Barry Is Back, Baby

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, An Bettimore. I'm a producer, writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on the show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watched this tonight. There's always something good to watch. Let's get started. Barry is back Baby. Today on the show, we are talking about Barry, which has returned for a fourth and final season. The first two episodes came out on HBO on Sunday night, so that is what I'm gonna be talking about today.

0:53 First, kind of an embarrassing admission, So I accidentally played for some reason on my HBO Max. It was just set this way. I played the last episode of season three by accident, and I'm writing notes as I'm watching. I'm like, Wow, what a bold what a bold choice instead of doing previously on seems like they're really, you know, reminding us of what happened. It took a good, I'm embarrassing to say, like a good five minutes. Par I was like, all right, I think this is actually just the last episode of season three. But I do think that the fact that I even questioned it speaks to the show, meaning that if this is a normal show, I would have realized that within twenty seconds.

1:36 But because it's Barry, we're kind of anything going to happen. I think that's why it took me that long to realize. So it just speaks to the originality of the show that this is one of those shows where anything can happened. Really, you know, you think back to previous seasons. I mean drastic shifts in tone, crazy action sequences, surreal stuff where you're not sure what's real what's not real. So this is a unique show that you go into it and you don't know what's gonna happen, and especially that's true of this final season. You know. One of the things that is really exciting to me about Barry, and I think it is exciting about where we're at now, is streaming. You know, this is something that I've always thought there was an opening four is taking a show and just kind of following it to wherever it goes, even if it means drastically departing from what seemed to be the template of the show. You know, you could have ended this with Barry is caught and he's in prison and that's the end of the show, right, That could have been the end. And because they're continuing, I have no idea where they're going, and that's exciting, you know that to not feel like you can kind of predict where the show is going to go, it does make it more compelling. So I think it's a really exciting place to be with the show for the last season. Barry is one of the few shows where I rewatch episodes. I've always felt the Barry gets more mileage out of a half hour then most shows get out an hour because the details, the little details, are so well fought out. For example, in the new season, Sally goes home and it is immediately clear

3:10 she's not comfortable there the way her mom treats her, and you know, she basically treats her like, oh, you're being so dramatic, what's the big deal? So your boyfriend murders people. She goes to her old room and the room that she had when she was a kid has been turned into her father's man cave and his heads of deers mounted on the wall everywhere, and the only sign that Sally was ever. There is a few tiny scraps from some kind of rainbow unicorn wall sticker thing they weren't able to completely scratch out. So just in that visual detail that really puts you in the head of the character of like, I am not this is not home, I'm not home here. My existence has essentially been erased. You know, there's barely traces that I was ever here. It's a little visual detail that in a bad our show would be like five minutes of dialogue, another great little visual detail. So we're with NoHo, Hank and Crystal Ball and they're having dinner at like a Mexican restaurant. There's like the Margarita's and somebody comes up to the table. He says, can I play some music for you while you've dinner? And the obvious choice would have been to do Marriatchi's or something, but it's not Marriatchi's. It's a rain stick, which is such a weird detail. Again, I mean, this is the challenge of great writing, right is that you don't go with whatever is the first thing you come up with, and you really sit and think about it for a while and you think, what have I not seen before. You really care about that detail, that little detail of what the guy's gonna play the restaurant. It

4:41 seems like it's not a big deal, right, but it is a big deal. People that are good at this, that are like world class of this, which is you know, the show Berry is all that stuff really matters, and you really sit and think about it and you know, make sure that it's something that's special included. By the way, whoever came up with noh Hank's outfit, whether you get that restaurant is incredible. I think I paused on it like five times. I just loved that. And then I think it's the end of the first episode of season four where Barry goes just full unforgiven full William money. He's got the nicest corrections officer in human history. It was so nice that he probably doesn't exist anywhere in real life. And Barry's reaction to that guy, he says, I'm a cop killer. If I saw you in the street, I'd kill you. I kill your wife, I kill your kids, to kill your mom, like he just it's just like way of money. I've killed everything that walked crawled at one time or another. You know, from the beginning, Barry was a show that tried to put us in his head as he self rationalizes about who he is and the idea that he's not really that bad of a guy.

