Puzzling Over Barry Series Finale One Week Later (HBO)

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan 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. Today on the show, we are talking about the series finale of Barry and kind of just Berry in general. This is something that some of the listeners reached out to me about and I'm kind of glad I waited a week to do it because the last episode of Barry was so weird that I feel like I needed time to process it. Barry in general has gotten increasingly weird and surreal, and I think that that's going to create a more polarizing reaction from the audience because it's strange and it's not what we're usually looking for at a TV I think for most people, and towards the end particularly, it got super weird, and really, ever since the time when they did this big jump forward and it's years later and Barry and Sally have a child and they're sort of hiding out in the middle of nowhere, and it almost is like a different show.

1:26 And because of the extremity of what happens, not only that point, but then in the last couple episodes after that, they have to kind of collapse time and that forces some narrative shortcuts. And so I want to say before I get into all this, I like the last episode of Barry. I think it's cool. I applaud the boldness of it, and I think that I watched it again actually this morning. It's like emotionally true, but it's I do think it has there's some narrative stuff that is worth unpacking. So I do want to be clear that I do like it, but I have issues. So let's just kind of walk through this here. Robert Wisdom's character, Janice Moss's dad is depicted as like the smartest guy in the world, but he leaves Barry in a position in his garage where Barry is able to escape really easily, which doesn't you know, there's no magic secret of that. It's it is a narrative shorthand, right, It's just a way of getting from point A to point B. I don't know that it's really plausible or consistent with the character that was established, so you know, take that forward a will And then also, and I think this is actually probably even the better example. In the last couple episodes, Fuchs is determined to get Nojo Hank to admit that he betrayed and killed Christo Ball, And it makes sense on an emotional level and a thematic level, But why would his character care that much about that? You know, I just didn't understand on just like a practical level. So that's why, you know, the way

2:57 that it plays after that big time jump, it almost is like a really awesome piece of Berry fan fiction. I think that's how it feels. It feels like if someone wrote a piece of Berry fan fiction that was fantastic and it went viral and we all loved it. We thought it was great, but it was still sort of like a weird, what if kind of different thing, like its own experimental thing. If you take it on its own terms, I think it definitely works. But just reading the tea leaves online, I mean, I think I was the only one who had sort of a mixed reaction. Now, one part that I did see mixed reactions about which I totally loved, straight up, just absolutely adored. Is at the end when they do the fake movie that was made out of inspired by what happened in the show, they have Kuzano played by a British actor, which that was great. I just I thought that whole thing was hilarious and I loved even the fake silly action in the fake movie was still choreographed and photographed better than most actual movies. Barry was always very underrated, and how well it choreographed action. If Bill Hayter wanted to, he could make a great action movie. But also the end, the same issue is there, which is that you know you're watching Barry's son wants this movie that is loosely based on his father's life, but we don't really have an emotional connection with the son because we don't know we don't know him, Like if his name was Barry's son, it would be the same impact. Even though you know, they did a great job, like I think given how late he was introduced,

4:27 they did as good of a job as they possibly could. But it speaks to the fact that this was I mean, it's just a big high wire act at the end, and there's just not enough time, right, There just wasn't enough time to really establish all this in a way that has its foot on the ground in reality in a really strong way. Again that said, I thought it was hilarious. The final note that Barry was buried with full military honors at Arlington, I thought was hysterical. So the show is true to itself thematically emotionally. It's a show about creating identity, and that's what the end is about creating this idealized identity, even if it has no burying on reality, and people wanting to do that about for their own identity. So all that is there. But I think it's fair to say I kind of can't help but think back to where we started, and so it actually to prepare for this, I went back and watched the beginning of the first episode, and it's all about normality, about the mundane qualities of life. We see Barry kill a guy and then sit in the middle seat on an uncomfortable plane ride, go back to a messy apartment, play video games alone. Stephen Root is giving him a hard time about extra day in the hotel room because it adds to their expenses. His rental car sucks.

5:41 He goes for another job, and Noah Hank says, we need you to kill a guy who's sleeping with Gran's wife at a holiday inn in Studio City. So again it's all just super grounded in reality and the humor. The idea is about identity, the characterization. It's all drawing from how real can we make this supposed to where it goes later, which is surreal. So I think even though the surreal stuff is brilliantly done on a certain level, it's just not going to have I think it doesn't kind of stick to your bones in the way that the stuff that is very based on reality does. So I think that was my thing is that Again I liked it a lot, but I do think it plays like an experiment and a worry the experiment and an experiment that I thought was cool, but I don't think that it like I don't know. I almost wish that we could have also the alternate version that stayed in reality, even if it meant it would take longer and you know, another two seasons of walking that through to the ending that they ultimately got to. I would have been interested to see that. It's interesting.

6:46 I've listen to a bunch of interviews with Bill Hater about this, and he talks about his writing and how he will sometimes make a choice to skip a bunch of stuff because he's like, I just thought that would be boring, Like if I showed you so for example, Barry escaping from and how does he end up? Where ends up with Sally and all that, and and Bill said something, the fact of you know, showing the escape from prison and logistics is that he felt like would be sort of boring. And I really like that as a writing strategy. I think it's that's actually a brilliant way to approach it and would prevent a lot of you know, kind of weaker writing. That being said, it's almost like for me, a little bit too much of that towards the end, I kind of needed more connected tissue, you know, somewhere in the middle, That's what I'm saying.

7:31 I like that it has the boldness to skip around, but I just felt like I kind of needed just a little more, like, you know, a middle ground. And the last thing I want to say that I absolutely loved and it just shows you that Barry sticks to sort of the courage of its convictions, and it's so honest about its characters. At the end, we see Sally in the future and it's like this bucolic idyllic the snow is falling, and she's a teacher and she teaches theater and she finished, she leaves a performance, and her son is like, all right, mom, like love you and instead of saying I love you back, she says basically like was the show good, and then never says I love you back. So she's still just like narcissistic. She's still like not a great mom.

8:15 It's not like she became like the best mom in the world. So I just thought that was a really interesting, kind of brutal choice that, you know, they could have very easily just let her say I love you back to her son. They wouldn't. But again, I think that the show had a real courage of its convictions throughout. And I'm very I mean, look, I'm very interested to see whatever Bill does his career. I wur watch anything he does. It does feel like, in a weird way, this end was like a little too abrupt, but at the same time, maybe it's it was kind of time for it to end. It almost feels like Bill, he is so talented and he got to do like many movies, like he got to do like his version of like a scene from Heat with the car chase in the highway, which is amazing. He got to do his version of of like a really good Blumhouse movie, that that bit where the guy is clad all in, you know, like it's like a full costume movie covering his face and he's following Sally around. He got to sort of use the show as a vehicle to explore all these different genres so effectively. And yeah, I don't know. I think it's almost like it you can't cage the bird for too long, right, Like he kind of just needed to. I think he needed it to end as well as the show you know, came to at a certain point they had to end it. But all that being said, if you told me, you know, there was some magical way that I could see two more seasons that played

9:46 it out again with that more sort of grounded in reality approach, I would have loved to see that. So regardless, awesome show, as you can hear, I'm sort of stumbling over. It's like I feel to two different way at the same time about how it ended. So I would really love to know what you think, especially now having had a week to sort of digest it. Did it work for you, did it not work for you? Did you want more? Did you want less? You know, how did you feel about the end of Barry? I would love to know. You can always reach me at dan ad voyagemedia dot com. Watch this Tonight on Instagram, better moore down on Twitter, and watch this Tonight podcast on TikTok. That is a show for today Until next time, Bye bye.