his voice right down to the threatening vary he needs to mission.
From the a la carte mercenary choice scene to the one the place he’s wanting by packing containers containing their heads (good work from David Alan Baker and the props crew to verify there’s juuuuuust sufficient crimson on the backside of that cardboard to let individuals know what’s occurred as quickly because the digicam cuts to Hank’s desk), we’re watching one man develop into extra faraway from the human value of his personal petty disagreements. Fuches (Stephen Root) left him insulted and spiraling, in his very Hank-like approach. The failed try at payback hints that Hank nonetheless won’t be prepared for being the shot-caller for non-legitimate enterprise ventures, and it additionally reveals how effectively he’s in a position to dissociate from unhealthy information post-Cristobal.
Even when Hank is numb to the fallout of his actions, “Barry” remains to be intent on reminding those that these selections don’t exist in a vacuum. Season 4 has been dominated by the long-simmering payback visited on everybody caught on this mess, and “A Good Meal” makes room for the short-term, too. One in every of Fuches’ guys mops up the blood from the off-screen beheadings whereas he does harm management together with his new household. With all of the speak of the “Quick and the Livid” motion pictures, Hank’s getaway after the failed rocket launch try is decidedly unglamorous. With lives within the stability, essentially the most he and his soon-to-be-assassinated driver can do is go barely quicker down a protracted driveway, like somebody on a grocery run. Life-and-death conditions don’t flip these individuals into superheroes. It solely brings out extra of what makes them human.
That goes for Barry, too. His escape from Jim’s (Robert Knowledge) storage chair is a savvy little bit of visible undercutting. The digicam strikes from the chair to the door in just a few seconds, all it takes for Barry to chop himself free. It’s a affected person, managed transfer you’d anticipate from an exacting heist flick, the sort of shorthand to let somebody watching know that each topic and storyteller are in full management. That makes Barry slipping and reducing his palm open its personal sort of punchline. Right here’s somebody so ruthless and environment friendly, solely to go from military-trained escape artist to zonking out in somebody’s kitchen within the span of minutes. (It’s why, after appearances from Guillermo del Toro and Sian Heder, Gene’s lure is plausible, just for the present to tug out the rug from below him, too.) Whether or not Jim put somewhat one thing further within the IV drip or Barry’s shortly bleeding out, that’s not the triumphant, redemptive escape for somebody you’d anticipate to get out of subsequent week’s sequence finale unscathed.
Momentum-wise, that is an efficient setup for an ending from Sarnoff and the writing crew. Everyone seems to be converging on Barry, as anticipated. Fuches needs his revenge. Hank needs to make him joyful. Gene now sees getting Barry below oath as the one approach to clear himself. And now, Sally (Sarah Goldberg) and John (Zachary Golinger) have flown in from elements unknown to finish up proper again the place she began this complete factor. After just a few episodes of Sally drifting by a listless new life sooner or later, “A Good Meal” additionally brings that clarifying pressure of what it’s she’s combating for now. That look to John as she walks towards the LAPD automobile comes with the popularity that turning herself in is a worthy value to pay with a view to protect her son from extra hurt. Subsequent week will present if her unenthusiastic plea for assistance on that final cellphone name, herself now trapped in a chair below Hank’s supervision, is greater than the frustration of discovering malignant males all over the place she turns.
Barry’s model of lofty goals has lengthy been having a content material life, free from the burden of remorse or disappointment. After slack-jawed daydreaming from a jail cell the place these weddings blended into the desert, this episode confronts him with a terrifying waking VR nightmare (together with John in full “It’s occurring once more” mode). As Jim reminds him, “That is all in your head, Barry.” Simply as this one man can’t assist imagining his personal worst-case situations, the most important prisons in “Barry” Season 4 have been those a bunch of those individuals have made for themselves. The finale will convey not less than some sort of freedom. It’s in all probability not going to be the sort anybody is on the lookout for.
Grade: A-
“Barry” Season 4 airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
