Bill Hader in HBO's Barry

haha

I understand that, but "as much middle ground as possible" turns out to be too much: 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.

― JRN, Friday, April 13, 2018 3:59 AM bookmarkflaglink

Lol if you've never attended amateur theatre auditions, they come far, far worse than Barry circa S1.

Just finished S1. A bit aggrieved by the finale but i will continue

From that article linked above about the infamous S2E5:

“We might have jumped the shark,” Hader said

...sez the guy whose co-star is Henry Winkler.

Also there is a great little piece of understated physical comedy in S1 when Fuches goes to sit backwards on a chair to give Barry some coaching and he can’t because the chair has arms so he has to turn it around.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Is this back next week?

Yep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx6AS0zzfGM

Back Sunday!

Assume this is on weekly? (which would give me a chance to rewatch season 2)

oh my god lol this show has become so deeply unpleasant

just realized that outside of the acting stuff this is basically live action tv show version of gta 5

The “you have too many dogs” scene a few weeks ago still pops into my head randomly and makes me laugh.

Last night when Barry was explaining to Sally what he could do about the network exec who had cancelled her show had one of the most uncomfortable mixtures of horror and laughter I've ever experienced.

It's interesting to see the turn of completely burning any of Barry's bridges and bringing back the guy he saved to investigate but, yeah, it has become pretty unpleasant. While I understand the narrative need for it, the mom accidentally shooting her son in the stomach, thus saving Barry, felt like unnecessary punishment for those characters after everything else. I did lol very hard at the FaceTime from the parking garage scene.

Barry has gone from awful but still likable or endearing to just like… really, really unlikable. There’s no complexity anymore or like tension between the two halves. Like he’s just capital-B Bad. It makes for a much less compelling show IMO, there’s very little fun, and what funny moments there are feel like try-hard attempts at levity

Also I can’t tell if I’m being overly uptight but as much as I love the Hank-Cristobal pairing there’s something about the way it’s supposed to be funny that feels ever so slightly off to me

Disappointing to hear. I've gotten behind and only seen two eps. If he's going full on Scarface I'm a lot less interested

i'm not sure about villainous but it definitely seems like, especially in that scene with Sally about gaslighting the network exec, they have made him seem way more psychopathic and detached from reality. I get that that change in tone was a diagenic response to Hank and Cristobal's encouragement to be more honest, but even so it seemed like a different Barry being honest than the one we got to know in the first couple seasons, who was often on teh verge of tears when he "had" to kill someone. If they keep this up they will have lost a lot of anything new or unique that this show had to add to the very well-trod prestige TV antihero canon. But I think they can still pull back, will keep watching to see where it goes.

Also I can’t tell if I’m being overly uptight but as much as I love the Hank-Cristobal pairing there’s something about the way it’s supposed to be funny that feels ever so slightly off to me

― Stevie D(eux), Tuesday, May 24, 2022 10:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I'm not sure it's supposed to be funny on its own. I think any humor that comes from their scenes that appears to be pointed at them is more about the increased discrepancy/juxtaposition between them and their line of work.

I've also not interpreted Barry as "capital-B Bad"... my understanding is that he essentially has snapped and crossed another threshold of disillusionment and depression. Note the way he thought he was "fixing" things along the way this entire season. Just has no moral compass but isn't aware of it.

It's a weird show. They definitely seem to be doing a gritty "if you thought being a hitman was at all quirky or Cusack-esque, it's not, it's really fucked up" thing.

Instead of the Coen Bros world where you have either hapless civilians going down dark paths or cold-hearted killers who aren't bothered about redemption or living normal lives, you've just got Barry going further down the rabbit hole. I guess I'm curious to see where they go with it, assuming he lives to see another season.

someone is going to get hit on-stage

i think it was someone here's theory upthread that the daughter from sally's show is going to figure out his deal and he's going to kill her. that felt otm though not sure now that the show's canceled, she wasn't in the most recent ep at all i don't think.

fuchs sending all these innocent civilian types after barry is certainly setting him up for some actions that may give his feeble moral compass a little jolt

Oh, didn't know it was canceled. Probably for the best though, it doesn't seem like the sort of show that should run much longer.

Oh wait...you mean the show within the show, lol

Yeah in fact Barry got renewed for a 4th season

I'm not sure it's supposed to be funny on its own. I think any humor that comes from their scenes that appears to be pointed at them is more about the increased discrepancy/juxtaposition between them and their line of work.

― Evan, Wednesday, May 25, 2022 10:25 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think this is exactly it, though, like I guess I'm just kind of tired seeing queerness framed as this soft, flowery thing that is even something to be juxtaposed with hardness. Though otoh they have definitely throw in some really sweet not-funny scenes that really humanize them as a couple, so that's nice too.

