Reaction Review: Barry Season 4 Episode 8: wow
written by Andreas Babiolakis
EPISODE SUMMARY
Warning: major spoilers for Barry season 4 episode 8, “wow”, are throughout the entire review. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
We start the series finale of Barry with Monroe Fuches in a bathtub and with earphones in. His phone goes off and it’s NoHo Hank wanting to make peace. He is offering Barry Berkman, and proves that he can bring Barry to him since he has his wife, Sally Reed, and their son, John, there. Fuches changes his tone and agrees to pop over to Hank’s. Hank confides in Sally and reaffirms that he, too, has been backstabbed by Barry when he was made to feel secure by him. He leaves Sally and her son without any answers as to what their fate will be. Barry goes to the local superstore to pick up guns, and no one bats an eye (even with an AK-47 on his back). Jim Moss is on television addressing the death of his daughter, Janice, and states that they’re reopening the case: he is convinced that Gene Cousineau is responsible for Janice’s death, and that he brainwashed Barry into killing her (this isn’t true).
Sally begins to tell John the truth while they are locked away: that she and Barry are fugitives. She even tells John about Barry’s hitman past. She then claims that she is also a murderer, but we know it isn’t in the same way that Barry is (she was acting in self defence, and has clearly never forgiven herself for it). She begins to call herself a bad mother, and John instantly rushes to hug her. They are instantly separated by Hank’s men, with Sally being dragged out. John screams for her to be brought back.
Fuches is on his way over to Hank’s with his posse. Barry himself is speeding up to Hank’s location, clad with guns. Hank awaits Monroe at the front of his building with his team, and he is met by Fuches and his own men; Hank has Sally there. Fuches wants Barry’s kid brought outside as well before threatening to walk away. Fuches begins to mess with Hank about the death of Cristobal. He then continues to state that it was the abuse in prison on a daily basis that made him realize that he was heartless, but Hank doesn’t want to identify with Fuches’ revelation. Fuches then states a new deal and says that he’ll walk away, never to be seen again, only if Hank admits that Cristobal died because of Hanks’ own errors, and that Hank hates himself for what he has done. He refuses to believe that Hank isn’t heartless, but the latter begins to tear up. It’s at this point that John is brought out. Fuches is concerned by how much Barry’s son looks like him. Hank then calls Fuches a liar and states that the deal is off. Fuches shoots Hank, and both posses begin to shoot one another dead (or close to it, for some).
Fuches gets up and it’s clear that he saved John’s live by shielding him. Sally starts crawling and trying to find him, but some tear gas has gone off and it’s hard to see. Fuches pulls him out of the office away from her. It’s apparent that Hank didn’t survive, as he sits at the feet of the golden statue of Cristobal. Barry finally arrives, and he starts praying to God, hoping that his son will live a peaceful life if and when Barry dies this very night. As soon as he gets out of the car, John spots him. He runs and hugs him. Barry spots Fuches from afar. After some reservations, Fuches finally decides to just go inside, maybe realizing that he does have a heart: he used to value Barry like a son, and maybe this was his opportunity to seize that. Inside, Sally is still trying to find John. Hank, bleeding, finally starts moving, and he looks up to Cristobal. Panicking, he grasps his hand of gold. He eventually dies for good and will see Cristobal again. We cut to black.
Sally reads about Gene’s predicament on the news. She, Barry, and John share a bed, but she is wide awake. She wakes up Barry to tell him that the Gene situation. She tells Barry that he needs to turn himself in so Gene isn’t wrongfully convicted. Barry initially says yeah before stating that this isn’t what God wanted. He expected to die, and he feels as though that God spared him; he’s been “redeemed”. Sally disagrees and thinks that by turning himself in, Barry will finally be good in God’s eyes. After Barry tries to persuade her otherwise, Sally flips away from him on the bed. The next morning, Barry wakes up alone. Meanwhile, Gene can’t stop reading about himself online: even his son has sided against him. He eyes the box with a pistol that he has kept in his possession for years. Barry arrives at Gene’s doorstep and barges in looking for Sally. Gene’s agent, Tom Posorro, tries to convince Barry to turn himself in. Right as Barry claims that he will turn himself in, Gene is there and shoots Barry dead.
