Why you should be watching ‘Barry’, the HBO series that went from being a parody of ‘Dexter’ to becoming the heir to ‘Breaking Bad’

Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) is a shy man with social problems who has no family or friends. past his boss, Fuchs (Stephen Root). But everything changes when he meets Gene Cousineau’s acting school (henry winkler), a part-time actor who gets the acting bug, and Sally (Sarah Goldberg), one of his students, who awakens love in him for the first time in a long time. Barry has found his calling, and makes a decision: he wants to quit his job and become an actor. The problem? That he is a hired assassin involved in a war between international drug trafficking mafias.

This is the premise of ‘Barry’, the HBO Max series created and starring Bill Hader, former member of the cast of the largest and most prestigious pool of comedians on North American television: the sketches Saturday night Live.

‘Barry’ faces its fourth and final season after having evolved from black comedy to psychological drama and the most unpredictable thriller. What started as a lighthearted and fun version of ‘Dexter’with a serial killer trying to reconcile his criminal life and his daily and love life (with the moral dilemmas and stressful situations that this causes), has ended up being ‘Breaking Bad’.

‘Barry’ has gradually abandoned comedy to become a criminal drama where guilt and remorse make a bigger dent than bullets, and the legend of Barry Berkman has grown (unintentionally) to become a “Heisenberg” in the underworld. A kind of “bogeyman” or Baba Yaga (to name another illustrious contract killer such as John Wick).

However, and a bit like what happened to Walter White in ‘Breaking Bad’, everything goes wrong for Barry. Every time he seems closer to reaching a certain level of normalcy, everything falls apart and he is forced to kill again. to protect your new identity. The result is not the happy life he wanted, but a hectic and stressful reality for him, his girlfriend, and his mentors in both acting and murder.

What can we expect from season 4 of ‘Barry’

— Spoilers for the first 3 seasons of ‘Barry’ —

For Barry, Mr. Cousineau has been more than a mentor. He has been like a father. That is why it hurt his soul to have to kill his girlfriend at the end of the first season, who in the end was the police who were after his steps. Gene discovered, thanks to Fuchs, that his student had been the executioner of his beloved, and after being threatened, kidnapped and, in a desperate attempt to get his forgiveness, recovered for the acting world as a secondary deluxe, orchestrates a plan to put Barry behind bars.

This is how the fourth and final season will begin. Barry has been betrayed by the person he trusted most in the world. His girlfriend has left him and, after discovering the streaming sewers in the third season and being canceled in the industry for unleashing her anger on her assistant, she has returned to her hometown with her parents. NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Cristóbal (Michael Irby), former enemies as the leaders of the Chechens and the Bolivians, respectively, and now lovers (this is the best subplot of the entire series and NoHo is one of the most fascinating characters in 21st century television) ran away together and now live an idyllic life far from Los Angeles. And, to complete Barry’s misfortunes, his former boss and best friend Fuchs shares prison with him and plans to implicate him in more murders to get a release deal.

Barry finds himself alone, abandoned, betrayed and broken.. Although he is a hitman capable of cold-bloodedly killing people with whom he has shared years of life, deep down he has feelings for him. And boy does he have them. Already in the previous season we saw a great sequence in which, poisoned by the relatives of a former victim, he hallucinated with going to the afterlife and reuniting with all the people he had murdered.

Barry has been looking for redemption since the first chapter of the series, but as Steven Van Zandt’s character said in another of the best HBO series, ‘The Sopranos’, imitating Al Pacino: “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in (Just when I thought I was outside… I’m dragged back inside).” Will Barry be forgiven by his friends? Will he finally be able to rest in peace with himself?