I'm enjoying this season so far and I thought the second episode in particular was very well-directed -- Hader is a major talent behind the camera. I really don't care if Barry is "likable" or redeemable -- he's a creation of the U.S. military and others who exploited his instability.

xpost

Hear you on that for sure, though because the character Hank is such a deliberate opposite of the crime boss/management character trope, I guess they figured this development leans into that as well (opposite of trope). I wonder if they thought about your takeaway in the writer's room or not.

This show is so rad.

This episode felt like it took place in its own weird micro-universe to me, vague Repo Man vibes for some reason

"Handoff!"

...the dirtbike scenes in this felt especially GTA 5 like...

feels like this was a good watch through seasons 1 and 2 as a bill hader character study, but when they pulled back the curtain on barry with his whole i can gaslight the banshe executive into offing herself, that's where it feels like it lost the plot for me - now it just feels like hitman silicon valley, not saying that's a bad thing, but def a different direction

I thought the GTA vibe was intentional, given Barry's gaming throughout the show.

Also the machine gun the guy tried to handoff was one of the heavier weapons in GTA5

Fuchs going from shot-and-left-for-dead to perfectly fine in the course of a couple of scenes threw this whole show into a level of SoCal Magic Realism that unsettled everything else for me. It would honestly be a relief at the end of the season for Pam Ewing to wake up and realize it was all a dream. xp maybe the video game stuff means it is a dream!

bill hader aka king of the algorithm pic.twitter.com/lZjOUDQ1Jy

— Shae 🇵🇸 | BARRY S3 (@escapinglocals) May 23, 2022

The GTA vibe was enormous throughout the chase.

-The NPC mailman unable to react
-The casual change of vehicles and continuation, leaving a huge mess behind as if it wouldn't be instantly traceable to the vehicle owner in reality
-The curiously, overly long shots following Barry on the bike onto the highway as if in 3rd person perspective (AKA as if playing the game)
-The traffic not reacting to gunfire at/from the bikes weaving through
-The over the top firepower from a conveniently placed goon in said traffic that even MORE unbelievably does not react to the heavy gunfire even after (during the attempted handoff gag)
-The instantly hostile car dealer NPC that fetches his gun
-The biker girl that gets knocked over by the initial shotgun but has more HP so gets up again
-The NPCs at the dealership that scream and run a short distance away (not far enough away from someone still shooting wildly) and aren't panicking
-The same NPCs calmly strolling back into the building after the biker is shot dead on the roof just like how actual NPCs simply switch back to idle animations/pathing as if nothing happened.

<3 james hiroyuki liao in this

This show has really captured how Stephen Root can go from total buffoon to Satanic figure in the blink of an eye.

one thing i like about this season is how various people have a chance to bring barry to legal justice, but are far too wrapped up in their own violent vengeful fantasies, so he skirts away

Haha, Evan very much otm about that chase scene

Very impressive finale. I read an interview that said that Cristobal died, which I didn't realize when I watched that scene (and may not be accurate?).

I'll say something possibly daffy: I think the extreme ramped-up emotions and increased brutality of this season feels more resonant with the times. A lot has changed in the 2 years since this show was away and that's plenty of time for characters in these situations to dig deeper into instability. I'm glad a show like this and one like Atlanta (whose latest season I largely need to catch up on) can become what it wants to without worrying about the classification of remaining a comedy.

I don't think Cristobal died, but his brain was fried by his wife's electroshock conversion therapy.

This show is next to impossible to classify, and as the characters sort of spun out away from each other this season it was increasingly hard to find the through-thread of the show (although as I type that I realize that with the exception of the Hank/Cristobal plot, they all passed back into Barry's orbit here at the end). Reflecting on this finale, I would say that the main character of the show is the theme of solving problems with violence, brutality, and betrayal. And of course how doing so is a vicious cycle.

I have been dipping into some of the press that Hader has been doing this season and around the finale, and I love that he is really unsympathetic to Barry - it's a nice contrast to the Walter Whites of the world who are more at risk of getting valorized by fans.

Everybody goes, “How do you write and direct yourself?” I’m like, “He doesn’t speak.” [Laughs.] I don’t think the whole of seven I say a word. You don’t want to hear Barry talk for that long. He’s a dummy.

Also Chris L - your initial point about resonance with the times seems otm w/ how Hader sees it. This is from the same Vulture interview as the link above:

I always appreciate things that I would watch and feel, “Oh, that feels honest.” I did another interview and someone said, “Wow. This is really bleak.” I said, “Is it bleaker than anything you see on the news right now?” Living in the pandemic and where the world’s at and mass shootings and all these things — it’s all in there emotionally.

Nice, thanks for the heads-up! This season also had some of the best satire about streaming content I've seen so far; another area where they were observant.

Oh yeah, and all the meta stuff with the show we're watching adopting the algorithm advice (e.g. characters always eating breakfast) - clear enough to see but not ott

oops i mean dessert. i have inadvertently revealed when i eat donuts

Beignet oracle guy was great.

I haven't seen the finale yet so this post might be redundant but I predict next season will see Sally ask for Barry's favour she turned down (and caused their split) to be called in.

;)

lol