‘Barry’ season 4 review: Bill Hader gives a thrilling Hollywood send-off to the hitman

Bill Hader in ‘Barry’

Towards the end of the first episode of the final season of Barry, our eponymous lead berates himself heavily. In prison now for the murder of Janice Moss, Barry finds himself alone. The acting teacher he was trying to protect, Gene Cousineau has helped the police in apprehending him; his girlfriend Sally calls him a liar and refuses to speak to him; and he parted ways with Fuches on a bitter note last season.

Any semblance of normality that Barry had built over the years — a loving relationship, an acting career — has been taken from him. A violent hitman behind bars, Barry finds himself exactly where society deems him to be. For a moment it seems like he is also reconciling with his vices. He at least is no longer looking to separate his actions from the consequences. A prison guard catches him insulting himself in the mirror, and tries to reassure him. “You did a bad thing, but I am sure you’re not a bad guy… you were in the marines!” he says.

And with those lines, Bill Hader delivers the guiding philosophy of the concluding season; In the pursuit of happiness, Barry will not count his worst actions towards who he is.

From its first season to this one, the show has changed directions to lean significantly on darker themes. While the first season relied on the friction between Barry’s life as a hitman, and his longing for a normal life as an actor, the fourth one gives us an irredeemable Barry. And yet, Hader and his team manage to serve eight episodes embodying a comically tragic end to the tale.

Spoilers for the whole season ahead…

As Barry laments in prison, the show gives a scorched earth beginning to everyone else in his life. After the failure of her show, Sally finds herself back in her childhood house, horrified to learn of Barry’s action. Cousineau, meanwhile, lands a gig hosting an acting masterclass. Cristobal and NoHo Hank try their hand at a slightly illegitimate but significantly less bloody business of importing sand.

However, as the storyline progresses, each individual can’t help but fall back upon their vices. In need of recognition from his Chechen seniors, Hank kills off any competitors to ruthlessly take over the business. Unable to stay away from the limelight, Cousineau agrees to spill the beans of his girlfriend’s murder to a journalist. Finally, Sally fails to find acceptance anywhere but in her relationship with Barry and visits him in prison to tell him that he ‘makes her feel safe.’ Buoyed by Sally’s confession and afraid of what Cousineau might tell the journalist, Barry makes a protection deal with the FBI by promising to sell out the Chechens. Upset by this, Hank sends assassins to finish off Barry, but he manages to break out of prison and escapes towards a fugitive future with Sally.

Hader packs all of this in just the first three episodes of this season. The show only moves forward, experimenting heavily with cinematic devices and pushing the envelope of traditional storytelling.

Each subsequent episode neatly folds in the central pathos of these people being caught in a futile cycle of redemption. They are each running at full speed towards a perceived happiness, whilst furiously denying that they are simultaneously hurtling into their worst selves. The show’s complex statements on morality are also supported by technically strong cinematic choices. Sound effects from the next scene cross fade into the previous one. Often Hader lets a take play out, as the audience from a fixed POV see a scene unfold in the distance. Barry elevates what it means to fit the comedy and drama genres within the same show.

For the final episode, Hader gives the audience a masterful allegory on America. Without giving away too much of it in this piece, the storyline sneakily harkens back to the second season when Cousineau told his students to act out their personal truth. Barry had modified a murder he committed while serving in Afghanistan and narrated it to pass himself off as a war hero. Sally had bent her own truth to appear as a courageous woman who resisted her abusive husband. Barry’s and Sally’s hidden aspirations of who they could have been as a person are realised. A deeply disruptive man eulogised as a war hero, and the woman who made the choice to leave behind this violence. The world acts out for Barry, what he couldn’t achieve in his life.

Concluding its risky final season, Barry proves to be a testament to the power of cohesive storytelling, a rarity in today’s TV landscape that is increasingly relying on longer episodes with little pay off. Barry answered every question it raised along the way, the most important being — what defines us better, our actions or the intentions behind them? The final scene cheekily dismisses both; after all in Hollywood, you are what you are perceived to be.

All episodes of Barry are now streaming in JioCinema