Over the course of its first two bleakly hilarious seasons, Barry’s psychologically tormented title character violently wrestled with the burning question: Can we ever really transcend our pasts? Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) is an ace assassin and shadowy loner who excels at keeping his feelings guarded as he ventured into the fraught world of acting, where the ability to access one’s emotions—as well as those of others—is crucial to one’s longevity in a cut-throat business. And in the show’s third season, Barry is still earnestly, if clumsily, using the art of acting as an attempt to unburden himself of who he really is.
In the process, though, Barry is only becoming more in tune with his basest impulses, almost accepting that disentangling himself from various criminal enterprises will be too much effort than it’s worth. Acting hasn’t made Barry a better person, or even a different person. Rather, as the show’s third season makes clear, he was perhaps always doomed to become his darkest, most ruthless self. Acting wasn’t an escape so much as it was an awakening.
As Barry becomes more emotionally aware of his inner turmoil, he’s increasingly desperate for paternal guidance. For far too long, this lost soul relied on the wayward advice of Fuches (Stephen Root), a selfish, pathetic, prideful mentor who molded Barry, a PTSD-burdened war veteran, into the accomplished gun for hire that he is today. He only learned to push this father figure out of his life under the rambling tutelage of failed actor Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), who, in last season’s finale, learned the sinister truth about his doting pupil.
Gene resolves to seek his own justice for the murder of Paula Newsome’s Detective Janice Moss, whom he considered to be the love of his life. Alas, his ineptitude as a performer is no match for his complete incompetence as a would-be avenger. The ensuing conflict between Gene and Barry puts into stark relief the parallels between these two broken men, who are trying to find redemption and self-worth after years of bad behavior. In his own way, Gene uses the situation that he finds himself in as a way to refocus his needs and priorities, reconnect with past collaborators, and become a better person in the process.
As ever, Hader’s anguished visage stresses Barry’s drive to arrive at some kind of Hollywood ending. It’s a stunning, visceral performance that only grows sharper and more cutting with each new season, with Hader increasingly leaning into the ugliest, seediest, nastiest, yet weirdly sympathetic facets of Barry’s tormented persona.
That’s made dramatically stark by the ways in which Sally’s (Sarah Goldberg) relationship to Barry is complicated by him becoming more in touch with his frantic emotions. While Barry has always mined deadpan comedy from the brutish nature of mob bosses, Sally’s rise up the Hollywood ladder becomes an occasion for the show to bitingly underline how the industry can be as senseless and casually cruel as the criminals who regularly enlist Barry’s services.
More so than ever, the series is keenly interested in exploring the lasting damage caused by its accident-prone malefactors, as well as teasing the potential harm that could befall those around them. For instance, a humorous visual gag of two children constantly selling lemonade in front of Cristobal’s (Michael Irby) frequently raided house casually builds a queasy feeling of doom, as though tragedy will soon befall an innocent bystander. Furthermore, a greater focus on the inner lives of the show’s minor characters allows this morosely funny world to feel denser and more lived-in, heightening the jeopardy that always lurks around the corner.
As Barry fearlessly digs into the depravity of its combustible characters, including Anthony Carrigan’s unfailingly polite but incompetent NoHo Hank, it only becomes more confident in its nervy, high-tension mix of showbiz satire and absorbing dramatic stakes. That’s a fitting irony, surely, as Barry’s ever-looser grip on his stability threatens anyone in his periphery.
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