Barry recap: Barry and Sally go method in the middle of nowhere

It’s been eight years since Barry and Sally escaped Los Angeles for the desolate plains of Wherever The Hell They Are, U.S.A. Cutting themselves off from Hollywood, their families, and the ghosts haunting their waking life, Barry, who now goes by Clark, has committed himself to the idea one character calls “clean living.” On the prairies resembling the same vacant stretches of undeveloped land where Barry spent his childhood, he, Emily (a.k.a. Sally), and their son John (Zachary Golinger) live a solitary, humble life free from the outside world. Picking up mere moments after last week’s abrupt conclusion, Barry and Sally attempt to disentangle their own “tricky legacies” by trying to convince themselves they’ve changed by becoming someone entirely new. The result leads down some of the bleakest avenues the show has explored.

Both Barry and Sally have gone full method with their latest roles. When we first meet Clark, he pushes John to apologize to their neighbor over acute Call Of Duty ignorance. Clark tells the neighbors that video games are a no-no in their household and instructs John to make peace. “I hope we can be together next time in harmony,” John says. “We’ll look into that,” replies the neighbor, doing his best with the weirdest apology anyone has ever received. Barry wants to right the wrongs of his past through his son, but John has violent tendencies like Barry. Well, Barry used to have them; now he’s changed. He can control his anger while knowing he can’t control anyone else’s actions. Barry learns from the greats, notably Abraham Lincoln, who Barry seems to have recently discovered. Sally, after all, didn’t learn about George Washington until much later. As he and John watch YouTube videos of Honest Abe, Barry sits with his mouth agape. President Lincoln, it seems, is a good role model, promoting “pragmatism, optimism, and compromise.” With skills like that, maybe John can be a lawyer one day.

Sally, too, has a new role with a new hairdo. The camera introduces her from behind as she adjusts her brunette Emily wig like Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, recalling Kristen’s monologue from “you’re charming.” Framed by the window to her left, John and Barry plant fence posts as she sits at her vanity, radiating alienation and resentment. Sally can’t even face her family, later passing Barry and John as they watch YouTube without even offering a goodbye; how can we expect her to face the camera?

Emily works at Lynette’s Country Diner, serving short stacks and warming coffee for a distinctly not-L.A. crowd. As a working actor, Sally certainly has service experience, but the irony of doing it as an immersive theater experience for an audience of herself must be disorienting. Still, the scene is a brief respite from the crushing despair of the episode. But within moments, the atmosphere changes from a friendly greasy spoon to her co-worker Gina (Emily Spivey) needing “a fuckin’ xanny” in less than 30 seconds. Gina doesn’t even bother hiding it from the customers—this is a world where drug use is a common requirement to get through the day. It’s not hard to see why. The job stifles and deadens Sally; she begins committing petty crimes, tapping the till for a few bucks and teasing a hookup with local scumbags like Bevel (Spenser Granese) out of sheer boredom—or exerting some control of her life. At least at work, Sally can escape binging Natalie’s hit television show, Just Desserts. That was Sally’s show. Now she watches her former assistant make bad jokes on TV as she gulps wine and gives off a vibe that says, “She’s living my life.”

Sally doesn’t have the energy to put on a happy face. Not Barry, though. Having recently learned about Lincoln’s pragmatism, optimism, and compromise, Barry has integrated these principles into his everyday life. He created a wholesome new reality for his family, where the secular pleasures of Call Of Duty and ‌baseball are trumped by live streams of church services and retellings of “Feeding Of The 5,000.” God provides the family with what they need, which somehow doesn’t include a blanket for his son. After finding contraband in his son’s room, the baseball mitt the neighbor gifted John, Barry sits the boy down to watch several of the funniest videos on YouTube, exorcising John of his sinful ballpark dreams. Of course, the gleefully and explicitly violent videos give John nightmares (“I don’t want to get killed by a baseball”). John is growing too old to sustain this lifestyle. The boy doesn’t understand why he can’t play baseball or why his mom wears hair on her hair, and he’s on the cusp of asking too many questions.

Barry and Sally can’t provide for him emotionally, socially, or financially. Living in the middle of nowhere, the family eats undercooked potpies or cereal for dinner in the dark as John shivers himself to sleep. While they’re not living like kings, there’s no reason to think they couldn’t afford the comforter, nor does Barry offer a sufficient explanation. But their failures extend to past material goods. Sally, for instance, can barely bring herself to touch the boy. When John comes crying to her after his baseball nightmare, she lays next to him and stares at the ceiling as he clings to her for warmth and love. In this instance, Sally looks totally detached. The closest she comes to showing John compassion is when they’re squeezed into the bathtubs as Barry fights the shadowy ding-dong ditchers outside.

Even with such wide open spaces, Barry and Sally keep running up against their old lives. Despite his enthusiasm for the 16th president, Barry falls down the YouTube rabbit hole and learns of all the “messed up shit Lincoln did” from the Heroes Exposed channel. Lincoln’s is a “tricky legacy” that recalls another maxim Barry once heard: You’re more than the worst thing you’ve ever done. It turns out you’re more than the best thing you’ve ever done in the case of Lincoln or Gandhi. It’s as if Barry is still reconciling the bad guys and good guys dichotomy Fuches imbued him with and almost grasping the concept of nuance. It’s easy to see why Barry finds comfort in the complications of Lincoln’s life. If Lincoln could come out the other side of this as “Honest Abe,” maybe there’s hope for the hitman.

