Barry: Tricky Legacies
May 8, 2023 2:08 AM - Season 4, Episode 5 - Subscribe

Fast-forward eight years ...

Barry and Sally Clark and Emily are living a new life with their son, John. Sally is utterly miserable, drowning her sorrows with cheap vodka and wine while she hate-watches Natalie's success on her late-night laptop, Barry is obsessively home-schooling John, and neither of them seem to have the first idea of parenting.

Meanwhile, Gene (long-since presumed dead) re-emerges, threatening the new life Barry and Sally have created...

What a bleak, hopeless life Sally is living. What might have been for her is shown on a promo billboard for Megagirls 4, and the success of Just Desserts highlights her own failures even more. I thought she was going to kill the short-order cook (after all, she's killed before when she's been in a rage).

It seemed to me that it wasn't the first time she and John slept in the bathtub while Barry kept watch for some unseen threat (would Barry not have had security cameras and lights?).

Also, I know the isolation of the house is meant to be symbolic, but no road, no vehicles, and somehow the kids (I assume?) who knocked managed to disappear into nowhere.

Anyway, it was bleak and sad, particularly as I'm sure there are actual people living lives like that too.
posted by essexjan (26 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
So John needs to be put in a loving, supportive home, where he can have normal interactions with other kids, go to school and not get the Barry "Isn't this Cool" edition of home schooling. It was excruciating to watch this episode, in part because of John is like all kids, he loves his parents unconditionally, even when they're very much selfish assholes. When Barry chooses to order whatever the hell he needs, such as extra power strips, instead of a simple blanket for John who gets cold in his room, he launches into this horrible religious story that isn't even applicable. When John is poking at his half-cooked chicken pot pie, he doesn't say anything because he knows there isn't anything else to eat beyond it. As awful as it sounds, Sally's parents would probably be a better fit for John at this point. Having lived in Joplin, I can say it is vastly superior to "nowhere, nothing," and has quite a bit more trees.

There's a certain level of sympathy for Sally, as she appears to be the only parent with a job, and one she clearly hates. Her only acting now comes in the form of engaging with diner customers, when she throws on her wig and breaks out a twang (which she then drops periodically). She's self-medicating with alcohol, drowning herself in it, and in misery as she watches the success of others on her laptop. The relationship between her and Barry really does seem to boil down to "he makes her feel safe" and that's it. They live in two different worlds except for meal time and church. Her focus on her (dunno if we can' say "their") safety is highlighted by the fact she remembers exactly where the pistol is hidden in the house even after Barry has forgotten.

Barry clearly wants to be a good father, but his selfish instincts just completely overwrite whatever those intentions might be. He's obviously okay with John playing with other kids, but when he see's that John is succeeding with baseball where he failed, his reaction is to terrify John into giving up baseball. We know this isn't about keeping a low profile (i.e., no baseball games) because Barry was failing to teach John how to hit in the background of one of Sally's shots. Barry's desire to be a good role model lent itself to lying about his job in the Marines (what's weird is the slip up, Marines don't have medics, they have corpsmen - maybe we can say Barry expected John not to know?). I guess, bonus for Barry for not glorifying killing people to his son.

When it comes to killing, Sally and the diner's cook, that...was intense. It felt like Sally was trying to reclaim some level of control in her life, by exerting her will over the cook. The guy was definitely gross, but old Sally wouldn't have gone so far with the flirting, and obviously, the strangling.

Gene, popping out at the end, was a little bit of merriment in an otherwise bleak episode. My end goal for this show is now just for John to find a truly loving home.
posted by Atreides at 7:05 AM on May 8, 2023 [5 favorites]


On the phone it said Gene shot his son, not killed, so I think ( hope ) his son's fine.
posted by Pendragon at 8:24 AM on May 8, 2023 [2 favorites]


because Barry was failing to teach John how to hit in the background of one of Sally's shots.

I think what was going on there was they were pounding in large steel fence posts, and first Barry held the post while John took a dangerous swing with a sledgehammer. Barry loses his nerve and lets the post drop. Then they switch sides and Barry insanely swings the sledgehammer at his son's hands, and again John wisely loses nerve and drops the post before Barry hits it. It was just the worst parenting I've seen in years. But also, very Laurel and Hardy and kind of hilarious.
posted by Stanczyk at 11:17 AM on May 8, 2023 [4 favorites]


I think what was going on there was they were pounding in large steel fence posts, and first Barry held the post while John took a dangerous swing with a sledgehammer. Barry loses his nerve and lets the post drop. Then they switch sides and Barry insanely swings the sledgehammer at his son's hands, and again John wisely loses nerve and drops the post before Barry hits it. It was just the worst parenting I've seen in years. But also, very Laurel and Hardy and kind of hilarious.

