Monday, April 30, 2018

Barry Episode 5 Review: Do Your Job




My first thought when I heard Bill Hader was doing a tragicomic take on the gangster genre was “seen it a thousand times.” Off the top of my head: There’s "The Whole Nine Yards" "The Mexican", the first season of "Breaking Bad", "Analyze This", "Mickey Blue Eyes", "Big Time in Hollywood, Florida", "Lilihammer"---it would be easier at this point to just think of TV shows and movies that involve illegality WITHOUT veering into mob humor.

But that just means this is a high bar to clear. To stick out in a saturated genre, “Barry” has to show me something I haven’t seen before. I don’t know about anyone else, but “Do Your Job” did the trick for me. One of the stalwart conventions of the genre is the numbing of the protagonist to murder after murders.  The act of a gangster’s crisis of conscience leading him to decide “so what happens if I don’t kill him?” Now that’s something new. The ramifications of letting a marked man live? Now that’s intereresting.


A lot of great TV at the moment ("Good Place" and "Last Man on Earth" are prime examples in the half-hour comedy space) leaves you with no idea what’s coming next and Barry has this in spades. Taylor's survival is (at least for me) the show's saving grace but it's not an isolated incident. 

The Sally-Barry relationship is another great example. Sally’s somewhat of a fast mover for Barry in every sense. She pushes him into Gene’s class, into a friendship, into a sexual relationship, and now she pushes him away with equal style. Her “toxic masculinity” label of Barry might have been appropriate if Sally had actually taken time away from her own needs to actually see Barry for who he was and treat him with the necessary gentleness (in this case: kid gloves at every stage of their relationship). In this sense, it’s somewhat refreshing to see Sally get called out by her classmates.  D'Arcy Carden's character (I want to call her Janet?) came into their after-rehearsal chill sessions with fighting words that nicely ratchets up some of the in-group dynamics which reminds of how much more development these guys could use. 

The fact that this universe is acknowledging Sally has some growing up to do also leads for a possibility of Sally-Barry ship to recur considering they both have roughly an equal amount of work to do. Besides, they’re scene partners which seems like a cruel exercise for both of them.
For now, “toxic masculinity” isn’t a particularly appropriate description for Barry considering how well he’s handling his line of work. Nonetheless, Barry’s a pretty troubled guy and “Do Your Job” is the first time Barry starts to express this out loud. The channeling of his anger about his classmates’ ignorance of killing is a good start for Barry, both as an actor and a man dealing with his demons. In a sense, one serves the other which is why Barry was likely drawn to acting in the first place. 

In other plot lines, Gene's and the lady detective finally consummate their relationship. To call this unexpected is an understatement particularly with the incongruity of how Gene sees himself verses how smooth he actually is. Gene is the comedic high point of the episode which is a much-needed introspection of Barry.

The show's fluidity between action, comedy, and serious self-introspection is striking the right notes at this point in the season.



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