Barry: yikes
April 17, 2023 7:33 AM - Season 4, Episode 1 - Subscribe
Barry deals with his past in prison while finding Fuches with him. Sally returns home. Gene has a spark of new fame after his help with capturing Barry.
wow, Sally's mother is awful... no wonder Sally turned out the way she is...
posted by Pendragon at 9:36 AM on April 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Pendragon at 9:36 AM on April 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
The complexity of the characters in this show and the performances of the actors is second to none. The Coen Brothers meets Breaking Bad. How will Barry get out of this situation? I have no idea, but I know that I'll be watching until the very last minute.
posted by essexjan at 1:04 PM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by essexjan at 1:04 PM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sally's mother is awful
Agreed! And performed so well I had flashbacks of my own. Chilling.
NoHo Hank continues to be one of my favourite characters.
posted by porpoise at 6:07 PM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Agreed! And performed so well I had flashbacks of my own. Chilling.
NoHo Hank continues to be one of my favourite characters.
posted by porpoise at 6:07 PM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I definitely found myself thinking "Sally's mom is awful"/"but Sally is also awful??" I'm excited for the dirtbag turn from Gene, who, as we saw previously, was a huge dirtbag the last time he got a taste of fame.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:32 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:32 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
And performed so well
Just like for Season 3, the Ringer Prestige Podcast is doing episode, by episode interviews with Bill Hader. Basically discussions about theme and production which is even more enlightening this year since Bill Hader is directing all the episodes.
In this week's podcast you'd find out that the actress playing Sally's mom is Stephen Root (Fuches)'s wife in real life.
posted by mmascolino at 8:51 PM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Just like for Season 3, the Ringer Prestige Podcast is doing episode, by episode interviews with Bill Hader. Basically discussions about theme and production which is even more enlightening this year since Bill Hader is directing all the episodes.
In this week's podcast you'd find out that the actress playing Sally's mom is Stephen Root (Fuches)'s wife in real life.
posted by mmascolino at 8:51 PM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Sally's mother is awful
In much less obvious ways, her dad isn’t really better!
posted by ellieBOA at 11:11 PM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
In much less obvious ways, her dad isn’t really better!
posted by ellieBOA at 11:11 PM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
How will Barry get out of this situation?
He'll die.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:48 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
He'll die.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:48 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
I too am interested how everybody winds up. So far nobody deserves a redemption arc. I love it as a choice but it also makes it hard to stay invested.
posted by whuppy at 6:01 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by whuppy at 6:01 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Cristobal Sifuentes: "I feel like I'm Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz"
NoHo Hank: "I'm Dorothy"
posted by chavenet at 6:24 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
NoHo Hank: "I'm Dorothy"
posted by chavenet at 6:24 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Barry has always struck me as having some of the most sophisticated and nuanced depictions of women being terrible to one another, and Sally's exchanges with her mother are another awful, perfect addition to that collection.
Man, I don't know if I've seen many accurate depictions of that kind of family in general. Sally's parents were my ex's parents to a tee: the mother who can't see her daughter as anything but a failure to live up to her standards, and the father who's dimly aware that something's horribly wrong and responds with nothing but the shallowest flavor of "nice." (My ex was getting her MFA in theatre direction when we started dating, and I'm only piecing together how similar she was in temperament to Sally as I'm writing this. Eesh.)
I'm incredibly struck by how much empathy the show has for how Barry became Barry while making it clear that Barry is dumb as hell and sucks ass. What an incredible tightrope-walk.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:16 AM on April 18, 2023 [9 favorites]
Man, I don't know if I've seen many accurate depictions of that kind of family in general. Sally's parents were my ex's parents to a tee: the mother who can't see her daughter as anything but a failure to live up to her standards, and the father who's dimly aware that something's horribly wrong and responds with nothing but the shallowest flavor of "nice." (My ex was getting her MFA in theatre direction when we started dating, and I'm only piecing together how similar she was in temperament to Sally as I'm writing this. Eesh.)
I'm incredibly struck by how much empathy the show has for how Barry became Barry while making it clear that Barry is dumb as hell and sucks ass. What an incredible tightrope-walk.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:16 AM on April 18, 2023 [9 favorites]
How will Barry get out of this situation?
He'll die.
The real question to this season is, how many more people does he take down with him?
Joshua Rivera posted a pretty negative review of the new season, arguing that it has strayed too far from its initial premise as a black comedy. But I’m not sure that we were watching the same show: there’s been no happy ending in the cards since the end of season one at the latest, and honestly there’s probably never been a chance of one at all. A man who relates to the world only through violence is only capable of destroying those around him; if the story went anywhere else it wouldn’t have felt true.
(That’s not to say that Grosse Pointe Blank: the Series couldn’t work, but it’s a very different show with a much sharper division between deaths and our main characters.)
posted by thecaddy at 2:57 PM on April 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
He'll die.
The real question to this season is, how many more people does he take down with him?
Joshua Rivera posted a pretty negative review of the new season, arguing that it has strayed too far from its initial premise as a black comedy. But I’m not sure that we were watching the same show: there’s been no happy ending in the cards since the end of season one at the latest, and honestly there’s probably never been a chance of one at all. A man who relates to the world only through violence is only capable of destroying those around him; if the story went anywhere else it wouldn’t have felt true.
(That’s not to say that Grosse Pointe Blank: the Series couldn’t work, but it’s a very different show with a much sharper division between deaths and our main characters.)
posted by thecaddy at 2:57 PM on April 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
Yeah, any hope of Barry redeeming himself ended the moment he killed Janice. And the whole point of him killing Janice is that there was no hope of Barry redeeming himself before he killed Janice, either.
