Barry: The Dark Comedy Forgot The Laughs In The Series Finale
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of "Barry."
HBO's "Barry" broadcast its final episode Sunday night. Throughout the show's four seasons, creators Bill Hader and Alec Berg had always found the most clever and silly ways to break the show's masterfully elevated moments of jaw-clenching tension. But for the finale, simply titled "Wow," Hader and Berg abandoned any attempts at comedy, instead keeping the episode dark for nearly its entire 35-minute run time.
When the episode begins, Barry (Hader) is being led into a trap set by his former mentor Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root) at the offices of NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), where Barry's girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg) and son John (Zachary Golinger) are being held captive. The opening scenes are heartbreaking before turning bloody, then heartbreaking again. Sally confesses the truth about Barry's murderous past to John and admits that she also has killed someone before trying to reassure John that he is not like his parents. "You're a good kid. You always do the right thing," she tells him. "You're a good person. But I'm not."
A tearful Sally is then separated from her terrified son as Fuches, and his minions arrive for a showdown with Hank and his men.
After a tense conversation about denial with Sally and John looking on, Fuches shoots Hank, and he bleeds out on the floor of his office lobby, holding the hand of the bronze statue of his dead lover Cristobal (Michael Irby). A deadly shootout between the two gangs ensues, during which Fuches mercifully covers John's body with his own. Sally, John, and Fuches are the only three people to survive the confrontation.
Barry meets an abrupt and violent end
Barry, Sally, and John retreat to a hotel, where Barry learns that acting coach Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) is now under suspicion for the murder of Janice Moss (Paula Newsome). Barry goes to Gene's house, and seconds after he tells Gene's lawyer Tom Posorro (Fred Melamed) to call the police so he can turn himself in, Gene shoots Barry in the chest and head, killing him.
Viewers are then treated to one brief moment of relief in a scene showing a glimpse of Sally and John's future, where Sally is a high school drama teacher, and John (Jaeden Martell) appears to be a well-adjusted teenager. In the only scene in the entire episode that even remotely approaches comedic territory, John sits down with his friend to watch "The Mask Collector," the docu-drama about Barry and Gene's lives.
The laughs are found in the comparison between Michael Cumpsty's performance as the fictionalized Gene Cousineau to Henry Winkler's throughout the four seasons of "Barry," a role which earned Winkler two Emmy nominations and one win as Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
The only other real comedy in the "Barry" series finale is a small series-long gag regarding the gun Gene uses to kill Barry, a gift from actor Rip Torn that appears multiple times in the series along with its accompanying note reading, "Couscous, Try Not To Blow Your D— Off With This. — Rip [Dictated but not read]."