But as Barry attempts to relate to history’s giants, Sally sits and seethes. She looks for ways to let out the aggression and lands on Bevel. The next day at work, she takes advantage of Bevel’s crush on her by interrogating him about his life of crime. Relayed as he sips Nesquik through a straw, Bevel’s description of his brother’s murder conviction is consistent with much of the show’s violence. When Sally asks how the killings made his brother feel, he seems confused, as if he’s never thought about the victims. He chalks the bank robbery casualty up to simple, unfortunate statistics. “What do you mean, ‘how’d it make him feel,’” he asks. “You rob a fuckin’ bank. The probability of someone getting jacked is high.” When the conversation turns to Bevel, he sees it as an opportunity to make his wet dreams come true. Bevel brags to Sally that blasting fools made him feel like a “god,” which Sally translates into “a bad boy god.”

Sally’s testing him. Bevel isn’t the bad boy god he believes himself to be. He’s probably never even killed a guy. But Sally has. She invites him into the bathroom to give him a taste of the math he so proudly bragged about, choking him too aggressively until he rips her wig off. After he promises to keep her secret, Sally tells the boss that Bevel is tapping the till. Sally will do whatever she can to get out some aggression that vodka and wine can’t quench.

Barry, too, tiptoes back into old habits. After learning that Honest Abe isn’t the best role model for his boy, Barry begins mining his history for lessons. When he and John bring packages into the house, he plants a shadow box of his old Marine medals and photos like Darren McGavin at the end of A Christmas Story. Barry directs these precious moments, deciding at the last minute to move the formation of this idyllic memory on the swing rather than the steps. It’s all a fabrication, so he might as well make it as much like television as possible. Regardless of where it takes place, Barry can’t help but make the past accessible, offering John breadcrumbs that will lead to the truth. By the end of the episode, he’s rewriting his history. Barry’s traumatic experiences in Afghanistan, particularly the incident that got him discharged, become a proud war story. In Barry’s new version of reality, he was a medic who saved Albert’s life.

But that past is catching up with him. One night, a mysterious knock at the door sees Barry reaching into a wall and pulling out a pistol. He stands guard in the patch of dust that goes on forever all night, waiting for the knocker to emerge. The sounds of footsteps in the oppressive darkness characterize the atmosphere of “tricky legacies.” The following day, the episode does one of many slow fades that can’t help but feel like No Country For Old Men from the endless stretch of flat land to a Hollywood backlot. There, a long-haired Gene Cousineau has re-emerged from hiding. He received word that a movie is being made about Barry, and he wants in. Barry drops the act when a Google Alert warns Sally of what’s coming soon. Clark dies at that moment because Barry has to kill Cousineau.

After last week’s clearing of the board, “tricky legacies” doubles down on darkness, depression, and duplicity. The doubling of characters and resetting identities through a filter of filth and decay evokes Twin Peaks’ final episode, when Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) awakes in Odessa, Texas, in a seemingly different reality. Barry and Sally have changed superficially, but ultimately the past remains a part of them, a trauma they cannot escape, no matter how much they try to outrun it.

Stray observations

• I know John takes “you’re good enough to play right field” as a huge compliment, but as a retired little league right fielder, we all know that’s where they stick the sucky kids.
• I think John is named after Barry’s dad. I couldn’t find an instance of anyone saying Barry’s dad’s name in those first two episodes, but IMDB lists two characters as having the name: Detective John Loach (John Purrccello) and Barry’s dad (played by Gloria).
• The shot of Sally at her vanity also reminded me of the childhood segment of Citizen Kane, a memory of parent-child bonding in the background as the child’s fate is determined in the foreground.
• YouTube video title: “Little League Breaks Neck Colliding With Wall!” Description: “In the middle of a little league game, the first baseman runs to catch a foul ball, but hits the fence and breaks her neck, dropping to the ground motionless.”
  Title: “12 Year Old Pitcher Killed By Line Drive!!!!!!! (MATURE CONTENT)” Description: “A 12 year old pitcher from Indiana throws a fastball which is hit directly back at him, striking him in the head and killing him instantly.”
• The suggested videos aren’t much better: “Child will Never Walk Again After Horrific Tackle In Junior Game!” “LITTLE LEAGUE PITCHER PARALZED AFTER DIRECT HIT!!” “Parents Straight Up Murder Each Other After Little Game!” “7 Year Old Boy Gets Grisly Injury in Outfield – TERRIFYING.”
• The sound from the videos is perfect, too. “Noah. Noah! He’s not breathing!”
• Hader’s line readings still crack me up, no matter how dark the show gets. “You like your dinner, John? Pretty good, right? Chickenpotpie!”
• John’s was the only potpie not fully cooked. By the looks of things, Barry and Sally had no problem finishing their dinners.
• “We’ve got to honor mom.”
  “She cries a lot.”
  “Oh, yes, yes she does. You know what, like I’ve said, there’s happy cry, and then there’s sad cry, and then there’s, uh, well, there’s mom cry and that can be very loud and scary.”
• Kristen, who had a small role in the first movie, is now the star of “Megagirls 4.” Sally’s coaching really helped.
• Pray we see more of “Larry Chowder: The Magical Boy” starring @Tyler #FeelTheMagic.
• “It’s just so crazy to go from a chubby little kid who loves cupcakes and all of a sudden, the President of the United States is quoting our show at the State of the Union. How did we get this lucky? Did you know we almost fired you season two? You weren’t good yet. You were a kid, so you were bad.”