the decision to have hader direct every episode was easily the best choice for this season. one of the great aspects of barry is seeing hader grow increasing confidence as a filmmaker over the course of the show and this final season shows a lot of ambitiousness. he has a very direct and immediate visual language and while some shots can get a little too obvious in their meaning (like the one where sally stands in front of the actress she's meant to be coaching) i think his bluntness rly works for the gripping moments and the series' pacing. especially love the parts where he's doing the test run for his upcoming horror movie. so major thumbs up to this season on that front. unfortunately this season was a step down in every other way for me. hader's directing keeps things enjoyable on an episode to episode basis and helps make the season feel more coherent than it actually is, but it kinda falls apart when taken as a whole. when i saw the season 3 finale i felt it could have easily been a great finale for the entire series. i think it was a great ending to gene and sally's arcs - s3 explores both characters at their lowest and sets them up to be intertwined with the evil of barry, but it comes to the conclusion that while neither are necessarily good people they're not as evil as barry either, and both are given a means to escape from him and become better. 

unfortunately S4 answers the question of "where do the characters go from here?" by putting them back in their previous places. the show has built up a theme of characters being unable to escape their past mistakes and returning to their worst traits as a result. this worked for barry's character because the show was doing something interesting with the concept of redemption, where barry maintaining his "redemption" became a new form of justifying his actions. part of why i liked S3 is that it really committed to the direction that S2 took and firmly answered "no" to the question of whether or not barry could be redeemed. but reducing your characters to their worst traits can only take you so far, and s4 of barry makes the mistake of doing this to EVERYONE. the sopranos had a similar point where it felt like the writers increasingly hated their characters over time, but it maintained their psychological complexity even at their most monstrous. barry s4's theme reduces the characters to one note caricatures whose actions can always be explained away because it's 'their nature'. 

the season rly needed something like the climax to sally's arc in S2 is the scene where she performs the play about her abuser and changes the scene last minute so she stands up to him. this is a moment that's a step backwards for sally and arguably a selfish decision, but one which is entirely understandable and painfully tragic. you can read the scene as sally choosing to be 'the star' over her artistic dignity and be correct but it's also motivated by the pain of being unable to confront her past. it's a decision which the show doesn't condemn her for. i feel s4 is lacking this kind of complexity in the characters' poor decisions  - sally ditches the acting coach job because she needs to be the star, gene tells the story to the journalist because he needs attention, hank lets cristobal die because he's always been a criminal at heart. what makes these moments fail in contrast to barry's characterisation in s3 is that they are not congruent with where these characters went in s3, while barry's arc simply committed to the direction that the show had set from late season one. hank's characterisation in particular seems completely egregious. i'm surprised episode 4 of this season got so much praise when his turn to a tragic villain was so contrived. idk maybe i need to rewatch s3 or something but i got the impression from that season that he had become disinterested in crime and that it mainly existed as an intrusion to him and cristobal's relationship. his motivation in that episode really came out of nowhere to me and it seemed to happen just to underscore the show's theme of people being unable to change. i also don't rly like how the finale shows how the characters' endings correlate to whether or not they embrace their 'nature'. like how fuches basically gets a redemption for fully embracing that he's a bad person and hank gets a tragic ending for not admitting that he killed cristobal. i really don't think this fits with their characterisations across the series as a whole! this is less of a problem than the character writing but i think the season is also a mess in terms of plotting. i rly liked how the series could quickly open up and resolve storylines without rushing them but here it crams way too much in. they'll end the episode in a way that sets up an exciting direction and then speed through it to get to the next setup so it doesn't feel like it actually matters (moss kidnapping barry being an especially annoying example). the final scene is a funny punchline but i just wish the leadup to it was better, it could have landed so much harder in a better season. succession sweeps sorry guys

Comments