After finishing the second season of Barry, all I have to say is this. Watch it! It’s free to stream on the HBO app during this time of quarantine and each season is only eight half hour episodes. So in summary, it’s a very small time commitment for some very rewarding television. You’ll laugh, you’ll tear up, and you will love it.
The second season picks up almost immediately after Barry kills Janice. Naturally, Gene is heartbroken and decides to shut down his class. Barry manages to convince him to keep it going by sharing a story from his time in the war. Barry was an excellent marksman, and while the class believes Barry was distraught with his first kill, the flashback confirms that Barry was actually pretty fulfilled by it. Either way, his personal story leads the class to decide that their next show will feature all of them acting out their most defining moment.
Sally spends most of the season trying break into more acting roles with a new agent representing her. Her piece for the new show will feature her talking about how she left her abusive husband. She struggles between telling what really happened (she ran in the middle of the night) and what she wished would have happened (telling him what’s what). Meanwhile, Barry tells NoHo Hank that he will train his men to become a more formidable Chechen army so he can kill Esther.
Janice’s partner, Loach, comes to the conclusion that Barry has to be the one who murdered her, so he finds Fuches and gets him wired up to talk with Barry. Fuches ends up succeeding in getting Barry’s confession somewhat accidentally, but instead of arresting him, Loach tells Barry that if he kills his ex-wife’s boyfriend, they’re even. Barry is naturally furious with Fuches and makes it his mission to kill him by season’s end. Fuches is resourcefully scrappy, so he pretends to be an agent and leads Gene to the car where Barry hid Janice’s body in the trunk.
Everything comes to a head in the last episode where Barry goes on his first audition (nails it with nonchalance), and Sally ends up performing the made up version of her personal story, but is ultimately praised for it. Gene is arrested for Janice’s murder, but Barry gets the Chechen’s framed by planting a pin in the trunk. There’s a showdown in a monastery where Hank appears to be the one who took out the Burmese mob, when in fact it was Barry who also, in a fit of rage at hunting down Fuches, also kills most of the Chechen army. In the end we see Gene, who suddenly remembers something Fuches whispered to him: “Barry Berkman did this.”
And that’s where the season ends! Throughout the season, Barry and Gene keep saying to each other that a human’s nature can change. Although Barry seems to think that he’s changed, it is clear that rage and murder are still a big part of his life. Barry is also on the cusp of becoming an actor in a feature film! That will be a fun ride. Sally and her agent are distraught with all of the acclaim she got from telling the lie in her piece, so I’m sure there will be fallout there. Hank seems to be in a prime position, since he’s back in Cristobal’s good graces, and he got rid of the Burmese mob. I’ll be really interested to see what happens with the Gene/Barry and ultimately Fuches dynamic.
This is such a fun show, and totally nails a wide array of topics and tones. It’s fantastic! Hank is still my ultimate favorite character. He’s sassy and really a good guy. It was also cool to get more background on Barry and Sally’s past, but I still can’t stand Sally. She’s selfish and stupid, really. The standout episode of the season was easily “ronny/lily,” which showed Barry going to kill Loach’s ex-wife’s boyfriend. He goes in offering Ronny an escape plan, but then finds out he’s a Taekwondo master. They basically beat the crap out of each other for the entire episode, along with Ronny’s feral daughter. There was no music and it seemed like one continuous scene. I laughed so much during this episode – it was genius! So, like I said initially, watch Barry!