By Niklas Müller
(PHOTO CREDIT: HBO)
GRADE: A+
Barry is incredibly hot right now. And I mean hot as in, one of the best shows on television right now. Three seasons in, they have yet to miss. In other words, Barry has delivered three top notch seasons of television so far and it doesn't looks like that's gonna change sometime soon. From being a black-comedy the show has almost made a 180 degree spin and is now most of the time a full blown drama (at least this season) with some comedic elements in it. It has come to be one of television's deepest and emotionally charged shows. Every episode in its third season is a roller-coaster of emotions.
When thinking about Barry, one really has to ponder the question whether this is one of the best acted shows of the last years. The answer to that question is rather simple indeed: Yes, it is. Especially this season is absolutely stacked from amazing performances from about everyone. Bill Hader perfectly captures Barry's emotional vulnerability, and there's even an emotional breakdown scene that he completely and utterly nails. Though, I really have to say Sarah Goldberg stunned me the most this season. Her emotional gravitas is scintillating and disturbing at the very same time, and she owns all of her scenes. I'm gonna be really upset if she's not gonna get her deserved Emmy nomination this season. Anthony Carrigan as everyone's favorite Chechen mafia member isn't just useful for comedy relief, but he rather delivers one of the finest performances of the entire season (one season in Episode 8 is a big highlight for him, as he has to master the entire scene through facial expressions only).
As much as I love watching Barry, season 3 was frankly one of the most stressful seasons of television I've seen in a while, and I mean that in the best possible way imaginable. At some point you'll just stop counting how often you've been sitting at the edge of your seat. It really felt like every character (as important as they might be) could be killed of at any moment. This season might actually be unofficial, unexpected Game of Thrones successor (I'm not quite sure if they're gonna do something similar again). I feel like that's a really weird, somewhat off-putting thing to write, but that sums it up quite well. You never know where each episode goes next, if someone's gonna die or if you'll laugh out loud.
Even though, this is Barry's most intense and dramatic season so far, there are also some of the funniest things to be found that I've seen in a while. For instance, one scene involving a full-blown horde of dogs is peak comedy. There's also been this whole debate online, whether or nor not Barry should contend for Drama instead of Comedy this year. There's not really much to veto about that, considering that the show literally just delivered one of the darkest TV episodes of the last few years, but I don't really think that they're gonna go the drama route next season (I don't know if this is true, but I've heard that the next season is gonna be more comedy than drama once again).
It is really astonishing that a comedian such as Bill Hader, just became one of television's best drama directors in the span of a few episodes. Hader's filmmaking is a particular highlight of the season (the complete filmmaking, really), crafting every scene (and episode) meticulously well. Episode 6, "710N", features one of the best chase scenes I've ever seen (this seems to be a particularly good year for chase scenes, I'm looking at you The Batman), Hader just knows how and where to place the camera. A lesser filmmaker probably would've tried to pump up the scene with some dramatic score laid underneath it. Hader doesn't, and that's what makes everything about his direction so very special, in all honesty the Comedy Directing category seems really unfair to me now.
The way Barry handles certain thematic subjects such as an existential crisis, depression or losing a loved one is really quite astonishing. It's all there in the screenwriting, and talking about the writing, it's really on a completely different level this season. Some of the monologues are such a masterclass and I especially liked the fusion of the drama and comedy, or even some of the absurdism integrated.
I really hope that over the years more and more people start watching this show, such as it happened with Breaking Bad, because let's be honest here Barry deserves all the attention and it's it actually is just as good as Breaking Bad ever was. If they can keep this up, it'll go down in history as one of the greatest shows ever.
CREATOR: Alec Berg & Bill Hader
CAST: Bill Hader, Sarah Goldberg, Stephen Root, Anthony Carrigan, Sarah Burns, Henry Winkler
RELEASE YEAR: 2022 (all 8 episodes are now available)
Comments