‘Barry’ Season 4 aims to make you laugh, punch you in the gut and terrify you

One of the many reasons HBO’s “Barry” has become a smash hit and critical favourite is the fact it has something for every viewer.

Dark humour? Check. Unpredictable drama and mountainous tragedy? Check and check. Action sequences? Check. Satire on modern-day Hollywood? Check. A little bit of slapstick comedy? Check.

However, the story central to the masterpiece series, from star and co-creator Bill Hader and co-executive producer Alec Berg, is something that resonates with everyone. And that story centres on human nature, regret and, ultimately, the folly of vengeance.

In its fourth and final season — premiering Sunday night at 9 p.m. on HBO Canada and Crave — “Barry” takes its audience on a truly wild ride. But throughout, the series keeps coming back to that notion that vengeance isn’t the elixir for anyone’s grievances.

You can go back through the first three seasons and look at any character who tried to exact revenge, and see there isn’t a single instance of the revenge bringing peace or happiness to the person who exacted it.

And that’s entirely by design.

“It is an amazing thing, because the exploration of human nature, especially in this fourth year, is paramount,” said Henry Winkler, whose character of L.A. acting coach and faded onscreen star Gene Cousineau — like all Barry’s key characters — goes through a radical transformation in Season 4.

“(Gene has) some dark, dark thoughts about some human beings. But what you hopefully have learned, in your home, in your school, in the society in which you live, is that vengeance doesn’t usually work out. It has tentacles. It’s not clean.”

Hader concurred that revenge does not solve any problems for anyone on the show.

As the titular character — a former army sniper turned killer-for-hire — Hader’s Barry is himself a tool of vengeance. But with every foiled attempt he makes at straightening out his life, Barry only drags himself deeper into the muck.

So does every character, including Winkler’s Cousineau, Canadian actor Sarah Goldberg’s Sally, Stephen Root’s Fuches and Anthony Carrigan’s NoHo Hank. They each have different motivations, but the result is always the same: something inevitably goes awry and the ramifications close in, like quicksand eating them alive.

“I think that is key and I think that’s key to life, too,” Hader told reporters about the moral of the show.

“We all lose our temper, and I feel like when you lose your temper and go off, that’s a version of vengeance and it never ends well. People stop listening to you and the points you’re getting across. Now they resent you, now they hate you. You take little moments like that from your life, where you’ve learned something, and you go, ‘I should work on that,’ and then you put it into the big question that Barry has, which is, ‘Can I change my nature?’ And then it kind of turns into, ‘I don’t know if I can change my nature, but can I be redeemed?’”

Viewers will have to wait until the eighth and final episode to discover the fates of “Barry’s” characters, all of whom have become unforgettable in their own right.

But through the first seven episodes of Season 4, Hader and Berg’s meticulousness once again makes this one of the most complex, nuanced productions you’ll see on any medium.

Fuches, for instance — Barry’s contract-killer handler — is bathed in red light in one pivotal scene, as if he’s living in hell. In other scenes, Fuches hands out a business card that is red. Root does typically tremendous work in humanizing Fuches, but he’s the closest thing to a devil on Barry’s shoulder there is.

“That’s a good observation: there is a lot of red and a lot of fire and a lot of hellfire in the character,” Root said of the colour palette for Fuches, who is Barry’s ally and shepherd as often as he is his antagonist and nemesis. “I think red is revenge.”

Barry isn’t solely about murder and revenge, but one constant from the first episode is an outstanding attention to detail in storytelling that doesn’t leave any wasted scenes.

Goldberg — a beacon of female rage as Sally — knows full well how painstakingly particular Hader and Berg were in mapping out the series and setting up all storylines to pay off in the final episode. All the Easter eggs and subtle references laid out throughout have an effect on the characters’ destinies in one way or another.

Winkler told reporters he knows Berg and Hader adapted “Barry’s” story as the seasons went along, which makes it all the more impressive they evolved every character the way they did. And Goldberg couldn’t agree more.

“They’re incredible storytellers and they’re incredibly meticulous,” Goldberg said of Hader and Berg.

“Since this is a show about morality, everything has a real deep cause-and-effect. And they’re really constantly building this Jenga tower of where the story can go, and they do all kinds of callbacks and every single thing adds up. There’s no wasted shot. There’s no wasted line in your character and everything connects. There aren’t really any accidents … every detail, down to the costumes and the haircuts and makeup, every single detail is thought through. And I love that.”

Hader and Berg wrote Season 4 during the pandemic and, while it’s taken seven years to complete all four seasons, the series — which has won a slew of awards, including Emmys and Critics Choice Awards for Hader and Winkler — is going out on a high note.

Hader directed each of the eight final episodes and has established himself as a creative leviathan. Once again, “Barry” is giving its audience a little bit of everything and, because of that, is destined to be recognized as an all-time great production.

“My wish for pretty much any audience member of ‘Barry,’ in general … is that they see something that is going to move them in every direction possible,” Carrigan said.

“When you can make someone really laugh, and then punch them in the gut and completely knock the wind out of them, and then also terrify them, and then also give them a break with another laugh and then rip their heart out of their chest while it’s still beating, these are the things that we’re going for as actors and creators. I think that’s what makes ‘Barry’ special.”

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