Summary: Hank meets with Toro, who is sending hitmen to kill Barry. Fuches calls Hank and learns about this. Barry meets with Lon and learns that Gene has told Barry's story. He calls Hank to kill Gene, but Hank blows him off and refuses. Barry meets with a witness protection agent and notices a man is there to kill him. There is an attack and everyone in the room is killed except Barry. Barry escapes. Lon meets with Jim who takes him to his garage. Gene is fearful that Barry will come after him after making his deal and tells Tom what he told Lon. They go to hunt down Lon and find out he talked to Jim. Tom flees, leaving Gene to face Jim. Sally starts a teaching class and uses Gene's method on Kristen. Everyone else is horrified and leaves, but Kristen stays.
The Good: This is peak "Barry", combining humour and drama masterfully. On the dramatic front, Barry's story is really sad to watch. He's so broken, and angry, and utterly soulless. It's far removed from the socially awkward and relatable figure he was in season 1. Now he's at his worst, and every scene here reflects that. After speaking with Lon about Gene, Barry falls into a fit of absolute rage at how Gene is ruining his deal as well. Barry has been frightening when angered, and in this episode he falls to a whole new low, raging at Lon, and then raging on his own (though amusingly a bystander witnessed the whole thing). This sets up Barry calling Hank, a scene that absolutely steals the show. Barry is pathetic and manipulative here. He has called Gene and he has called Sally, but here he only carries Hank when he wants something from him, and he tries to manipulate Hank into giving him what he wants. It's desperate and pathetic, and this time Hank can see that too. Seeing the sheer hurt, betrayal, and pain in Hank's face contrasted with Barry's sadistic desperation, frustration, and rage is starkly impactful. Seeing this long-running friendship finally dissolve is very sad, and hearing Hank accuse Barry followed by Barry's angry response confirming the worst is very painful, and I can't help but feel for Hank who has lost his friend. Despite this intense emotional drama, "Barry" still leaves plenty of room for comedy. The opening of the episode sees Hank and Cristobal meeting "Toro", which is where the episode pulls out a very fun Guillermo Del Toro cameo. This scene seems like your typical arrangement of a hit, but it takes a delightful turn when Hank starts instead criticizing a gadget podcast that Toro is clearly a huge personal fan of. It's so funny to hear Hank complaining about this podcast because of the non-functioning gadgets, and being forced to only imagine them since he often listens to the podcast while driving. The best part about this joke is that it comes back later when the two podcast hosts try to kill Barry and the pen gadget blows up, becoming completely ineffective. This final scene is so fantastic for a lot of reasons, not just the comic timing of the gadget not working. Fred Armisen's facial expressions as he works up to killing Barry are so funny, and I love that Barry's mass murderer instincts kick in and he immediately figures out that this guy is here to kill him. The wacky action involving a ceiling sniper that follows is a ton of fun, and the sheer violence that accompanies the wacky ridiculousness has become a signature touch of "Barry". I really enjoyed this ending scene. More on the comedic front is Gene's story, and the laughs here are fantastic. Last episode got its laughs from Gene's vanity and narcissism, but this episode instead gets most of its comedy out of Tom's absurdity through visual gag after visual gag. I adore the variety in humour between episodes, and it makes both of the last two episodes equally memorable in terms of comedy. However, I give the edge to this one because the visual humour was so good, and it made me laugh more. The wide shot setting up Tom crashing the car was a hilarious delight, you have an idea of where this is going, but the execution is tremendous. Breaking into Lon's house was even funnier, and got a lot of comedy out of keeping Gene and Tom outside of view of the camera. Tom throwing a rock through the window is so funny because we don't see what he's doing until it happens; hearing Gene falling into broken glass and Tom fumbling around through the kitchen is funnier because we are left to fill in the holes with our imagination. Then a terrific gag of Lon's wife being in the backyard the entire time with the backdoor unlocked makes the entire break-in even more absurdly funny. Add on one final gag of Tom throwing Lon's monitor into the pool in the background and the scene is a masterclass in comedy (nothing is even stored in monitors so this is absolutely meaningless to add the cherry on top). The episode has a few other terrific comedic bits. Having Fuches get yet another change of heart after seeing himself and Barry in "Rain Man" is a hysterical moment. Seeing Fuches have a change of heart in practically every single episode now is really funny, and is a clever self-parody that makes good use of the character. The torture done to Lon was outrageously unexpected. I was afraid that Jim may have cut out his tongue, so when he started speaking German, I was baffled in the best possible way. The real kicker is that Lon's snack of choice seems to have changed as well from Skittles to Haribo gummy bears, making his German transformation even more authentic in hilarious fashion. Sally has her own story in this episode, and most of it is really good. It's amusing to see her taking Gene's role as teacher, and she adds some typical Sally flair to make things enjoyable. I don't think we've seen Sally with glasses before, so if she just grabbed them to look more professional, that's a good touch. I also like that she simply skips the "boring" parts of class so that she can only teach the parts that she likes. As fun as this is, the most impactful part of this storyline was her dressing down of Kristen, which was done in the same way that Gene did with her. Sally was ruthless and cruel, but the result was that she drew something out of Kristen that Kristen never would have unearthed otherwise. The class reacts poorly to this, but it's telling that Kristen comes back for more, highlighting that even though Sally may be in the wrong for subjecting others to the challenges that she faced, it still ultimately bears fruit. I appreciate the complexity in this story, and Sarah Goldberg is great as always. The Bad: Sally's story is starting to feel like a disconnected side story again, so I hope that she can get back in touch with the main plot to avoid similar problems as last season. Her story also has the one moment of weak writing in the episode. When she executed Gene's acting strategy, I was confused about how everybody decided that it was abusive. This caught me off guard because nobody raised this point in Gene's class, furthermore she used a type of strategy that we commonly see from coaches and acting teachers, so this is far from abnormal behaviour, and most certainly not abusive. Furthermore, students usually won't have the courage to confront teachers like this about abuse, so there's a sense of realism that is lost when absolutely everyone up and leaves after that. Add on how inconsistent this type of moral behaviour is in the world of "Barry" where people are often shown to be too stupid or ignorant to notice these things, and the scene feels out of place in this show. The Unknown: Batir has returned and is possibly planning on eliminating Hank's new operation. Where is this storyline heading? What's next for Fuches? He has been a bit adrift in this episode. Where has Barry gone? Will he try to escape prison? Why is he missing? What the hell did Jim do to Lon to make him German? Best Moment: Barry's phone call with Hank. Character of the Episode: Hank. Conclusion: This is "Barry" at its dark, comical best. There are some emotionally charged scenes here that hit like a truck, but they are interspersed with some absolutely hilarious sequences that are a blast to go through. The best episode of the final season so far. Score: 73
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|