Ah thank you! I saw things being swung around and then the neighbor kid's reference to Barry not being able to teach him how to hit had me thinking it was a horrible attempt at batting practice!
posted by Atreides at 11:30 AM on May 8, 2023


I'm so tempted to show a friend who's never seen Barry this episode and see what they think. It would be so fun to start them with this vision of Barry and Sally and then "flash back" to all the rest.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:37 AM on May 8, 2023 [5 favorites]


Apparently, "Larry Chowder: The Magical Boy" was how some video store customer described a video she wanted to rent. It took the clerk a while to figure out she was asking for "Harry Potter". (source)
posted by jabah at 12:40 PM on May 8, 2023 [7 favorites]


I fast-forwarded parts of this episode because I pretty much hated the combination of bleak and highly-stylized. The exterior shots kill my suspension of disbelief. And I hate every person on the screen, including the children. I probably would have applauded had the lot of them gotten anthrax.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:36 PM on May 8, 2023


I found this episode exceedingly grim to the point of being hard to watch.
posted by onya at 6:44 PM on May 8, 2023 [10 favorites]


Hard agree, this show has become sad and depressing to watch, and I’m unsure if it’s worth continuing. Not just this episode, but it’s certainly hit a new level of bleakness.
posted by Pryde at 7:06 PM on May 8, 2023


I agree it was extremely grim. I'm curious to see how it all ends. Bill Hader's next project is apparently horror so this falls in with that idea. The show at this point is so uncomfortable. Still the best show on TV right now though. I don't think anyone expects a happy ending.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:06 PM on May 8, 2023 [2 favorites]


Cold-blooded killing machine Barry was much more likable than not-great dad Barry. That’s an accomplishment, but this episode was bleak.
posted by snofoam at 7:19 PM on May 8, 2023 [7 favorites]


what's weird is the slip up, Marines don't have medics, they have corpsmen - maybe we can say Barry expected John not to know?

Not many Marines would say “Yeah, I was a soldier” either. I think it’s more that the writers don’t know that level of nuance.
posted by Etrigan at 7:51 PM on May 8, 2023 [2 favorites]


He was talking to a kid - and so using the terms a boy that age could be expected to understand. I doubt if most viewers would have understood what a "corpsman" does in the Marines either. I certainly wouldn't have.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]


QFT: If you just have the internet raise you, you wouldn’t ever want to leave your house. You’ll find whatever you want to be scared of. It’s there. [from the excellent interview jabah linked to above]
posted by chavenet at 1:31 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]


Why does Barry say he needs to kill Gene? It wouldn't stop the TV show being made. I've lost track of whether there's stuff that Gene knows, that isn't public knowledge, that would cause more problems than the TV-show-without-Gene, which would explain it.

I'm also not buying the house in the utter middle of nowhere. Fine for a dream, but it feels like another occasion when the show's tipped a little too far towards the absurd to be convincing.
posted by fabius at 6:01 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]


I'm also not buying the house in the utter middle of nowhere.

One of my friends from college bought a tiny house in Colorado. I guess she just wanted to get away from other people. The view in every direction is similar to the landscape in this episode of Barry. Flat, rocky earth, everywhere, with some mountains in the far distance. No power lines, hardly even a road, just rocky earth and some scrub. The only other structure visible from her house is another tiny house, long abandoned and falling down.

My point being, if your goal is to live in such a place, it's perfectly possible.
posted by jabah at 8:11 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]


Hey guys, native Texan here. There are indeed many thousands of miles of basically empty land in my state where you can drop a prefab home to live in, easily.

My cousins live in an area where they have no electricity lines, water, landline phone service or metered gas. Everything at their house is run by tanks of propane gas, solar panels, batteries, wood-burning stove, etc. They drink well water and burn all their trash. Their driveway is 16 miles long before you reach the nearest actual road. They also don't get mail or Amazon deliveries at their house; instead, they have to drive something like 40 miles to get groceries or pick up packages/mail at the local post office.

It took me 3 tries to get an invitation to my 2010 wedding into this cousin's hands, and only then by mailing the invite to another relative that drove 45 minutes to hand-deliver it.

There are many areas that look like where Barry and Sally live scattered throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and probably New Mexico (only with more cacti or occasional snow).
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 9:37 AM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]


I found the house rather unconvincing on first look, but the explanations above have swayed me. Besides, isn't Hader from Oklahoma? He's probably familiar with this kind of development even though he's from the big city.
posted by maudlin at 10:14 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]


i think the show is not trying to be convincing it is trying to be a cool television show and it's all the better for it. barry does not take place in our reality and that's good. there are many, many, many things in this show less realistic than a house in the middle of nowhere in America.
posted by JimBennett at 11:13 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]


I found the house rather unconvincing on first look, but the explanations above have swayed me. Besides, isn't Hader from Oklahoma? He's probably familiar with this kind of development even though he's from the big city.

