Bill Hader in HBO's Barry

as a hitman he's pulling John Wick moves, and as an actor he's like an alien who came to earth having never seen movies, or TV, or very much human behavior before.

I mean...ok if that's not your thing. But you're just describing the essential conceit/premise of the show.

I agree that the show hasn't been hilarious so far. but a good amount of the comedy comes from hader being a one-dimensional hitman exploited by stephen root. you get to watch root's whole deal fall apart because hader, who is very capable otherwise, is worried about his afternoon acting class. so I only mean that this relationship wouldn't make sense without a skill to exploit. Hader is also becoming more of a bumbling hitman, anyway, because of the distraction. I don't love the show yet, but the decision to make him a competent hitman instead of macgruber seems like a funny one.

xp lol exactly

I've only seen this first episode but for this to be bad with this cast, it would have to be really, really bad.

most recent episode was a marked improvement. Winkler's dinner scene was great.

the chechen guy w/o eyebrows shd get his own spinoff

yeah the idiotic chechens are the only thing keeping this show a "comedy" at this point. though i did laugh hardest at barry and winkler's backstage interaction this week ("ok, i see you're still in that place...")

yea idk abt that last macbeth ep

the "this is your new process" line sure felt like comedy to me

is one of the jokes how wretched all of the actors are? unsure. weird show.

(spoilers obviously!!)

I'd have preferred for the detective to take him down and leave this as a limited series tbh

is it going to continue? this show confounded me.

Yeah s2 is happening

Apparently yeah. Henry Winkler is gonna be so sad. ;_;

xp

the idea that he could talk, or shoot, his way out of the ending seems pretty implausible.

I was already annoyed that he hadn't scrubbed his FB page.

as mentioned upthread, what you were meant to accept- what's plausible from a character POV vs a storytelling POV- was so confused and all over the place that it just came out as a mess imo. I generally find Hader to be a welcome presence but i thought on balance this was more bad than good. the idea that it's going to continue makes even less sense.

that ending at the cabin could not have been real

hbo really loves their "antiheroes" who are not actually heroic in any way and you only end up rooting for because they're played by a famous, charismatic actor, huh

entertaining show, good jokes, great character actor work across the board, all somewhat spoiled by the murky morality and weak/inexplicable plotting

going back and reading the comments above, barry doesn't really seem like a badass hitman to me - he's a good shot, but doesn't really do anything fancy or smart. maybe this is just because i'm watching killing eve at the same time.

this show has really leveled up this season

holy fuck

That just blew the monumentally hyped TV show that airs before it out of the water.

^^^^^^^
I woulda sworn this was hiro murai directing; hader pulled off something spectacular here. Coen-esque!

looking forward to catching up since I’m only just finishing with season 1 but that Glengarry scene killed me.

yeah this season has been wild !

This was nice mini-movie, definitely felt like a Coen Bros/Rube Goldberg device to let Barry get away with murder. That little girl!

I hadn't realised there was a second series, mainly because the end of the first was a perfectly satisfactory conclusion, so this is a nice surprise to have to catch up on. (See also Hank Azaria's 'Brockmire'.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/arts/television/barry-bill-hader-season-2-episode-5.html

There will be some people who will dig this, and there will be some people who are like: “What’s going on with the acting class? I don’t care about any of this.” You can’t please everybody.

(brockmire is also having a very good third season; the linda lavin episode was aces)

watched it again just now. so great.


(so excited to catch up on brockmire!)

That just blew the monumentally hyped TV show that airs before it out of the water.

totally. that was wild.

Have to wonder if they staggered the season starts just to do that!

i loved this so much...i don't even think it was that much of a tonal shift in the series that people like alan sepinwall keep saying it was. it was just a brilliant and hilarious little short film

Also loved the wordless shots of Stephen Root in malevolent devil mode.

when he yelled "what are you??"--that was the hardest i've laughed at anything on tv this year.

Please bring back feral mongoose girl for more - so entertaining. The little 'eep' on the last hedgerow leap had me laughing so hard.

The whole since in the house with Ronny felt very Tarantino to me

Kill Bill vibes for sure

I’m caught up except for the most recent ep which isn’t out yet here and just came here to say I’m new to this idea of there being a person called bill hader who is actually dexter Michael Shannon. And apparently this is normal, everyone is just letting that go by

honestly hoping the little girl never recurs, Pine Barrens-style

lmao just read the interview and got to Hader explicitly referencing it!

Nice clickbait:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xZFQjeZwaw

I love this character.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/PinkPoshBlueshark-size_restricted.gif

the lightswitch with him from fawning sycophant to psychopath is always so clean

the scene with winkler breaking down "swim instructors" is probably the best highlight of the show since the glengarry scene.

i strongly agree

"You say the title of the movie...they can't possibly cut that!"

FWIW, this was Vulture's take on Sally:

Sally will likely never again be able to do what she truly wants. She had that opportunity with Joplin, but the vagaries of the streaming economy ended that, and her own increasing megalomania, combined with the unfortunate news about her ex-boyfriend, closed off any potential path back.

