The new HBO show Barry could be a good show for a lot of people to watch and there’s a few reasons why. For one he’s a veteran of the Afghanistan War that now kills people for a living since it’s about the only thing he does fairly well. The trauma of his time spent in the military shows as he has difficulty relating to several people back in the real world as he’s more of a tool to be aimed and unleashed on someone than a human being with thoughts and feelings at first. As the show goes along he becomes a little more well developed but still remains kind of lost among his fellow human beings.
It’s hard to know if Fuches, his handler, is really abusing Barry by sending him out to kill people or if he is looking out for Barry by giving him a purpose But the show is either funny or dark, it’s not really both at the same time. In some ways the show depicts the futility that Barry deals with on a constant basis, while on others it shows at least some hope for his life that things could get better if he really wants them to. But Bill Hader is such a master at displaying his emotions and molding his acting around them that you have to wonder just what the end of the series will be like. At times you want to root for Barry and at other times you might want to keep your distance just so it doesn’t seem like you enjoy what he does too much. That kind of program is the type that many viewers tend to love since it tweaks their emotions in so many ways that it seems like a different but similar experience every night.
This is not the Bill Hader that’s always charming and funny and yet it is since he cycles through his emotions during this show in a way that keeps you just enough off balance that you don’t get bored and yet don’t come to expect that the same thing will always follow the same. The formula of the show is easy enough to figure out but the idea that you could makes you turn away in favor of seeing just what Barry is going to do without being able to guess. That’s the kind of show that a lot of people have been looking for in the past year or two and one that HBO has finally delivered on. When a shows becomes predictable it loses just about all value and in effect starts to lose its viewers and its verve. When it has the ability to bend your emotions backward and forward like a twisty straw then it might be worth a look since it means that the show has managed to do something a lot different than many others could.
For this quality alone Barry seems like a must-watch program that a lot of people could possibly enjoy.
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