4/5 Stars

Last year, HBO premiered a brand-new show, courtesy of Alec Berg (“Silicon Valley”) and Bill Hader (“Trainwreck”), about an assassin who wished to abandon the life to pursue an acting career in Los Angeles. This show was “Barry,” and it premiered to rave reviews and favorable ratings. Starring co-creator Hader as the titular character, and co-starring Stephen Root (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”), Sarah Goldberg (“Hindsight”), Glenn Fleshler (“Suburbicon”), Anthony Carrigan (“Gotham”) and the legendary Henry Winkler (“Arrested Development”), the show attempted to portray a surprisingly dark comedy with styles much more similar to a Coen Bros. (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”) film than any other traditional comedy. With the first season a hit for HBO, winning Emmys for both Hader and Winkler, the show has now returned for a sophomore season.

Thankfully, the show reminds the audience right off the bat that it is not set on being a sophomore slump. The show picks up from its very tragic season one ending, which saw Barry supposedly murder Detective Moss (Paula Newsome), leaving Winkler’s character Gene Cousineau completely distraught. Now that he has abandoned their next stage production, Barry is leading the charge, despite everyone’s insistence that the show cannot go on without Gene. Meanwhile, Monroe Fuches’ (Root) attempts at continued work only result in more confusion, failure and arrest, while No-Ho Hank (Carrigan) continues to enjoy his position as the new boss of his family as well as his new partnership with the Bolivians, at least until new threats emerge.

The show continues its traditional darkly comedic look and feel and does what few other shows of this caliber do: continue to utilize the characters to enhance the story and keep it going in a fresh, original way, and fully embrace its wacky concept. So much of the show is reverse escapism, as most viewers probably wished to be going on cool missions as spies/assassins, instead of being stuck in school. This show opts to take the complete opposite approach, making this another in a long line of media products that seek to debunk the allure of traditional action. 

Rather than being portrayed as cool and flashy, Barry is the perfect everyday man: just a dude going to work, only his is cold, efficient and brutal when done right, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Residual post-traumatic stress disorder from both this and his time in Afghanistan have left him with an awkward, quiet and seemingly meek demeanor on the outside that gives way to a cold, brutal interior when faced with threats. In the new season, however, he seems to be more jovial and appreciative of life, as opposed to his fellow characters, who seem to only be more down after the despair they faced in the last season.

Besides Hader, the stand-out is Carrigan as No-Ho Hank. As one of the most bizarre and instantly loveable new TV characters of 2018, his upped screentime is a welcome relief to all the doom and gloom. His weird demeanor mixed with one of the most positive attitudes ever for a vicious gangster makes this character so entertaining that he ends up stealing the show whenever he is on the screen. He has even matured and risen to a certain level that he can finally go toe to toe with Barry, potentially setting up yet another friendship-turned-mortal-enemies relationship that TV has always seemed to get right.

“Barry” is by no means a perfect show, and it is in its imperfections that the perfections lie. By applying just the right amount of human emotion and intrigue to an otherwise extremely dark and different show, it is a fresh new take on an age-old genre, with the right actor in place to further his career to avoid the dreaded typecast spot that so many 2000s comedians fall into. Hopefully, storylines to come will face Barry with even greater obstacles, both from his personal and professional lives, now that they have pretty much reversed themselves, which will surely come back to haunt him as these things always do. Hader is a joy to watch, the cast is spectacular, and it truly is a revelation of a show.

Image from HBO via YouTube