Bill Hader’s Barry and How It Handles Violence and Forgiveness
I just watched and finished the three seasons of HBO’s dramedy Barry written, directed, and starring Bill Hader, I did this while also simultaneously finishing Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic novel Crime & Punishment. Maybe it’s just recency bias but I couldn’t help noticing the similarities in their themes and how they handle them, so naturally I’d like to discuss and juxtapose where exactly they relate and where they differ with a focus on how Barry handles this theme and its characters. There will of course be a lot of spoilers throughout for both Barry and Crime & Punishment.
To begin it’s important to understand what I consider the core theme of both Barry and Crime & Punishment: Forgiveness, specifically forgiveness only through punishment and suffering. Throughout the entirety of Barry and the final act of Crime & Punishment our main characters seek a return to normalcy, titular Barry, played by Bill Hader, seeks to give up his life as a hitman and start a new one as an actor in LA. While Raskolnikov seeks to end his paranoia and escape the law for the murders he committed. One important aspect of both characters is that they don’t actually feel remorse for their acts, but rather wish to escape them, they don’t want to be forgiven they want them to be forgotten, because of this they act erratically and irrationally which only makes things worse for them in the end. They attempt a double life where they escape from their crimes but never repent and suffer because of it. The first and second season of Barry is built on this premise, this inability to escape the past no matter how desperately Barry wishes to, he only makes things worse and worse for himself as we watch him sink deeper and deeper attempting to keep his fragile double life intact.
There are three key moments in season one and two that I think mark Barry’s descent, three essential choices Barry needs to make to be truly forgiven, and much like Peter at Jesus’ crucifixion when asked if he knows him, Barry fails all three times. The first one was the absolute turning point in the show for me, it felt like Tony Soprano killing a man on screen in season one of the Sopranos levels of impactful, the moment when Barry kills his old ex-marine friend Chris. Up till this point the audience has seen Barry as a flawed vulnerable victim of a manipulative uncle, who never wanted to be a killer but became one because he had nowhere else to go, and now he has something to grasp outside of the life he was forced into, and we believe he is truly trying to change. We meet Chris’ family through Barry, his wife and young child, we see Chris has a life for himself, so the moment Barry pulls the trigger on an innocent man and friend we feel the impact fully, Barry has made his choice, it’s not about forgiveness for Barry, it’s about escape.
The second moment is in the final minutes of season one, after a brief time skip we see Barry with his new girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg), at his acting teacher, Gene Cousineau’s (Henry Winkler) vacation cabin with his new girlfriend, Janice Moss (Paula Newsome), the detective that was investigating Barry’s last hit. After a small slip up leads to Detective Moss piecing the puzzle together Barry is cornered at gunpoint by her, he is left with his second choice, face his punishment, and receive his forgiveness or run once again. Barry of course, fails, he kills Moss and hides her body, this will only lead to Barry’s eventual downfall.
The third key moment is Barry’s rock bottom in the finale of season two, throughout this season it’s revealed Barry has a serious anger management problem, we watch as he deals with it and is accepted by his new friends and family despite it, in the final episode Barry’s mentor and puppet master Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root), reveals to Cousineau who killed Moss and attempts to pin it on him. This obviously sends Barry into a violent rage, and in this moment, he has his third choice, give into the anger that got him here in the first place or forgive and deal with the consequences. Barry fails once again, he gives into his rage and shoots up a monastery full of Chechen and Bolivian gangsters, and despite their place in society they were people who trusted and looked up to Barry, and he kills them all without second thought.
In season three we find Barry depressed and working as a hitman again, he has given into his violent tendencies even without Fuches pulling the strings anymore. We watch as he kills without remorse or second thought, this is a very different Barry than we have seen in the last two seasons. As the audience, despite Barry’s emotionless robotic murder I still wanted to see him succeed in turning his life around, getting all the things he wants, until a moment shortly after he spares Cousineau and decides to forcibly gain his forgiveness by giving him his acting career back. He goes to his girlfriend Sally, who is now a directing and starring in a show based on her own experiences with abuse and screams at her in front of everyone, cornering her and overpowering her. He never lays a finger on Sally, but this act of emotional violence is one of the most harrowing in the show, in this moment Barry feels different, he’s no longer our misunderstood and occasionally prone to violence hero, he’s an abuser not far off from Sally’s ex who we met the season before. Barry’s violence stops being a distant fantasy about a hitman and becomes a very close to home experience for a lot of people, his violence stops feeling like something most people will never experience and becomes something most people have. This changes how we view Barry, we no longer want him to succeed, we no longer want him to escape, we want him punished, we know he has to face his past head on and accept the consequences. Barry must be held accountable for his crimes before we or anyone can forgive him.
This is much like the final act of Crime & Punishment, it becomes clear Raskolnikov can no longer escape his crime and shouldn’t, he will never reach the return of the status quo he must face his punishment if he wants a future. Depending on how you feel about epilogues, Crime & Punishment ends with Rodion Raskolnikov turning himself in, the final sentence is dedicated to his admittance for the crime. In the New Testament Peter denies Jesus three times, he fails to admit his relation to Jesus, by the fourth time he hears a rooster crow and faces the consequences of his beliefs head on. Like Peter and like Raskolnikov, in the final moments of season three, Barry is faced with another chance to turn himself in and face his punishment. Unlike Paul and unlike Raskolnikov, Barry fails once again, as he walks into the home of Detective Moss’ father Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom) with a loaded gun, he has one final choice: run or face accountability. I sat glued to my screen begging Barry to put the gun down… but he doesn’t, he lifts it fully ready to shoot him in the back before he’s stopped by a SWAT team planted by his former acting teacher and Moss. Barry will face his accountability, but not by his own doing, he will be going to prison like Raskolnikov but not on his own accord. Barry’s accountability will be forced upon him, and forgiveness may not be had, Barry chose to run but he can’t anymore.
“For suffering, Rodion Raskolnikov, is a great thing” I find this to be the most important line in Crime & Punishment, as a devout Christian, Dostoevsky’s novel centers around the Christian themes of suffering leading to forgiveness, but I believe Barry takes this theme and secularizes it, Barry must suffer punishment and accountability for his crimes and only then he may be forgiven.
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