In the interview above, the interviewer references Quiktrip as a wink to Oklahoma or an Oklahoma setting. In the show it went right over my head because I live near Quiktrips and didn't think about it in the least, since it'd be nothing different than Phillips 66, Kum & Go (seriously, it's a chain), Conoco, and so on. I've lived too long in the weird center of the US, apparently. In reality, this was filmed out in the desert in California and the mountains were digitally removed from the exterior shots (the interior was on a soundstage - blast this movie magic).
posted by Atreides at 12:42 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]


“My point being, if your goal is to live in such a place, it's perfectly possible.”

Yeah, no. I knew someone would say this. Didn't expect two, though.

I grew up in the landcsape that most closely resembles this: absolutely flat with no trees and little or no scrub, very arid, farmed with aquifer water. Yes, there is land like that and people live on it; but they have things like roads to their houses (whether double-wide mobile homes or not), trucks parked outside, weeds where the earth isn't farmed/tilled, power lines, and so forth.

The idea here is that the family deliberately lives away from people, and that's fine, but they've taken the concept of "nothing there" and eliminated everything but the home and dirt. It's symbolic but very heavy-handed. It's not realistic and wasn't intended to be — it's intentionally sterile in terms of how the home sits in the landscape.

These are defensible artistic choices and the show has frequently veered into the impossible, so I'm not bothered in principle. But I'm not seeing how this is actually contributing very much to the theme. The mood is just like Barry's beach fantasy sequences and I guess I can imagine some reasoning behind that, but it's just not working for me.

This is the dirt road about five miles south of town that leads to a group of trees (barely visible in the distance) where we teens used to go to drink and whatnot. We called it "the forest". This is the area that the film Hell or High Water depicted very well. One of the banks they robbed was the one my mom worked at my entire childhood.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:39 PM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]


Guys, not saying there's a conspiracy, but when I first heard that Barry was using "Clark" as his alias and Sally was using "Emily", I thought Barry was using the Griswald family from National Lampoon's Vacation to create his alias family. But then I looked it up and Clark's wife in Vacation is Ellen, not Emily, but why an E name, and why five letters? Why do they both start with an E? And Clark's son in Vacation is Rusty, not John. Then I remembered that the actor who played Clark's son and the actor who played Clark's father, Clark Sr., were both named John. WTF, guys? Is Barry trying to tell us something?
posted by Stanczyk at 1:52 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]


Bill Hader mentioned on the podcast that he thought this was one of the funniest episodes he'd ever written, and I'm glad he said that because that was absolutely my reaction. I mean, it's grim as fuck, but I thought the whole thing was hysterical. Just, you know, in that "blacker than black" kind of way.

It's funny: I bounced off Barry the first two times I tried to get into it, and it's because, those first couple of tries, I wanted a sitcom, dammit. I didn't want a show that opened up with Barry cleaning his pistol in silence in a dark room next to a corpse. Where were the jokes? What was this shit? And then, at some point, I came back to it in a grimmer mood, and took it instead as the funniest possible version of a story that deserved to be pitch-black.

That's what this episode was to me: maybe the grimmest possible outcome of this whole show, in that Barry's brought new life into this world and is fucking it up in the bleakest of ways... but depicted in the funniest way possible, to the extent that the humor doesn't undercut the bleakness. Forget Better Call Saul's extended black-and-white coda: I could have watched a season and a half of this awful isolated family.

The mood is just like Barry's beach fantasy sequences and I guess I can imagine some reasoning behind that, but it's just not working for me.

Hader addressed this on the podcast too! The idea was very much to take the family Barry kept having dream sequences about back in season one and manifest it in real life. So the landscape intentionally reflects the dreamscapes he kept having about his childhood, in part because Barry went out of his way to create his literal(ized) dream life.

He also mentioned that the stark flatness and total isolation would be Barry's dream scenario because it would keep anyone from having any kind of cover if they approached the house. Plus it sets up what Hader called the funniest line of the series, which is Barry telling his son "Look at everything God has given us" as they walk through the blandest, most desolate landscape imaginable.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:12 AM on May 10, 2023 [14 favorites]


As much as I like Barry I increasingly wish that instead there was a Sally, in which she never meets Barry (but still has a dramatic, darkly funny, but less violent, life).
posted by fabius at 5:48 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


That "Look at everything God has given us" line brought to mind one of the funniest lines in Big Lebowski — the brother shamus who intends to show Bunny a photo from her parents of a similarly isolated house in a desolate landscape, saying "They think it'll make her homesick."
posted by theory at 3:06 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]


I increasingly wish that instead there was a Sally, in which she never meets Barry

You’re in luck, maybe?
posted by cardboard at 5:50 PM on May 11, 2023


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