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cjlasky7On a rare free weekend of HBO from my satellite service, I had the opportunity to binge Season 1 of "Barry," the satirical comedy/drama from former SNL star Bill Hader and Seinfeld/Curb Your Enthusiasm writer Alec Berg.
[mild spoilers ahead]
Barry Berkman (Hader) is a former Marine sharpshooter who's working out of Cleveland as a killer-for-hire, knocking off participants in various mob wars around the country. He doesn't feel too bad about killing the scum of the earth, but even in the first minutes of the first episode, you can tell that the work is taking its toll.
Isn't there something better than this kind of life?
Then, his middle man, Fuches (Stephen Root) sends him to L.A. to bump off a personal trainer who's fooling around with the wife of a Chechneyan mob boss. Barry, dutifully doing what he's told, follows his mark and (almost accidentally) stumbles into his target's acting class. Barry is transfixed. Here is a group of young, energetic, hopeful thespians exploring their feelings, expressing their true selves through theater. Barry instantly sees a way out of the shadow of death and into a new life.
Of course, the idea that Barry could just wriggle out of his assignment and just step into a new life as an actor is absolutely ludicrous. The series mines considerable comic gold from Barry receiving text messages from mobsters during acting scenes and texts from his sort-of-girlfriend (Sarah Goldberg) about class events while he's trying to ice a local informant in a Bolivian drug cartel. And, over the course of eight episodes, the harder Barry tries to escape his profession, the higher the body count...
Hader's performance here is sneaky good. In the first few episodes, he's a blank slate emotionally; but that's because he's bottled up his feelings for years. (It's no coincidence that his chosen stage name is "Barry Block".) But as circumstances (and his work through the acting class) develop, Barry confronts the pain of his given trade for the first time, and Hader lets loose with some shockingly volcanic emotional scenes. Root is typically excellent too, both an "aw shucks" friendly kinda guy and a loathsome, crass manipulator, both Barry's surrogate father and his pimp. [Bonus for Good Place fans: D'Arcy Carden (Janet) and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Simone) are here, too, as part of the acting troupe.]
The real revelation, though--the real reason to watch this series--is Henry Winkler as Gene M. Cousineau, Barry's acting teacher. Gene is every cliche of a Hollywood acting teacher rolled into one, with talks about "the process", finding the emotional center of a scene, and vocal exercises that become more and more ridiculous as the series wears on. But if Gene is a parody, he is a loving parody, and Winkler infuses him with so much charm and hard won wisdom that you don't wonder why people are willing to pony up big bucks to take his class. The b-plot of Gene trying to woo a hard boiled LAPD detective is so sweet and funny that it almost overwhelms the a-plot.
If there is a flaw in Gene's insular actor's paradise, it's that it's a little TOO insular. All his buzzwords and exercises don't help his students deal with the show biz sharks swimming outside (like Mike the Sleazeball Agent), and they sure as hell can't prepare them for the nightmarish moral complexity of Barry's world. Nevertheless, Gene's class serves as an accurate microcosm of the other side of Barry's life, because EVERYONE in this show uses buzzwords and self-help jargon to ward off icky feelings about their participation in mass murder and drug dealing--even the drug lords.
In that way, "Barry" is a distinctly American tale. This is the place where you can leave the old world behind and recreate yourself into anything you wish. But the dark side of that dream is that when you refuse to deal with the moral consequences of your actions, it can destroy you--or everyone around you.
After Barry's actions in the final moments of Season 1, a lot of online fans said that Barry had fallen too far, he was irredeemable, and he could never escape justice now. But we are living in a country where if you're rich enough or famous enough or powerful enough, nothing is irredeemable, and you can always escape justice. Barry has reached the end of the line? This is America, people. I think he's just getting started.
[mild spoilers ahead]
Barry Berkman (Hader) is a former Marine sharpshooter who's working out of Cleveland as a killer-for-hire, knocking off participants in various mob wars around the country. He doesn't feel too bad about killing the scum of the earth, but even in the first minutes of the first episode, you can tell that the work is taking its toll.
Isn't there something better than this kind of life?
Then, his middle man, Fuches (Stephen Root) sends him to L.A. to bump off a personal trainer who's fooling around with the wife of a Chechneyan mob boss. Barry, dutifully doing what he's told, follows his mark and (almost accidentally) stumbles into his target's acting class. Barry is transfixed. Here is a group of young, energetic, hopeful thespians exploring their feelings, expressing their true selves through theater. Barry instantly sees a way out of the shadow of death and into a new life.
Of course, the idea that Barry could just wriggle out of his assignment and just step into a new life as an actor is absolutely ludicrous. The series mines considerable comic gold from Barry receiving text messages from mobsters during acting scenes and texts from his sort-of-girlfriend (Sarah Goldberg) about class events while he's trying to ice a local informant in a Bolivian drug cartel. And, over the course of eight episodes, the harder Barry tries to escape his profession, the higher the body count...
Hader's performance here is sneaky good. In the first few episodes, he's a blank slate emotionally; but that's because he's bottled up his feelings for years. (It's no coincidence that his chosen stage name is "Barry Block".) But as circumstances (and his work through the acting class) develop, Barry confronts the pain of his given trade for the first time, and Hader lets loose with some shockingly volcanic emotional scenes. Root is typically excellent too, both an "aw shucks" friendly kinda guy and a loathsome, crass manipulator, both Barry's surrogate father and his pimp. [Bonus for Good Place fans: D'Arcy Carden (Janet) and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Simone) are here, too, as part of the acting troupe.]
The real revelation, though--the real reason to watch this series--is Henry Winkler as Gene M. Cousineau, Barry's acting teacher. Gene is every cliche of a Hollywood acting teacher rolled into one, with talks about "the process", finding the emotional center of a scene, and vocal exercises that become more and more ridiculous as the series wears on. But if Gene is a parody, he is a loving parody, and Winkler infuses him with so much charm and hard won wisdom that you don't wonder why people are willing to pony up big bucks to take his class. The b-plot of Gene trying to woo a hard boiled LAPD detective is so sweet and funny that it almost overwhelms the a-plot.
If there is a flaw in Gene's insular actor's paradise, it's that it's a little TOO insular. All his buzzwords and exercises don't help his students deal with the show biz sharks swimming outside (like Mike the Sleazeball Agent), and they sure as hell can't prepare them for the nightmarish moral complexity of Barry's world. Nevertheless, Gene's class serves as an accurate microcosm of the other side of Barry's life, because EVERYONE in this show uses buzzwords and self-help jargon to ward off icky feelings about their participation in mass murder and drug dealing--even the drug lords.
In that way, "Barry" is a distinctly American tale. This is the place where you can leave the old world behind and recreate yourself into anything you wish. But the dark side of that dream is that when you refuse to deal with the moral consequences of your actions, it can destroy you--or everyone around you.
After Barry's actions in the final moments of Season 1, a lot of online fans said that Barry had fallen too far, he was irredeemable, and he could never escape justice now. But we are living in a country where if you're rich enough or famous enough or powerful enough, nothing is irredeemable, and you can always escape justice. Barry has reached the end of the line? This is America, people. I think he's just getting started.
