Season 3 is tedious.. gave up after 2nd episode
Barry's third season seems thought for people who still didn't get (or forgot during the hiatus) that sure, there's comedy here, but it's really about digging in the depth of human souls, in the damage that comes from violence and in the impossibility of running from the consequences of your actions. And it's fearless in how it goes deep into the abyss. Visually more ambitious than ever, with a perfect cast of actors, incredibly written, it crazily dances on the delicate balance between farce, drama, thriller, comedy. It embraces the fascination for the guilty laugh, for making you feel disturbed by your laughs, and it doesn't do that through ridicule and cringe. No, it injects laughs into tragedy, anguish, pain, and always makes it work. It's a masterpiece and I can't wait to see what they are doing with season 4.
Season 3 Score: 8.8/10
I didn't love this as much as season 2, but Barry continues with its incredible consistency. This felt like a big shift in terms of story and tone, in that the comedy has taken more of a backseat and is replaced with a heavier emphasis on the the drama. Gone is the optimism from the first two seasons and instead this is the most depressed, pessimistic, flawed, and dark the show has been and especially for Barry's character. He pretty unlikable in this season, having regressed into the worst version of himself. It's a bold direction to take the character and to take your protagonist, and it works quite well. Bill Hader is as amazing as ever, and here his range is truly shown as the optimism and hopeful Barry has disappeared into this rageful and broken person. He failed to free himself of his worst character flaws in the season 2 finale, and in season 3 we see the consequences of that for him as he essentially sits around in the mud. Yet, he still longs to be loved and accepted, wanting a better life, but his history has shown him he just can't escape it. He hasn't completely given up, but he is slipping further and further as he desperately tries to cling on to the life and future he dreams of having. All of the surrounding characters are still very compelling, and Sally especially just continues to get better and better for me. She is so complex, I want to root for her but she's become so self-obsessed this season that she makes it hard to at times. Sarah Goldberg is also as good as ever, and her development as a character has been so interesting. Her rageful moments rival even Barry's, and Goldberg's performance in those moments is truly some of the best acting I have ever seen. Gene is a much different person now as well, and you can start to see how Barry's presence in each other peoples' lives has changed them for the worse. Once again, everything comes together phenomenally in the finale and this is perhaps the best one yet. Overall, the tone was less enjoyable for me this time around compared to season 2. What that season did was just incredible in terms of balance, and here it felt off just a little. And while this season probably had more near-perfect episodes than any other season before, I don't think it was as consistently impressive as season 2. The switch from an optimistic Barry to a completely broken and darkened one also provided a bit of whiplash, even if it works on a character and story level.
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Bill Hader is a genius
Loving this season. While this one definitely won't top as my favorite season, there are still a lot of chuckle, sweet and bleak moments to be had.
I never watched a lot of 30 minutes shows (or when I do I tend to stop following them after the first season) but Barry is really such a gem.
It's just so funnny (the scene where he is dictating an apology to his iPhone in a clothing store is just so good) and grave.
I'm really happy that the show is coming back for a fourth season although this third season could have served as a perfectly acceptable ending to the show.
I am very critical of T.V. series. I do not watch many. Barry is one of the very few that held my attention for 2 seasons, so far.
Review by DeletedBlockedParentSpoilers2022-06-18T16:58:45Z
Might be that the series has been on hiatus since 2019 due to COVID, but there were quite a couple of things I forgot and had to look up, which wasn't the case with other shows like Russian Doll or say Atlanta. Anyways, what about this season? Was it any good? I could see people picking the season finale as one of the best episodes of the year but I found the seventh one to be amazing and show what Barry is good at doing. Sure, it's a series about a hitman who wants to be an actor but the show doesn't feel like it has embraced too much of its lighter side as often as it believes itself to. For example, we know things are going to get darker in Breaking Bad however we never really forget Walt is a drug kingpin in the works, Barry, on the other hand, doesn't really demonstrate that he's turning into an actor. Anyways, everyone deserves some awards attention, particularly Henry Winkler and Sarah Goldberg, who both turned in some amazing turns. Hader's great, always has been, but as a showrunner, I feel like he and Alec Berg seem to be using the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul technique of doing now and solve later, this works great for the Albequerque universe, but not so much here since S1 ends on a cliffhanger that really destroys one great character arc and 2 goes into some lazy tropes. Although this does fix some of that, it ends with me wondering if they even have a series after this. Barry is arrested? And considering S4 wasn't labelled as to its last, I'm gonna be surprised to see what this show will look like next year. Anyways, some amazing moments but Barry is awful and I can't say he's like other anti-heroes, I seem to find him repulsive and that goes for the other characters on this show like Jean and Sally as his enablers. If I pick newer shows over this at the end of the year, its because I believe TV needs to be a place where you tune in for someone you want to see every week, I can't say that's the case here or at least not for a good portion of its run.