Seasons 2 and 3 were both extremely explicitly about how there was no hope of Barry redeeming himself, ever. That's not even a subtext thing, it's just the plot.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:49 AM on April 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
Seasons 2 and 3 were both extremely explicitly about how there was no hope of Barry redeeming himself, ever. That's not even a subtext thing, it's just the plot.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:49 AM on April 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
Seasons 2 and 3 were both extremely explicitly about how there was no hope of Barry redeeming himself, ever.
Someone wrote that season 3 was about whether Barry is a bad person or a person who does bad things and I liked that description, especially coming off of the blood bath at the end of season 2. I thought the most compelling part of season 3 was when Albert said Barry’s not a bad person but he’s got to stop. I think now it’s about Barry facing consequences for his actions, like how Hank told him that forgiveness has to be earned.
posted by kat518 at 7:26 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Someone wrote that season 3 was about whether Barry is a bad person or a person who does bad things and I liked that description, especially coming off of the blood bath at the end of season 2. I thought the most compelling part of season 3 was when Albert said Barry’s not a bad person but he’s got to stop. I think now it’s about Barry facing consequences for his actions, like how Hank told him that forgiveness has to be earned.
posted by kat518 at 7:26 AM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
"arguing that it has strayed too far from its initial premise as a black comedy"
I think this is a valid take, even if I don't entirely agree. Barry did set itself up as a black comedy and has maintained the trappings of a black comedy, though it's done a pretty hard shift to Barry and those around him unraveling. (With some comedic punctuation and tone.)
My wife noped out of Barry after he killed Janice. I've stuck with it because it's a brilliant show but at times it's a hard watch. I mean, hats off to Bill Hader and cast/crew for creating something that's undeniably gripping and taking a more difficult path - they could've called it a success as a dark comedy, but they went in a unique direction.
posted by jzb at 7:26 AM on April 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think this is a valid take, even if I don't entirely agree. Barry did set itself up as a black comedy and has maintained the trappings of a black comedy, though it's done a pretty hard shift to Barry and those around him unraveling. (With some comedic punctuation and tone.)
My wife noped out of Barry after he killed Janice. I've stuck with it because it's a brilliant show but at times it's a hard watch. I mean, hats off to Bill Hader and cast/crew for creating something that's undeniably gripping and taking a more difficult path - they could've called it a success as a dark comedy, but they went in a unique direction.
posted by jzb at 7:26 AM on April 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
“I'm incredibly struck by how much empathy the show has for how Barry became Barry while making it clear that Barry is dumb as hell and sucks ass. What an incredible tightrope-walk.”
Well said. Barry's like one-third someone you want to like and two-thirds incredibly toxic in every way and the viewer naturally needs to have that first third divorced from the rest but, the thing is, Barry's a whole package and to believe otherwise is delusional. The show is semi-fantastical, including in its psychology, yet somehow the underlying message about how people actually are is very realist.
Sally exemplifies this more than Barry, I'd argue. She's complex yet familiar yet partly incomprehensible in ways that are realistic. Gene, too, come to think of it. He's often drawn so broadly that he's cartoonish but then we see a real person underneath that explains some of this and we want to connect with that somehow and he just repeatedly confounds our empathy, just like lots of awful people do in our real lives.
This is true to some degree of every character on the show and I think it's trying to say something about how the pretense of theater isn't all that far from the pretense we mostly share that we can really understand anyone, ever.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:55 AM on May 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well said. Barry's like one-third someone you want to like and two-thirds incredibly toxic in every way and the viewer naturally needs to have that first third divorced from the rest but, the thing is, Barry's a whole package and to believe otherwise is delusional. The show is semi-fantastical, including in its psychology, yet somehow the underlying message about how people actually are is very realist.
Sally exemplifies this more than Barry, I'd argue. She's complex yet familiar yet partly incomprehensible in ways that are realistic. Gene, too, come to think of it. He's often drawn so broadly that he's cartoonish but then we see a real person underneath that explains some of this and we want to connect with that somehow and he just repeatedly confounds our empathy, just like lots of awful people do in our real lives.
This is true to some degree of every character on the show and I think it's trying to say something about how the pretense of theater isn't all that far from the pretense we mostly share that we can really understand anyone, ever.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:55 AM on May 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm incredibly struck by how much empathy the show has for how Barry became Barry while making it clear that Barry is dumb as hell and sucks ass. What an incredible tightrope-walk.
yeah this is spot on, and ditto Ivan F's note that this is a trick the show is pulling off everywhere, with every major character. it's absolutely stunning work, a combination of immaculate writing, direction, and performances, and maybe the best executed thing on TV right now?
and to me the strangest thing about the AV Club's take is that this show is still funny! and exactly in the ways it's always been! but over time the show has increasingly foregrounded the blackness and bleakness throughout which the "comedy" is framed. but come on how can you look at Noho Hank in that outfit in the restaurant and say this show doesn't still have comedy genes
posted by Kybard at 4:10 PM on May 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
yeah this is spot on, and ditto Ivan F's note that this is a trick the show is pulling off everywhere, with every major character. it's absolutely stunning work, a combination of immaculate writing, direction, and performances, and maybe the best executed thing on TV right now?
and to me the strangest thing about the AV Club's take is that this show is still funny! and exactly in the ways it's always been! but over time the show has increasingly foregrounded the blackness and bleakness throughout which the "comedy" is framed. but come on how can you look at Noho Hank in that outfit in the restaurant and say this show doesn't still have comedy genes
posted by Kybard at 4:10 PM on May 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by kat518 at 7:42 AM on April 17, 2023 [2 favorites]