After almost three years away, Bill Hader’s Barry has finally returned to us. With such a long break in between seasons, and so much having happened in the world around us during that time, I wondered if I would still connect to a show I had previously so adored and recommended feverishly. Truth be told, I hardly remembered anything that had happened in Barry Season 2, and as we’ve seen with many other series that have returned post-COVID, time can sometimes cause a lot more rust to form on a favored title than we might like.
But I am happy to report that as of the first four episodes provided for review, Barry is a refreshing reintroduction to a very strange and wonderfully engrossing story. To start, Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) is now in a stable relationship with Sally (Sarah Goldberg), but has lost a sense of himself and his purpose. His appearance is sloppy; he’s depressed, adrift. In the wake of the monastery massacre, he’s no longer in league with NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan). And after Fuches (Stephen Root) revealed the truth about Janice’s murder to Barry’s mentor Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) to end Season 2, well, he’s lost both of them as well.
All of those people around Barry, though, are thriving on their own. Sally is the showrunner of a new TV series she’s also starring in, based on her life; Hank has a new love interest, and his remaining goons are enjoying their time under his leadership. Gene has repaired things with his son, and even Fuches is—in his words—“a natural at everything goat.”
But life in Barry’s orbit ultimately means that no one is safe, and given the long list of “do not reveals” provided by HBO, I can’t go into further detail on that front. What I can say is that most of these surprises take place in the first episode, an incredible promise the series makes that it’s not going to just sit back and rely on the tension it built at the end of Season 2 to drive the narrative and drag things out. Barry is thrown back into the fray immediately, and there are consequences and new decisions that are immediately put into play. After sitting through so many poorly paced TV shows that wallow close to the hour mark or go over it just to make you stare at the screen longer in service of metrics, it is exceptionally rewarding to see a show that goes all-in for half an hour in a way that mixes action, emotional resonance, horror, and humor in such a satisfying way. Which is, of course, what Barry has been doing all along.