Barry season four: Is redemption possible for someone so damaged?

Given who’s involved, you think Barry is a laugh-out-loud comedy, but this genre-defying series is so, so much more than that.

Barry gets his comeuppance – or does he? Picture: HBO

Thorny, complex and darkly hilarious, Barry is one of those shows you were told was one thing, but was actually something almost entirely different.

The logline is an assassin joins an acting class to get close to his next target, but accidentally finds a different purpose and ambition. And it was created by Bill Hader and Alec Berg – one is a Saturday Night Live alumnus and the other worked on Seinfeld, Silicon Valley and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

On the face of it, Barry was meant to be a comedy, a laugh-out-loud series following the hijinks of a killer trying to hide the worst version of himself from his new friends, while trying to co-opt their dreams so he can feel – or even pretend to feel – like a normal person.

While Barry is technically classified as a comedy, at least for awards category purposes, the show itself defies genre boxes.

It’s as tragic and grim as it is droll and witty. Its thematic ambitions are aiming for no less than the fundamentals of life itself – “Am I a good person? Can I become a good person? Does it even matter if I’m a good person?”

Barry’s fourth season will be its final. Picture: HBO

There are definitely funny moments throughout the run, including a season two episode, “ronny/lilly”, with an extended chase sequence that was both thrilling and a prime example of its physical comedy.

But what Barry does so well is how it explores the big life questions through its story centred on an emotionally damaged man whose job was to kill people for money.

If murder is the ultimate human sin, how do you come back from that? Do you even get to try? Does everyone deserve to make connections, no matter what they’ve done?

The series is now in its fourth and final season – if you’ve never seen it, it’s never too late to catch up (it streams on Binge), but maybe jump off this page for now because it’s going into spoiler territory for the first three seasons – and everything is coming to a head.

Even more so after the epic conclusion of the third instalment, which found Barry (Hader) finally facing comeuppance for his crimes, arrested for killing Janice. Barry starts the season in prison but his physical surroundings concern him less than his relationships with father-figure Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and ex-girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg).

New episodes of Barry drop on Mondays. Picture: HBO

Sad, lonely Barry wants, more than anything else, a version of an ideal life and for a brief moment, he thought it possible. He thought Sally would be his ideal but she’s dealing with her clusterf**k of a life after that viral video of her going off on her old assistant.

She shouldn’t have the bandwidth for his chaos but there’s something about how they both gravitate to each other – but what they need from each other is never about the other person, it’s only ever about themselves and their own baggage, and what the other represents to them. For him, it’s a white-picket fence, for her, it’s safety.

Barry’s desire for a life with Sally is another way for him to cope with the ongoing denial he spins about his own actions – or is denial even the right word? He seems to have finally arrived at acknowledging what he’s done, but along with that, a seeming nonchalance about it.

Barry is no longer tortured by what he’s done, what he wants trumps any moral quandaries he may have struggled with.

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Gene is done with Barry. Picture: HBO

In a scene in the first episode of season four, desperate to cling on to anyone, he says to his other father-figure, Fuches (Stephen Root), after being rejected by the other, Cousineau, “You were right about Mr Cousineau, I never should’ve trusted him, I never should’ve taken that acting class. If I hadn’t tried to understand myself, we wouldn’t be here. I’m sorry.”

In that moment, Barry admits that trying to work through his demons, of trying for redemption, of trying to be a good person, is no longer the goal (and given the mounting body count over the years, it was a failing experiment).

Barry just wants what he thinks is a happy life.

But does someone who has wrought so much damage get to have contentment? Or are there people for whom redemption is not possible?

Barry season four is on Binge and Foxtel on Demand, with new episodes available on Mondays at 12pm AEST

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