Still, she could claw her way to finding something in the industry if she were open to lowering her ambitions. But the news from Kristen about Barry’s escape helps crystallize a suspicion that has likely been on her mind all day on the Mega Girls set: There’s no longer anything for her in Hollywood. What Sally wants now is safety and love, and in her mind, the easiest place to find those is with Barry.

yeah i dunno about all that about hollywood. i think the way it makes sense, which is really her DV victim mindset, is that she's seen the ugliness and violence of the world and while Barry is as emblematic of it as anyone, she is convinced that he and he alone can be trusted to never direct it towards her (witness her family being so useless and unsupportive). I don't love it and it is heartbreaking but that's my read

I agree Lavator, I didn’t believe Sally would truly desire this level of exile. She already tried exile with her family and couldn’t stand it. And she went back and even despite everything, she was still shooting her shot any chance she got. The scene where she seamlessly went from coaching to auditioning was peak Sally, and I don’t believe that even being rejected in that moment would be enough for her to 1) go with Barry 2) to the middle of nowhere 3) and become a mother 4) who works a dead-end job 5) where she has to put up with still yet more toxic men, only this time 6) men without any power to do anything for her

All it needs to be is enough for her to run with Barry in the heat of that first moment. After that she’s trapped because she’s helped harbour a dangerous fugitive, and then trapped again because she has a child.

that's a fair point about digging herself in too deep early by not turning him in and then one thing leading to another. however, the implausibility combined with the lynchian surreal landscape does still make me wonder if this is ultimately going to be some kind of delusional fever dream, or at least not be quite what it seems

really good interview with Sarah Goldberg who plays Sally, where she talks about Sally's trauma driving her towards Barry: https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/barry-time-jump-sally-sarah-goldberg-1235604728/

We thought with Episodes 1-4, how are we going to get Sally to a place where this tracks, and she’s wanting to go with Barry?

That’s why there’s the moment in Episode 2 when Sally says, “I feel safe with you.” The idea is that she’s been through so much in her life and she’s been through abusive relationships. Barry was the one person who witnessed her crime and her most animal self in this terrible thing that she did, and he chooses to love her anyway. Sally’s the only character in the show who murders someone when murder isn’t a part of her regular life and isn’t her career. She’s in his terrible trauma state from what’s happened, and Barry, for some reason, is the only person that makes her feel safe because he was there. It’s like him being around her annuls the experience. It makes it all quiet. It’s tragic, really.

bleaker and more messed up every week, so good

omg this show! we watched ep 4 yesterday.

I dunno if I can keep watching thi

oh no they got to him too

bill hader needs to direct a horror movie or something

Stephen Root was so entertaining in this ep.

My only puzzlement is what happened to the guy’s eye with the door?

It was a hallucination. The eye thing was from the episode where she kills that guy.

Doh, of course!

It’s purposely disorienting because according to Hader they used the actual audio from that scene but also brought back the actor to record new dialogue where he talks about the kid, etc.

Gotta admit I found that whole scene confusing. I understood there was some level of hallucination but I also thought something real was happening in the house? Wasn’t the house still trashed after she was sitting on the floor calling Barry?

i "read" it as flashback to the trauma she has of murdering someone

She probably trashed the house. There might be some level of intentional uncertainty about it though.

There's a lot of the last/latest season of Twin Peaks in this season. I think the last few episodes have been an extended fever dream. He'd fall briefly into these kinds of fantasies about a perfect life outside of Fuches, etc, so it wouldn't be totally out of nowhere. And now, at the end of this last episode, it picks up from whatever happened after Barry showed up at Sally's.

It was a hallucination. The eye thing was from the episode where she kills that guy.

Ohhh, thank you. I knew that sounded familiar but I wrongly assumed that the intruder in black was the dude from the diner. Or maybe it was, but she hallucinated some of the elements? There have been some obvious fantasy scenes this scene, and I initially wondered if the whole flash forward thing would be a hallucination, but this one was more ambiguous and eerie (haven't seen the new ep yet).

Appreciate that this week's episode maintained a reasonable amount of humor. The last two eps, as already said above, were f'ing bleak.

The 501 joke was fucking great, I'm perplexed that Sally would have Gene's mobile number though.

amazing episode--so much more satisfying than the end episodes of Succession

Wait what was the 501 joke

Hank's comment after '500 confirmed kills' when the assassins were being introduced.

the only joke I liked in this episode was hank saying "why do I keep opening these boxes?"

yeah didn't love this ep, felt a little too all over the place. i appreciate them getting away from the nonstop bleak by bringing back some of the humor that used to be a more significant ingredient, but tonally this one just felt all over the map

Oh, right. Yeah the jokes were mostly Hank-based as usual and felt a little rote, but I'm looking forward to the finale. Lol @ Daniel Day Lewis + Mark Wahlberg though.

I do love seeing Stephen Root in his gang boss incarnation, and the phone call bit between him & Hank.

barry finale beat succession at its own game.

Fucking hell, bleak

Oh man.

I found this very unsatisfying but I can’t really say why.

I found it unsatisfying yet also much of it was inevitable and was very “Barry.”

Appreciated this take, which made me appreciate how the redemption of Barry could only be fake redemption. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/arts/television/barry-finale.html

I wasn't feeling this season much apart from a few Hank scenes. The writers were certainly trying some new ideas but most of it left me cold