Barry's season finale is a nail gun to the heart

There’s justice, finally, for Janice Moss. The LAPD detective played by Paula Newsome figured heavily in Barry season one as she (unknowingly) stalked Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) for his connection to the Chechen mob and the murder of an acting student in a class taught by Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). In the course of her investigation, Moss began an ill-advised affair with Cousineau. You know all that and the rest: Moss realized too late that Barry was the perp (although he didn’t actually kill Ryan), and Barry, seeing no other option, shot Moss in the middle of the night by the lake. He then returned to bed with a sleeping Sally (Sarah Goldberg)—they were staying at Cousineau’s country cabin—and whispered into the darkness that his new life was “starting now.”

Moss, in a framed photograph by a couch, smiles at us at the end of episode eight, “starting now.” Hader, director of this episode (and several all season) shoots inside the living room of Jim Moss (Robert Ray Wisdom) looking out the windows toward the front lawn. Barry has been arrested by a SWAT team just as he was about to whack Moss from behind. He had learned from Cousineau that Moss knew who killed his daughter. But with a mounting chorus of “Drop the gun, Berkman!” Barry realized he was set up by Cousineau, Moss, and Detective Mae Dunn (Sarah Burns). Barry is cuffed and taken away. Cousineau almost smiles, grimly vindicated. Through the living room window we watch as Dunn gives Moss a hug and disappears into the swirl of red police lights. Moss and Cousineau regard each other across the lawn, then Cousineau turns and leaves. Hader dwells on the shot for 25 seconds before we go to credits.

We need that long static shot not only to notice Janice Moss’s photo, but to exhale and unclench our fists from what has been a brutal half hour of vengeance, violation, torture, mauling, and overall existential dread. In interviews, Hader warned episode eight was going to be intense with few laughs, and that’s about right. It was a meat grinder, a nail gun to the heart—insert your favorite destructive appliance. Barry started this season trying to earn forgiveness, but what he got was justice. He’s going to prison. It’s better than hell. For the time being, at least.

It’s hell we hear in the cold open, carried over from last episode, the sound of a vast rusty metal door opening to gobble up souls. Barry is on the mystical shore, looking out at the sea, surrounded by those he killed. He turns and see Sally and Cousineau. It’s a call-back to the first episode of the season, in which Barry hallucinated shooting his girlfriend and his mentor in the head. But Barry wakes up in the hospital. Sharon Lucado (Karen David) did a bad job of poisoning that beignet, but also, the doctors did a good job of patching him up. Barry staggers back to Nick and Jermaine’s house. Sally is there, and she has decided to take Barry up on his offer of psychological torture, but this time aimed at Natalie (something tells me it wouldn’t work on her).

After an episode that was defiantly goofy and cartoonishly violent (“710N”) and one permeated with dying, despair, and unexpected redemption (“candy asses”), the finale had to wrap up storylines and restore some semblance of a moral order. The Chechen-Bolivian-Hank-Cristobal narrative thread of slapstick gangsters and star-crossed lovers came to a vicious, probably tragic end. Cousineau’s career success is paused, but not ended, by his reckoning with Jim Moss. Sally has completed her mirroring of Barry by killing a person, however justified (think how she’d play Macbeth now), and she leaves L.A. for her hometown of Joplin—without telling Barry. Fuches is going to prison, finally embracing “The Raven” moniker.

By contrast, Barry and Albert Nguyen’s (James Hiroyuki Liao) showdown by the tree in the barren hills, where Barry was trying to bury the motocross corpse, remained unresolved and morally compromised. The furious Albert pulls a gun on Barry, who sinks to his knees and doesn’t resist. Albert demands to know how much money Barry got for killing Chris. Barry can only gape in agony and shame. When it seems like Albert might shoot Barry, Hader lets out an animal squeal of terror and grovels in the dirt, begging not to be shot. What would you call this? It’s not cowardice. Anyone would react this way. But for Barry, there’s a spiritual dimension: He knows he’s going to hell, and that’s scarier than death. There’s no torture like mental torture. Just ask Jim Moss.

Similarly, Hader keeps the goriest sequences unseen. Yes, the motocross dude knifed in his neck was nasty (plus the nice touch of blood filling his eyeball) but Sally pulverizing him with a baseball bat happens in Nick and Jermaine’s sound booth—we neither see nor hear it. And the graphic deaths of Yandar and Akhmal—fed to a tiger that Hank (Anthony Carrigan) shoots through the wall—was pure audio grand guignol. The shooting of Elena (Krizia Bajos) and the semi-naked male tempter happens relatively quickly and without fuss. Violence in this episode wasn’t a punch line or a virtuoso choreographed set piece (such as the end of season two). It was ugly. We saw Hank’s hysterical panic, nearly ripping his manacled hands off. Sally was forced to fight for her life, and years of abuse was channeled into that desperate act of homicide. Cristobal went through physical and mental torment with the electroshock conversion therapy devised by Elena, which has left him braindead or simply dead. Cousineau endured psychological violation in the Jim Moss interrogation, a scene that looked like a repetition acting exercise (and felt like the Break Room from Severance).

“Do you love Barry Berkman?” Jim Moss demands with rising intensity, his nose touching Cousineau’s, as he smashes through the acting teacher’s pretenses and evasions. It’s a question every fan of the show might ask themselves. Do I love Barry? At first, sure. Even after he killed Chris. He had no other choice, really. Same with Moss: impossible situation. If I make enough excuses, and laugh at the violence, or go numb, or look the other way, sure, I love him.

Maybe we were monsters for loving Barry. We’ll come crawling back next time.

Stray observations

• The sports commentary that plays under the Barry logo after the cold open is puzzling, until you realize it’s playing in the background at Jim Moss’s house at the end.
• Sorry, Sally: no direct flight from LAX to Joplin, MO. Layover in Denver or Chicago.
• “GOING TO TIJUANA TO TRY OUT OUR ACT — NICK & JERMAINE” — the note Barry finds at the house. I fully expect season four to open there.
• Annie Eisner (Laura San Giacomo) seems wary about using her play Chrome Fuck #9 for the theater-class broadcast: “It was the late ’70s. Very experimental.”
• Albert shows a monstrous lapse in judgment by not arresting Barry. Because Barry saved his life in Afghanistan, Albert lets Barry go, insisting the violence end, “starting now.”
• Anthony Carrigan Action Hero. That’s all.
• Chief Krauss LOL of the week. Dunn asks if Albert’s still not answering his phone. Krauss responds, “Yep. Haven’t seen him since he stormed out of here and cocked his gun in front of us. He’s probably out seeing the sights. Wish he’d take me.”
• The kitchen knife Barry pulls when he senses an intruder at Nick and Jermaine’s is the one that Sally finds on the floor and stabs motocross dude with.
• Hader seems to have a soft spot for audio-driven comedy/drama. There’s the short bit with Cristobal leaving Hank, and the truly stomach-churning sequence with the tiger eating Akhmal and Yandar. Horror for the ears.
• After his schlocky hamming on his “masterclass” program, it’s nice to see Cousineau using his thespian abilities to fool Barry in the sting operation.
• Sarah Goldberg’s descent into cruelty, blind narcissism, and finally murderous rage this episode and last has been Emmy-level stunning.