BARRY (HBO) brought to you by NoHo Hank

Third season is airing and I've been a big Barry fan. The characters, warts and all, are a big draw.

This last episode hit me differently. While Barry very casually, almost...boringly recounting about the psychological warfare he could engage in ("replace her dog with a slightly smaller dog") was great, this episode felt like the first one where the show itself was being cruel for the sake of being cruel. I'm not a Sally cheerleader or anything but to have her show cancelled like that? And I love Lara San Giacomo but does Cousineau need more people he's pissed off? Elena felt natural to the plot, at least. And the mom/son. Oof, that was...just mean.

A cruelty onion.

I know its SATIRE, but the whole "cancelling after 12 hours" thing struck me as incredibly phony. Not that I don't buy that the suits are slaves to the algorithim and so forth, but even as a cutthroat business strategy, it's just nonsense. You already sunk all the costs into creating the thing, and it has immediate critical cache, which has to be one of the rows on whatever spreadsheet they are using to assess show's value. It's a lot more to build off than starting from scratch with some other, unproved show.

And yeah, I always liked Cousineau as this longtime loser, but I'm not sure I buy that he was this scourge of Hollywood for decades. Winkler can pull off a certain kind of clueless venality, but the character doesn't seem particularly capable of wanton physical abuse or extended campaigns of harassment. Anyway, I am loving everything else, with Barry and Hank/Cristobal and Fuchs and the cops. Great season, even if they are leaning a little too heavily on certain buttons in the HOLLYWOOD SATIRE sphere.

Where is Hank's storyline going? He's off to another country, and with one episode left and all of these wildly disparate storylines to juggle - Sally has spun off into her own whateverthehell - I am weirdly curious how Hader and Berg will wrap this up...next episode, which is the finale.

Some nice directorial touches - Barry's storyline remains the best - and I can't quit these characters, even if they're all starting to become more one note.

The confrontation between Janice's dad and Gene gives me hope for a reckoning.

Hasn't it been renewed for one more season already? So they don't need to fully wrap up too much, outside of getting Hank and Cristobal back to LA.

It was renewed for Season 4 last month.

Tonight’s episode:


Damn.

Well, I can't say I always enjoy the ride but I can definitely say I never know where this show is going. That was some emotionally jarring stuff. I really thought they were going to go...well, where I thought they were going to go with that one character.

The technical aspects of this show are just stellar. Do they give sound award Emmys? Is that a thing? Because Sally going to town in the recording room? And then that attack that Hank only hears - now that's how you build tension, that's how you scare the bejeezus out of your characters; make them helpless and have them listen in as a jaguar or whatever (I'm saying jaguar because it's South America) goes all in. I also love how we never see exactly what it was. Excellent use of no subtitles, too. Didn't matter, you know what Cristobal's wife is saying.

Finally, a master class performance by Gene.

Now, will next season be the networks trying to adapt Barry's story? I mean, I kinda hope so.

It was clever how the episode gave you one horrific act of violence with no sound, and one with only sound.

That it also homaged DIRTY WORK while doing so (and I will not hear a word otherwise) is just splendid.