Barry (2.1) - "The Wound is Open, That's a Good Thing"

The second season of Barry picks up not long after the first season ends, and not in unfamiliar territory for the most part. Barry has to try and keep his composure in the aftermath of another one of his hits, as his murder of Janice sends ripples throughout the lives of each character in the show. On one hand, this story is not new. Barry struggles to balance a ‘normal’ life with the consequences of his actions as a result of his job (admittedly this murder was not job-related but survival, which promises to be a theme early and often this season). There is a sense that part of this season feels like it is restarting the central conflict from the first season just in a different context. However, the change in Barry (and Bill Hader’s performance) is noticeably different. Barry was far more muted in season one. In the first episode of this season, he even tries to take over directing the play the improv theater puts on (a nice nod to Hader’s directorial debut last season?). While some things change, many stay the same. The police are still not completely off Barry’s involvement in season one’s events, improv feels as uncomfortably destructive as it does cathartic, Barry is indebted to Chechyans, and Fuches (Stephen Root) cannot stop making asinine moves to put both him and Barry in peril.

The premiere taps frequent Atlanta director and director of a few episodes of the first season, Hiro Murai. Murai has carved out a consistently solid spot in the lineup of frequent television directors. His often capitalizes on the smallness of individuals in their surrounding environments, which makes him a great addition to an episode bringing Barry’s potential downfall front and center in the episode. Murai often gives a sense of how big the surrounding world is in small ways. The best part of the premiere comes as Barry is explaining the first time he took someone’s life as a Marine. The entire theater troupe believes this was a devastating experience you cannot come back from as the audio from Barry’s flashback tells a story of congratulations and jubilation at the distance of the shot. That dichotomy epitomizes Barry’s internal and external struggle, the pull between who he is (or perhaps who he was) and who he wants to be. In that moment the world feels much larger than what exists in that theater without us ever leaving Barry’s memories. It also highlights some of what makes Hader and Alec Berg’s writing so sharp. It doesn’t always need to go for the big profound monologue, sometimes it just sits the audience front and center and tells one story through images and another through words. Where Berg and Hader (and Murai in this episode) separate themselves is that in these two stories? They are not two different stories, just one story being told two different ways simultaneously. That approach lies at the heart of Barry and is admittedly – beyond the dark humor and the performances of Hader, Winkler, Root, Carrigan, and Goldberg – what keeps me coming back.

For as much as the season two premiere of Barry does stumble a bit out of the gates in an attempt to distinguish itself from the first season, it is great to have it back. Hader and Winkler’s performances still shine, Hiro Murai’s direction goes big in small ways, and the show retains the balance of dark humor and drama the first season crafted so well. With Noho Hank (Anthony Carrigan) pulling Barry deeper into a web of dueling enterprises and betrayal, Fuches accidentally giving up his DNA, and the investigation into Janice’s death, season two of Barry promises to dig deeper into the darkness, absurdity, and irony of this world.