Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: barry, bill hader, dark comedy, HBO, hitman, Sarah Greenberg

Barry: Bill Hader Is Giving Us Television's Longest Nervous Breakdown

Barry, the comedy about a hitman who wants to be an actor, is the darkest comedy on television. Creator & star Bill Hader has taken what might otherwise be a glib and lazy comedy pitch and turned it into an uncompromising character study of a guy having the longest nervous breakdown currently on TV. He has been falling apart since before the show began.

Barry Berkman (Hader) is a vet now working as a freelance hitman. He had undiagnosed PTSD from his time in Afghanistan, made increasingly worse with the jobs he takes. Barry is a man whose soul is getting hollowed out by killing. When he's sent to Los Angeles to kill an actor for sleeping with his client's wife, he becomes attracted to acting. Acting becomes a form of therapy for him, and he thinks being an actor offers a new life to him, except he still gets forced to kill people for money, and his day job and newfound calling keep threatening to collide.

The high concept pitch of a hitman who wants to be an actor and has to juggle between that and killing people is a premise that could have easily been played as glib comedy, but Hader seems to have higher ambitions than that. He pushes Barry right to the edge and beyond. He never, ever takes the easy route of making Barry heroic or even attractive in any way. Barry is a terrible actor. He's barely able to have a normal conversation with anybody. He's only really good at killing people, and that's never portrayed as a John Wick kind of superior skill. Killing makes Barry miserable and the more he does it, the more desolate his mental state becomes. And yet the comic irony of a hitman loose amongst the demimonde of struggling actors and the lower rungs of show business is still ripe for dark comedy. The foibles of Barry's hapless girlfriend Sally (Sarah Greenberg) trying to get her foot in the door and the self-obsession of their acting coach Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), while they're blissfully unaware of the monster in their midst, are rife with both horror and laughs.

And Barry is a monster. By the start of Season 3, he's at the lowest point he could possibly be. He craves forgiveness and redemption but suspects he doesn't deserve it. He has burned bridges, massacred two gangs, and begun terrorizing Sally with outburstss of rage. Cousineau now knows Barry murdered his girlfriend, and Barry desperately wants his forgiveness. Barry has lost touch with reality and is now thoroughly unhinged. He thinks he can make things right with Cousineau by getting him a part in a show – all the while keeping Cousineau prisoner in the trunk of his car! Sally, who's finally getting a taste of stardom by cashing out on her past with an abusive boyfriend, withdraws into her abusive mindset of trying to appease Barry's abusive behaviour and rekindling her trauma. Hader has turned the show and the character into his own acting showcase. He plays Barry as utterly psychotic and terrifying now, yet still horribly funny as if daring us to still like him. You could read Barry as a symbol of America's military interventions come home to roost, neglected, and ignored to wreak havoc back home.

The closest archetype for Barry is Shakespeare's Macbeth. The Scottish Play is possibly the best character study of a man who commits murder and finds he can't stop killing to protect himself and finds his soul hollowed out in the process. It's only two episodes into season 3 and Barry has gone full Macbeth. Barry is doomed. He knows deep down he's going to Hell, but he hasn't noticed that he's already in Hell, and is making the world Hell for everyone around him.

Barry is now on HBO.

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