I tried watching Barry back when it came out, weekly, and I just absolutely could not get into it. I bailed after four episodes, completely unenthused by this... indescribable show that wasn't really a comedy, wasn't really a drama, was mostly just a weird mishmash of the two that wasn't working at all for me. Very dark, very bloody, with plenty of actual assassinations and firefights one minute, and then the other half the time it's just Bill Hader doing horribly acted community theater stuff while Henry Winkler tries to coach and motivate him. Meanwhile there's a Russian crime syndicate whose members are cartoonishly weird, like something out of an Archer episode or, come to think of it, Killing Eve. It just wasn't working for me, wasn't congealing into anything meaningful, felt completely scattered, and so on.
But virtually everyone else seemed to absolutely love it! So, almost reluctantly, I waited a few months and then finally caught the second half of the season online in one two-hour binge. And, yeah, okay, now I get it. In its later episodes the show finally picks a lane - the dark one! - and by the penultimate episode I completely understood exactly what this show was trying to be and exactly how well it was succeeding at being exactly that thing.
There's a moment in that seventh episode - and a slightly lesser one at the end of the eigthth, to conlude the season - that feels as powerfully tragic as the best scenes from Breaking Bad. And that's no small feat for a show whose entire existence is four hours long thus far, and whose early vibe felt like a silly comedy with a sense of humor I just couldn't get behind.
At any rate, Barry redeemed its fist four epsidoes with its final four episodes. Of course, most people don't think those first four needed redeeming at all. Make of that what you will.
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