Summary: Barry is homeschooling his son John, making him sheltered and preventing him from spending time with other children. He tries to teach him not to be angry. Sally works as a waitress and is trapped within her life. She is sad to see Natalie with a successful TV show and is not invested in her new family. She chokes Bevel, a bad co-worker who tries to hook up with her before getting him fired. After returning home, Sally sees that Gene has re-emerged after 8 years with the intention to speak out in a movie about Barry.
The Good: This episode confirms that what we are seeing is an 8-year timeskip, which is such a bold move for the final act of this story. I quite like this decision as it throws us off in a way that we don't expect, making the story feel even more unpredictable and exciting. Now Barry and Sally have a new life to fight for, and it's tough to see where both characters are going to go, and how the rest of the main cast fit into this. As for that new life, this episode's entire purpose is to establish what this new life is, and what it means to Barry and Sally. Barry is clearly living it up playing this new role. As a father to John, Barry can play up all of the aspects of his character that he wants to be true, but we can see that evil within him as he holds Sally prisoner in this life and creates a traumatic environment for his son to grow up in. This is the answer that "Barry" provides to those asking the question "is it just if Barry gets a second chance". The answer ends up being a resounding no. Barry has tricked himself into thinking he's a good man, but it's a facade, and Barry's statement that he has to kill Gene at the episode's end confirms that the evil within Barry is still there. The soft-spoken, religious father that we see here is not the real Barry, and even though he's having a good life and has created a bubble to hide from what he's done, the things he has done continue to haunt the world around him. Sally is suffering immensely (more on her in a bit), and poor John is living through a traumatic childhood without even knowing it. This episode is uncomfortable and bleak in showing Barry's parenting style, how he manipulates John to love him with his stories, and how he isolates John from being able to form relationships with others. Add on these false stories of Barry's past, and John is set up to have a horrifying moment in his growth when he learns who his dad really is, and finds that he has no ability to connect with other people to overcome this. The knowledge of all this makes Barry's bond with John feel disgusting. Even if Barry seems like just another caring parent at first glance, this episode firmly hammers in that what Barry is doing is not good. Poor Sally is living a trapped life, and it looks like she has nothing to live for with this new family. Barry has it easy staying at home to parent, and naturally Sally is the one that has to go work and take risks with other people so that Barry can live his fantasy life. We can see how this new life weighs on Sally. Being a waitress is crushing for her as she knows she could be so much more, indicative with how she tortures herself watching Natalie's show regularly. To cope with her new life, Sally drinks, Sally ignores her son, and Sally chokes disgusting men to at least give herself the power of being the abuser instead of the victim for a change. This is her sad fate, and the episode portrays this nicely. Seeing Gene again was a blast, and a welcome departure from seeing Barry and Sally's new life. His re-emergence raises several exciting questions, and provides a necessary hook to make me anticipate the final three episodes. The Bad: This episode is too bleak and uncomfortable to watch. The storytelling is good, and the show artfully and impressively conveyed Barry and Sally's new life, but it is too much. "Barry" is a tragicomedy that gets by with lots of humour to take the edge off of some of the darker moments in the show. Because of this, it has always operated at a fast pace, offering plenty of jokes, and never forcing us to sit in the uncomfortable subject matter that is being discussed. Even the most dramatic of episodes obey this rule. The season 3 finale, "starting now", is another bleak and intense episode, but because it moves quickly between scenes, it's constantly entertaining. It doesn't linger in the misery felt by the characters, and its primary goal is still to entertain. "tricky legacies" struggles because it does linger in misery, and it doesn't do much else. This episode is deeply uncomfortable and dark, and instead of channeling this tone to tell a story, the entire point of the episode is to sit and watch how uncomfortable and dark it is. This doesn't make for entertaining television, and after 10 minutes I already got the picture and was more than ready to move on to see what came next. Instead, the episode continued to beat us over the head with the horror of Barry and Sally's new life to its detriment. The pace of the episode is painfully slow, and because of that, this doesn't feel like an episode of "Barry" anymore. So many scenes move at a glacial pace to get to the point, and the length of scenes is much longer than what we typically see in "Barry". This is not necessarily a bad thing - "Better Call Saul" does slow, long scenes to great effect - but this style of storytelling has never been what "Barry" does, and the switch to it in this episode did not work because it made "Barry" feel like a different show altogether. It felt jarring, odd, and out of place. Was the story competently told, and was the episode directed well? Yes, absolutely. But the story was told in such a weird and ultimately unnecessary way (a 10 minute sequence could easily accomplish this), that it did not work the way it should have. I usually love episodes that break the norm (just look at how much I praised "ronny/lily"), but when an episode does that, it should still feel like it belongs in the TV show it is a part of. For example, great formula-break episodes from "Lost" still very clearly had the same tone, directing style, and emotional resonance as other episodes in that show, but "tricky legacies" did not feel like it belonged as a part of "Barry". The Unknown: Where has Gene been for 8 years? Has he just been at his cabin? What happened to Leo, did he die? Or did he simply abandon his father? Why has Gene emerged now? Is it really just to tell the story of Barry in a movie? Or does he have ulterior motives? How is Barry going to kill Gene? What is he going to do? Will Sally be willing to risk everything for this new life with Barry? Or will she ultimately choose to escape from Barry? I get the sense that Sally will have to make a choice about this soon. Where have Hank and Fuches been? How are they going to fit into the final act of this story? Best Moment: Honestly, the brief scene with Gene because of how it felt more like the old "Barry" that this episode tries so hard not to be. Character of the Episode: Barry. Conclusion: Quite possibly the strangest episode of the series. This episode showed us the bleak reality of Barry and Sally's new life. While this was effective, the way it was shown to us was out-of-character for "Barry", resulting in a weird episode that has a very limited entertainment value. Score: 57
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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