Let’s get it immediately out of the way : this show is amazing, and you need to watch it or you are doing yourself a disservice.
Very light spoilers for the first episode ahead.
I discovered this show after seeing a comedic clip of it through recommendations on Youtube. I thought, “this is hilarious!” and downloaded it, thinking it was a comedy show about a hitman changing jobs.
It was no such thing.
Barry is described as a “Tragicomedy” on Wikipedia, or a “Dramedy” for someone who isn’t a complete tool. Barry is also, neither.
The truth is that Barry is not very funny, and not very sad. But wait! Don’t click off this! Barry might not be very funny or very sad, but it IS tragic. It’s like if you took the jokes out of Arrested Development – what you’re left with is a horribly dysfunctional family of crooks, each of which is quite stupid and very incapable of taking care of themselves on a day-to-day basis.
Barry feels a lot like that – but it features an enormous amount of character growth, the pacing is on par with some of the best paced shows i’ve ever seen, it’s always got something going on and payoff is never overwhelmingly far.
That’s because each season is only eight 30 minute episodes each! And despite that seeming like a limitation Barry makes every second count.
So, here’s the premise : Barry is a hitman that works with a partner who ‘books’ his hits. However, after a long time of doing hits, he’s dissatisfied with his work and tired of killing people, feeling like he’s a bad person for murdering others. He’s given an assignment to hit a “bad man”, only to find out that he is not a bad person and that the guy attends a theater class for actors.
Barry then not only fails to kill the guy but instead enrolls into the theater class!
So far so good – except that Barry is monumentally bad at theater. He has trouble memorizing lines and he is completely unable to put any emotion into his lines. Hilarity ensues, as the watcher discovers that the class is less like a theater class for actors and more like a theater class for failures.
Despite that, the show doesn’t push the characters to Big Bang Theory proportions and treats every member of the cast with a certain amount of respect.
Watch Barry! It’s got enough comedy to not be depressed watching the show, enough drama to not be bored with the comedy, and enough tension that you’ll be left wanting more and investing yourself in each episodes’ plot arc.
This show has been a silent hit, and it really shouldn’t be (silent, that is!), so get to watching 👀👀👀👀.