Favorite Characters: Barry Berkman (Barry)

Today, I'm staying home for the immunocompromised students I used to work with.
 
Obviously, if a show bears the same name as its protagonist, its success will hinge in large part on the portrayal of that character. Barry hits the jackpot in that regard. When it comes to both the writing and the acting, the show’s leading man is firing on all cylinders (premise spoilers.)

A TV show asking us to sympathize with someone carrying out highly-immoral activities is nothing new. Over the years, the popularity of “antihero” stories has given us shows about gangsters, druglords, and serial killers, along with plenty of characters whose failings are more garden-variety but still result in a lot of people getting hurt. Getting us to become invested in the life of someone like this, not seeing them as a monster but not condoning their actions either, isn’t something every show can pull off, but the ones who do it well capture our fascination while making us question our own reactions to it.

Barry Berkman, a post-9/11 veteran who became a hitman after returning stateside, definitely fits the bill. Right from the start, the show introduces the tricky balance it asks us to weigh. Barry kills people for money, which is bad. But he killed people for the army, which was deemed, not only good, but heroic. Most of his hits are gangsters, criminals who are labeled “bad people” without much debate. But the people paying him to kill those gangsters are usually other gangsters, and by taking out their enemies, he helps allow their power to grow. By no stretch of the imagination could you really call Barry a good guy, or “just a misunderstood guy,” but by the same token, painting him as an outright monster seems off the mark as well.

A big factor here is Barry’s PTSD. He’s been struggling with his mental health since his time in Afghanistan, and his post-traumatic stress can seize him at crucial moments. These are the times when he causes harm or death without being paid for it, when his mind overloads and all he can see is red. It in no way excuses what he does when he’s caught in the throes of an episode, but it helps the viewer understand where it comes from. In those moments, we hope for a resolution in which Barry’s ultimate end emphasizes psychiatric care over retribution.

Even though his PTSD isn’t usually overwhelming him while he’s carrying out hits, it still informs his presence in that criminal world. After coming home from Afghanistan, struggling and rudderless, he was a prime target for Fuchs, someone who wanted to benefit from the money that such a criminal enterprise could bring. In Barry, Fuchs saw someone with both the skill he needed and the mental damage to be steered into doing what he wanted. The show hasn’t drawn clear lines to show exactly how mercenary Fuchs was in his recruitment of Barry, and Fuchs’s manipulations don’t exonerate Barry for his own choices, but Barry was still an easy mark. He was feeling adrift and alone, unable to effectively reintegrate into society, and along came Fuchs promising to smooth the way and offering Barry big money to do the only thing he knew of that he excelled at: killing people.

It’s perhaps a sign of how desperate Barry is, for a way to fill his days as well as for an older male figure to direct him, that he becomes so immediately enamored with Gene’s acting class. After the barest hint of what the class has to offer (and its offerings are admittedly paltry,) he starts planning to retire from the hitman business and break into acting instead, hanging on Gene’s guidance and (middling) encouragement. Although less so than Fuchs, Gene is using him as well – he’ll eagerly bring up class fees at any opportunity – but Barry doesn’t care. He’s looking for something to do with all the upheaval and damage that his service evoked, and while Fuchs offers him a way to channel it into violence, Gene’s class offers him a way to channel it through acting.

It’s too soon to say how much hope there is for Barry, if he’ll ever be able to fully get out of the life he’s been living (since it’s a TV show, the smart money says not until the season finale, if that.) But he’s trying, and he’s doing it mostly of his own frantic initiative. I have my fingers crossed for him.

Barry (2018-Present)

My brother and I like to exchange show recommendations, and this is one he turned me onto. You might consider Barry the sitcom corollary to Breaking Bad: a dark comedy with elements of strong drama and heavy subject matter starring an actor heretofore best known for unambiguous comedy. An all-around excellent show.

Barry, a disillusioned hit man, glimpses the possibility of a different life when an assignment sends him to LA to do a hit for the Chechen mob. While there, his path crosses with a ramshackle but very dedicated acting class, and Barry starts to dream of learning how to express himself through acting, leaving his life of violence behind him. But of course, a life like that isn’t easy to get out of, and no matter how hard Barry tries to start something new for himself, lingering complications from his old life keep calling.

I love this show’s strong mix of ridiculous comedy and intense drama. For every excitable emoji-using gangster and self-indulgent original piece by one of the acting students, there’s a scene of Barry (a veteran) grappling with his PTSD or acting student Sally confronting the deeply-sexist reality of trying to make it in Hollywood. All the major characters similarly bring both humor and pathos in equal turn, and the supporting cast is populated by memorable personalities with amusing quirks.

To continue with the Breaking Bad-corollary thing, Barry starts out in the opposite position of Walter White: a man who’s done unspeakable things who wants to get out of his life of crime and go legit. So, instead of seeing the slow descent of an ordinary man, we see a guy trying to climb out of the descent that began a long time ago, trying to rehearse scenes for class and vibe awkwardly with a fellow student, all the while continuing to be hounded by contacts from his past. The show is unflinching in how it depicts Barry’s PTSD, something that all the other characters almost uniformly fail to understand: on the acting-class side, other students are jealous of Barry’s well of dark memories to draw from for dramatic scenes, and on the hitman side, we see multiple people exploiting Barry’s psychological damage for their personal profit.

When it comes to the cast, Bill Hader as Barry is of course the headline. He’s fantastic in the role, switching fluidly between awkward, tortured, and dangerous as the story calls for it. Also excellent are Sarah Goldberg as Sally, an ambitious actress made up of equal parts self-absorption and barely-restrained desperation, and Anthony Carrigan (Zsaz from Gotham) as Hank, a happy-go-lucky gangster looking to make friends and work his way up in the enterprise. The show also features a great performance from Stephen Root, a subtly scenery-chewing Henry Winkler (that sounds paradoxical, but that’s what he’s doing,) and minor roles for two The Good Place cast members, D’Arcy Carden (Janet!) and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Simone.)

Warnings

Strong thematic elements (including PTSD,) violence (including domestic violence,) sexual content, language, and drinking/smoking/drug use.