Is This the End of the Line for Barry Berkman? – Rolling Stone

This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of Barry“The magician.”

Barry spends a good portion of “The Wizard” listening to various religious podcasts, pastor-shopping for someone to tell him that killing Gene Cousineau is acceptable. Eventually, he finds one — voiced, naturally, by comedian Bill Burr — who says it’s okay. But it’s clear by the simple fact of finding that Barry is going to do what he wants to do no matter what, and in the end will find some kind of justification, even if it’s not from an ordained person who with a Yeti mic.

“The Wizard” is full of characters who talk about things they passionately believe in, even when there’s plenty of evidence that it’s nonsense. Gene is proud to have spent the last eight years in a kibbutz in Israel, which taught him about selflessness and true happiness, which is why he says he’s in town not to help make a Barry Berkman biopic, but to stop it. But when he visits his son Leo and grandson Gordon, we learn that he hasn’t seen or spoken to them since he shot Leo at his cabin door. That is not something a selfless person does. That’s something done by someone who doesn’t want to face the consequences of his actions — even unintentionally, in this case — until he absolutely, positively has to. But a visit with Leo is the only thing that saves Gene’s life, as Gordon walks through the door before Barry can get out guns blazing. And regardless of what a sociopath Barry is in every other way, being The Father Of A Son gives him pause about doing this in front of a kid not much older than John. (Or, worse, doing it in such a way that Gordon becomes collateral damage.)

And Barry’s trip to Los Angeles is something of a self-aggrandizing spiritual quest. When Sally suggests they can run again

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Where does their money come from? Barry did a lot of work for the Chechens, but it’s unclear how much Fuches was giving him. And they’ve been on the lam for eight years, and apparently moved several times in that time. But they have a nice — if completely isolated — house, keep ordering from Amazon, etc. Even if Sally steals from the till, waitressing isn’t enough to cover a runaway lifestyle like this.

Barry Season 4 | Official Trailer | HBO

And this in turn brings him back to NoHo Hank, who now runs his own conglomerate, NoHoBal, named after himself and his late partner. But even though he has a bronze statue of Cristobal in the lobby of his headquarters, this is an empire built on literal and figurative sand. Like Barry in his conversion to some very specific and helpful version of Christianity, Hank allows himself to pretend that the horrible thing with the birth of NoHoBal didn’t actually happen — or, at least to, that he is not involved, and should not be. the blame. (He and Gene get along really well.) And when Fuches starts joking about it at the McMansion where Hank has put the whole flock of Ravens

it turns these old allies into mortal enemies in an instant.

Also known, appropriately enough, as an unkindess of crows.

It’s all very effective, and at times – especially anything involving Stephen Root flaunting a very tight undershirt – quite funny, and a relief from the relentless darkness of last week’s episode. Barry leaves Sally and John in their Midwestern hellhole, where they are part of a terrifying, sometimes confusing sequence late in the episode. Sally, as we know last week, absolutely hates this life she’s chosen, and doesn’t seem to love her son that much, whom she medicates by putting alcohol in his juice cup to keep him from he heard her crying. more than his absent father . And he’s pretty drunk, on top of whatever PTSD he’s been dealing with since long before we met him, but mostly because he killed a guy in the Season Three finale. Sarah Goldberg, Zachary Golinger, Bill Hader in ‘Barry’ Season Four.

Merrick Morton/HBO Before this, she’s part of the episode’s single funniest joke, with Sally offering to cook John lunch just to get him to shut up, followed by a loud cut to the smoke alarm going off as we see a completely burnt and inedible grilled cheese sandwich.

one thing

happening? Maybe? The door must have fallen behind Sally, who began to hear a man swearing on the other side, while a terrified Sally struggled to open the door, to put the gun back, or even to shoot it, before suddenly the house started shaking. and leaning over, a car tire slammed into the bedroom wall, and he saw a pickup truck roaring away.