We cut to black, but then cut back to Gene sitting with what he has done, and Tom on the phone with emergency services. There is applause that rings out while Barry lays dead, but we cut to a different production. Sally’s own one. She has her own acting class now. Her son, John, is now all grown up. Her production, “Our Town”, with her latest class is a major success. She is approached by a fellow teacher named Robert. He invites her for a drink, but she turns him down. John wants to stay with a friend, and Sally’s cool with it. Before they both leave, she needs assurance from John that the play was good, and he promises it was. John’s friend asks if he is ready “for this”, and he says that he is; it’s clear that they’re up to no good. Sally looks at the bouquet she was awarded next to her on the drive home and ponders. At John’s friend’s, they’re watching something: The Mask Collector. It’s clearly the movie based on Barry’s life that came to fruition. There’s no Daniel Day-Lewis or Mark Wahlberg, but the film worked out. It’s a cheesy version of his father’s story, but it exists. In fact, the film is under the misapprehension that Gene instructed Barry to kill and that Gene killed Janice: it’s clear that after Gene killed Barry that this untruth prevailed. At the end of the film, it’s revealed that Gene is serving life in prison. Barry was buried and honoured for his services; exonerated of all of his crimes. John chuckles: Barry was redeemed after all, even if by the grace of Hollywood.
FIRST REACTION
I had no idea what to expect with the series finale of Barry, because it seemed like there were still so many loose ends to tie up. The episode is only thirty five minutes to boot? Oh boy. Well, Barry is over, and any apprehensions I had about the final season are mostly gone. It took Gene Cousineau to round up the five main characters and their different brushes with death. Barry Berkman was forced to become a killer after he served in the navy, and his vices wound up devouring him whole: he couldn’t stop killing. Sally Reed killed someone once out of self defence and it permanently scarred her to the point that she could never really shake off her demons; even in her successful finale (the only main character to have a good ending), she hangs onto her imposter syndrome (but I can’t fault her). NoHo Hank dies under the watch of the Cristobal statue and refuses to believe he is monstrous. Monroe Fuches cannot help but feel that he is evil, but he chooses his one opportunity to kill Barry to finally come to terms with his relationship: he’d rather remember him like a son. Gene was built up to this point of finally snapping and killing: if he wasn’t going to kill Barry, he would have opted himself instead. His life imprisonment is essentially the same outcome: he’s lost everything anyway. He would never turn back.
The Mask Collector is a funny send off and a reminder of how much the entertainment industry sanitizes the brutality of human nature. We can attest to how fictional the film is based on the history of the series and everything that it was missing (or was flat out wrong about). It also reminds us that Barry is a lot grittier than most shows out there, and that we likely won’t see many shows this upfront with its depictions of loss and personal banishment. The greatest joke of all was the applause j-cut sitting on top of the painting-esque image of Barry’s dead corpse spilling blood while Gene stares at us head on with the realization that he is no better than Barry at this very moment. If society already deemed him a murderer, why shouldn’t be play the part of one? It’s his most committed role. Barry, on the other hand, played the part of a vindicated soul; even if it wasn’t fully accurate, the test of time confirms that his name was absolved of all sin. Should he have been? That’s up to you to decide.
As fast paced as the final season of Barry was, I began to grow a little concerned about how this would all resolve. I needn’t worry since it all concludes in the right place. We will all die some day, hopefully not at the hands of another. Will we feel cleansed before we pass? Will our conscious be clear? Four out of five of the main characters feel reborn, even if it’s for a fraction of a second (in the case of Barry). The only person damned during the finale is Gene who killed for the very first time. Will he be at peace one day? Maybe. If Monroe Fuches can be, so can Gene Cousineau, but this isn’t that story. This is Barry Berkman’s story, and it comes to an end with such a Hollywood conclusion.
Having said that, the series finale cut to black for quite a bit of time (don’t think I didn’t notice the red curtains signalling a curtain call behind Barry moments before his death). Is everything afterward in Barry’s mind as he dies? Will Sally and John actually have a good life? Will Barry’s name be cleared? Did Gene answer to all of Barry’s sins? I guess we will never actually know for sure. I usually opt for the more pessimistic ending when we are left off with open-endidness, but this time around I am feeling a little more cheerful. Maybe that’s what the Hollywood Barry film wanted me to feel. That film isn’t the whole story, and maybe “wow” isn’t either. We may never know because Barry is dead and Barry has finished. We can listen to what it tells us. Maybe it’s nicer that way.
Final Grade: 5/5
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.