Barry Season 4 Episodes 1 And 2 Review: You Telling Me Jokes?

Spoilers follow.

Fame is a funny thing. Of course, on the HBO series "Barry," fame is a terrifyingly dangerous thing. "Barry" begins its fourth and final season with a two-episode premiere, exploring the darkest possible version of what fame can bring. The hitman-turned-wannabe actor is only ever a halfway-decent actor when he's channeling the immense rage that fuels him, and he's constantly lured back into the hitman lifestyle. But it took three seasons for that lifestyle to catch up with him in tangible ways. Last season wrapped with a shocker, in which Barry was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department thanks to a sting operation led by Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom), the intense father of the late Detective Janice Moss (Paula Newsome), who Barry killed at the end of the first season. Jim only got his man thanks to Barry's surrogate father figure and acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), who was also Janice's boyfriend and wanted revenge on Barry after realizing what he'd done.

So when "yikes" — the first of this week's pair of episodes — starts, it's no surprise that it begins with Barry (Bill Hader, of course) being led to his prison cell in the California State Penitentiary, from the vantage point of a pair of guards who are disturbingly starstruck because they just finished watching a press conference where Barry's crimes were described by the cops. "Give him whatever he wants!" crows one of the guards, upon hearing that Barry wants his phone call. Who else would Barry want to call, of course, but Gene himself, who's watching the press conference in person. Barry, as scary as he can be, is innately childlike, so when he starts asking Gene questions about why his acting teacher would work together with Jim, he sounds like a little kid who just realized his parents were lying to him about Santa Claus being real. "Mr. Cousineau, are you mad at me? Because I love you." Gene very calmly responds by saying "I got you" to a man who's pretty dangerous when he's angry. 

The last big player here is NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan). He and his lover/ex-enemy Cristobal (Michael Irby) are ensconced in Santa Fe, New Mexico, away from the prying eyes of the various gang factions that tried to separate them last year. NoHo Hank's wheels start turning, though, when he learns from their new landlady about a shortage of high-quality sand in the States, since the good construction-building sand is sent over from Asia and Africa. But it's not just Hank — Cristobal tries to convince NoHo Hank it's worth pursuing the option, even if it means them going back to Los Angeles so they can have the best of both worlds. (If you've watched this show before, you know that such a thing is not possible here, as evidenced by Hank being haunted by nightmares of his imprisonment last season.) But when NoHo Hank calls Barry's phone and learns that Barry's in jail, he decides to head back to California.

"Look, I know they say you did a bad thing, but I'm sure you're not a bad guy," exhorts the same awestruck guard to Barry, upon seeing our title character angrily berate himself in a bathroom mirror and punch a wall until his knuckles bleed. "Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done," he reminds Barry. Now, it is safe to say from these episodes that the eternal question of this series is still being posed — can Barry Berkman ever be a good person? Is he? Was he? It's hard to say now that he is a good person, no matter how hard he's tried in the past, and these episodes don't make him much better. He at least has more clarity of mind than the guard, reminding the latter that he's a cop-killer ... before indulging his self-destructive streak and saying he'd kill the guard's whole family if he could. That unsurprisingly leads to a brutal beating that we don't technically see — just a zoom into Barry's face as blood trickles down his forehead before we cut to what appears to be a flashback to his youth in the middle of an open field. When Barry comes to, bloodied and bruised, he's greeted by Fuches, who pays his honesty back. "I took advantage of you. I'm so sorry," he says tearfully before saying he loves Barry (as twisted as it is, it's clearly true).

But "yikes" doesn't end with this emotional reunion. Instead, we meet Lon Oneil, the aforementioned reporter played by Patrick Fischler of "Mulholland Drive" and "Lost." Lon is being called by "Batman voice" again, some mysterious person who warns Lon from talking to anyone else and promises to explain how "Gene Cousineau caught Barry Berkman." The owner of that voice? ... Well, it's Gene himself, as we see before the episode cuts to credits. Oh, Gene.

We then return to Lon, the nosy reporter whose nosiness seems fueled by the extensive charade Gene is putting on to ensure secrecy. Lon sees a fancily written note on his windshield telling him to follow a series of steps to get to the "most mind-blowing story" of his career. When Lon follows the clues, though, he runs right into Gene. ("What do you drive, a rocket ship?" is one of the episode's few very funny moments.) Oh, Gene. Come on. Gene has decided to tell the story to Lon, but just one time and just via a one-man performance at his acting studio, in which he puffs up his own role in what happened. (Henry Winkler doing a riff on Bill Hader's performance as Barry is another of the episode's very funny moments.) For Gene, there's just one problem: Sally is watching in the wings and understandably mad that he knew a good deal more about Barry without revealing anything to her. "How could you know and not warn me?" "And you're telling me that you did not see one sign?" is Gene's retort, and ... well, fair. But you shoulda said something, Gene! He, anyway, thinks she's there because she can't resist the stage, and since her career is done, she ought to teach instead.

Considering that when he called her in the first episode and she rejected him, Barry is reasonably shocked to see that his first visitor is Sally. She tries to maintain a businesslike appearance, even as Barry tearfully apologizes to her. Sally is, in essence, trying to verify if what she told her parents in the first episode — that she might be in a great deal of trouble — is true, via code about a dog named Muffin. After getting that out of the way, Sally has to push back against Barry saying he never lied to her. "I just didn't tell you the part I didn't want to be true," is his clarification, and ... well, hell, what a mouthful that is. It explains so much about Barry at his core — he wants to be a good person, and to be a good person, he has to ignore the parts that don't fit his narrative. Just as that says so much about Barry, what she tells him says a great deal about her — "I feel safe with you." Barry takes that as an enormous compliment, an emotional buoy in the middle of his prison stint. But it's obvious via Sarah Goldberg's typically excellent performance that as true as that statement may be for Sally, she hates that it is true. Is she safe with him? Whether or not that's true, the fact that she feels it is gutting for her, as she leaves without saying another word. But those words lead to a sad yet natural moment in which Barry's psyche turns a flashback with Fuches into a hallucination in which he watches a wedding party run into a reception hall full of onlookers ... and also an older Barry and Sally, dancing happily together.

Sally is getting the cold-water treatment, not only from gawkers at a local diner, but from her agent (Jessy Hodges) telling her that ... well, she can't be Sally's agent anymore. "Do you read what people are saying about you on social media?" The agent then reveals that the comments are mainstream: coupled with Sally's viral video from last season where she yelled at her old friend Natalie (D'Arcy Carden), the knowledge of Barry's crimes has all but ruined her ... unless Sally wants to do "a reality show...or a podcast."