Barry Season 4 Episode 5 Takes A Cue From Breaking Bad And The Leftovers
At the end of the last week's episode of "Barry" season 4, a lot of fans didn't know what to think. Was that ending a fantasy sequence, or did Barry (Bill Hader) and Sally (Sarah Goldberg) actually run away together and start a family? This week's episode confirms that yes, they did, and they're kind of miserable.
Sally spends most of her nights torturing herself by reading up on her ex-friend Natalie (D'Arcy Carden) enjoying the success she's always wanted, whereas Barry spends his time lying to and manipulating his child in a futile attempt to stop him from ever figuring out the truth about his parents. We're not sure if this technically qualifies as a bottle episode, but if it does it's certainly one of the most depressing bottle episodes we've ever seen.
But if you were a fan of "Breaking Bad" or "The Leftovers," it might've also been familiar. The former show spent its penultimate episode with Walter White (Bryan Cranston), now fully estranged from his family and on the run from the law, choosing to spend his final days in an isolated home in rural New Hampshire. This is Walt's low point on the show, in which he's technically safe from danger, but now has nothing to do but dwell on his past mistakes and wait for his cancer to kill him.
"The Leftovers" might be even more similar to "Barry," in that the transition to Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) living out alone in rural Australia is intentionally jarring. A significant period of the final episode involves the audience not even knowing for sure if this is our Australia or some alternate universe version of it. But sure enough, it turns out that Nora's simply chosen to self-isolate, just like Walt before her and Barry after her. Why do prestige dramas love this last-minute plot development so much?
A necessary reset
The obvious appeal from a screenwriting perspective is that it's inherently interesting to give your characters time to really dwell on the choices they've made and the stuff that's happened to them. Every character has been repeatedly thrown through the emotional ringer since season 1, so by the time we got to last week's episode 4, "it takes a psycho," it felt like Barry, Hank, Sally, and Gene were all 10 seconds away from a total breakdown.
Episode 5, "tricky legacies," meanwhile, gives Barry and Sally the sense of prolonged peace and quiet they've always sort of needed. Even though Sally clearly regrets giving up on her Hollywood ambitions altogether, there is a strong sense of relief that comes with fully giving up on a dream that's always been agonizingly just out of reach. And as dark as things get this week with Sally, one does get the sense that Barry has in fact provided some semblance of the safety and stability she's always wanted. But as her increasingly disturbing habits throughout the episode make clear, she's still not happy.
Unlike Sally, Barry seems fully on board with his life as a father and husband — the problem is just that he's delusional about how long he can keep this up. He has to keep his kid isolated from the rest of the society because otherwise the kid might find out about his parents' identity, but it's only a matter of time before the kid starts resenting them for this. The episode ends with Barry planning to kill Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), but even if Barry successfully pulls this off it's not going to fix his problems. His kid will still grow up, and he'll eventually piece things together.
How the other two shows compare
"Breaking Bad" had a similar sense of relief to it with the penultimate episode of the series, "Granite State." The central tension of the show had now been largely resolved, and the only thing the characters were trying to do now was make peace with how things shook out. "Granite State" existed as a necessary pause, letting its characters recover from the trauma of "Ozymandias" — the second to last episode — before they could find the strength to actively search for closure in the finale.
"The Leftovers" approach, meanwhile, was a lot shorter. We didn't spend an entire episode with Nora on her own — we just got a few minutes of tightly-packed storytelling before Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) knocked on her door and disrupted her solitary existence. But even with the little time we got with Nora on her own, it was clear that the years she'd spent alone had a similar purpose to Walt, Barry, and Sally's.
Prior to the time jump, Nora was also a mess, reeling from a chaotic break-up with Kevin and the agonizingly uncertain opportunity to be reunited with her departed children. Whether the scientists' machine worked or not, Nora would still need a lot of time before she and Kevin could even begin to reconcile.
They say time heals all wounds, and that seems to be the case on all three shows. The time jump allowed Walt to cool down enough to try to make amends with both Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) and Skyler White (Anna Gunn), just as it allowed Nora and Kevin to cool off after their bitter breakup. Barry and Sally have also left behind a string of ruptured relationships — hopefully in the near-decade that's passed, things have mellowed enough for some sort of forgiveness to be reached.
Barry vs Gene and Hank
Admittedly, things still don't look good for Gene Cousineau. Barry's final moment in "tricky legacies" was him telling Sally he'd have to kill the guy, which isn't exactly in line with the forgiveness I'm hoping for. But there are three episodes to go and plenty of time has passed — maybe they'll be able to work things out in a way they couldn't if it'd had only been a few months since Barry escaped prison.
Then of course there is NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), whose final conversation with Barry was absolutely brutal. Not only did Hank send two assassins after Barry, but he also called him a "murdering, self-centered, lying, f***ing narcissistic piece of s***." Was Hank wrong to say this? Not really, but it still had us worrying about Hank's future. But hopefully, since it's been such a long time since the two had this fight, cooler heads might prevail in any new interaction they might have.
The other variable is that Hank and Gene both committed murder in their final appearances before the time jump. In Hank's final argument with Cristobal (Michael Irby), he got a taste of what it's like to be the murdering, self-centered person he accused Barry of being. Likewise, Gene's last moment was him accidentally killing his son, the guilt that he'll carry with him for the rest of his life. How will both these events affect each character in the show's home stretch? We're about to find out.
Sally vs Natalie
But whereas Barry's feuds are more high stakes, one shouldn't forget Sally's ongoing rivalry with her friend turned assistant turned enemy, Natalie. It's clear that Natalie's still living rent-free in Sally's mind these days, but as Sally watches her interviews at night, the emotions on her face don't quite come across as straightforward hatred or jealousy anymore. It's something a little less volatile, and a little more complicated.
Although Sally admitted in this season's episode 3 "you're charming" that her season 3 meltdown on Natalie was an "ugly moment," so far she's only been remorseful about how the meltdown ruined her career. When it comes to how Natalie must feel after having a trusted friend scream and insult her despite not actually doing anything wrong, Sally still hasn't appeared to care.
While it's unlikely Sally's storyline throughout these final three episodes will focus primarily on Natalie, it could be a fitting end for her to give Natalie an actual apology at the end. For a show that's otherwise all about the never-ending cycle of abuse, it would certainly be nice if Sally ended up reflecting on things over her self-imposed exile, and decided to give Natalie an apology that was genuine and selfless.
It wouldn't be unprecedented: Walt's exile led him to finally muster up the courage to admit to his wife that he made meth for himself, not his family. Nora's exile led to her and Kevin finally being able to make amends. We don't know where Sally or Barry are heading going into these final few episodes, but maybe their time away from the other characters might give them the strength to finally break past their destructive, self-sabotaging cycles. It might not be a happy ending, but maybe there'll be some small moments of redemption on the horizon.