5:40 Right, And here we have a scene where someone tries to tell him, hey, you're not that bad of a guy. You're not The corrections officer says, I think you're not defined by the worst thing you did in your life. And Barry's reaction is to prove that he is that bad of a guy. And we're now at the point where the audience, you know, very much like breaking Bad, where as they got into the later seasons, you're like, this guy is just awful. There's no two ways about it. This guy is a terrible, terrible person. And that actually plays into what they end up doing with episode two, which I'll sort of get to as I walk through it. So episode two this arrival gang meeting, but it's hilariously at a David Busters. So Christa Ball and Nojo Hank have gotten together some rival gangs and they have to like talk really loud because to be able to be heard over the David Busters music, and they do this thing with the camera where the camera is spinning around the table, and it's it's kind of tracking NoHo Hank and Christa Balls. They're talking and walking sort of pasting around in circles, but at one point they like fuck it up and then Nojo Hank has to like run the opposite way to make the choreography work.

6:46 It's it's just again, it's like, this is a scene that I cannot tell you how many scripts I've read that haven't scene like this, and it's just like interior warehouse day. That's it. That's the difference, right, is you have to care enough to take that level of attention to detail and that level of invention for what is ultimately basically a scene of expositional dialogue. Right. Also in episode two, one of the things that's been a great line of comedy throughout the whole show has been this hilariously brutal mocking of actors. And you know, I'm in Los Angeles. I know a lot of actors. You know, I've been in groups where we have actors performed and stuff. I love actors. I've you know, so many actors that I'm super super fond of. But I think even actress would say that there are plenty of actors who are very narcissistic and that can be played for comedy.

7:43 They do that so well in the show where Gene is like, he tells the Vanity Fair reporter, I can't I don't want any more attention. But then he does a one man show of his life in his life with Barry and he's playing both parts. Is so funny. And then at the end of the episode, so this is where they pay off kind of all the stuff that's been building up with how bad Barry is and what I thought was so special about the show. I am totally rooting for crystal Ball, No Hank, like they're honestly the character probably the only characters that I'm like fully rooting for because there's such sweet guy's just true. You can't help but you want to see them kind of have their happily. Ever, after crystal Ball wants to know Hank to forget about Barry, and he says he's never cared about you, which is true. We've seen Barry le terrible to know Hank. It clearly show doesn't care about him, and no, Hank has been honestly pretty nice to Barry for most of the show. And then Noah Hank finds out Barry is cooperating with the FBI, and he says, we have to kill Bari. I love how he says Barry Bari, and I'm rooting for him to do it, honestly. Like, if if there wasn't any of this show that, like, you know, sort of this gonzo ending where Noah Hank kills Barry and lives happily ever after with Crystal Ball, I would love it. Yeah, I would totally go for it. So, yeah, it's such a pleasure to have the show back. This is one of my favorite shows of all time, you know, I think it's it's one of the rare shows again that I've rewatched episodes a bunch of times.

9:11 I'll probably do rewatch the whole series. It's so fun, it's so funny, it's so unique. It's really it's such an accomplishment, and I think it will hold up and stand the test of time. Is an all time great television series. So I'm very curious to see where they're gonna go for the rest of the season. You know, I think these first couple episodes were predictably great, and yeah, just looking forward to more. So if you are into Barry, I'd love to hear your predictions for where you think the show is going, Like where do you think they're gonna take this? Because it's gonna be over soon. This is the last season. I'm so curious about where it could end, and I kind of feel like everything is still on the table. It could go a million different directions and that's just exciting to continue to watch it and see where they take it. So yeah, I'd love to hear what you think about your predictions about you can see the series going. You can always reach out to me by shooting me an email to Dan ad voyagemedia dot com, tweet at me at Benamore Dan, find me on Instagram watch This Tonight or on TikTok at watch This Tonight podcast, or you can join our Facebook group that is the show for today.

10:16 Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, Bye,