Barry

[therewillbeblus]

It's great so far. Season three may still wind up as the series' high point given its crescendo'ing arc in everyone's lives, but I love how raw these first two episodes are - and how the show has essentially emerged from the explosions of expansive setpieces and interweaving narrative strands with contained moments of loneliness and connection. Bryan Stevenson's famous quote had to come out some time, but this show continues to move towards its logical conclusion without wincing - allowing humanism to be true, and also allowing Barry's emotional self-destructive response of rejection and the guard's emotional response of aggression to be valid right with it; just as Sally's allowed to feel both afraid of and safe with him. It's a show that knows multiple parts of us exist, without copping out by saying they're equitable, or moving to disengage from the charges by simply acknowledging other inclusive shades. That's the biggest misunderstanding everyone seems to have when people invite a humanistic view into an emotionally-charged conversation on reducing another's worth, and this show's ethos nails what most of us are actually trying to say when we bring up the complexity.

SpoilerShow

I get the feeling there is some transference happening where Gene will wind up more a monster this season then Barry has all along

I don't think so - everyone in this show is acting out of fear; fear of rejection, failure, of being small, of not being loved or important or others, of being worthless.. Gene's finally getting an opportunity and his fear is driving him to capitalize on it. What I've come to love about this show so much is that it's not interested in labeling people 'monsters' - though obviously it's engaging with the idea that people can do monstrous things and be monsters in other people's narratives. Barry's flashbacks to meeting Fuches exist to demonstrate love, not monster-shaping. I love how Fuches sacrifices his deal as soon as he gets a gesture from Barry - he loves him, and this stresses the vulnerability of socialization: feeling hurt by perceived rejection, and willing to shed all else when invited in - just like Barry felt with Gene, and his downfall was marked by this vulnerability and loyalty born from that love. So no, Gene won't become a monster, and if he does questionable things it'll be because he's either actings out of fear or looking for connection due to his own vulnerability. What appears to be pure selfishness and superficialness in this show has only ever been the tip of the iceberg - what we see on the surface with Gene, Sally, Barry, Fuches... but underneath they're all sad and scared and lonely and angry. But that doesn't discount what's shown, what's creating actionable harm, and disturbing others, from any of them. But the show is about weighing those two together - the internal tenderness and the external bite, while knowing that there's no objective answer to measure what matters more.

[therewillbeblus]

Fun cameo tonight. The show is taking an interesting turn this season, where trauma is passed on like a disease, but it's not all coming from Barry. Obviously his impact has initiated more pronounced chaos, but we're zooming out now to see that he was knocking down dominos that were already wobbling. The victims, whose resilience has been documented hand-in-hand with their harmful actions (without one eclipsing the value of the other) become the perpetrators, tragically without cognizance of the stained maladaptive nature of their behavior.

SpoilerShow

For instance, the problematic tactics in Sally's class tonight were informed more by Gene's own narcissistic/emotionally-abusive behavior in the power dynamics with his students, and Sally's own history, than Barry's influence. And not just with her abusive ex-boyfriend, but her upbringing, which said so much in the past episode without overstating anything. It was a great depiction of an anxious/avoidant attachment dynamic yielding an unsupportive home environment - with an anxious, superficially overly-compassionate yet passive dad and an avoidant, blaming mother. Yet both are engaging in their own brand of rug-sweeping, refusing to validate or acknowledge Sally's experience by not holding space for her emotions (the father seems like he cares, but he can't sit with the discomfort of dysphoria she needs to be joined with, co-regulated, and modeled). A safe space was never created for her, so she mistakes Gene's faux-safe space of his acting class as an appropriate 'safe' space, which of course alienates people who grew up with secure attachment.

[swo17]

I keep reading that this season is super bleak but to me it's as playfully funny as ever.

Fun cameo tonight.

There were two

SpoilerShow

Fred Armisen and Guillermo del Toro

[flyonthewall2983]

The victims, whose resilience has been documented hand-in-hand with their harmful actions (without one eclipsing the value of the other) become the perpetrators, tragically without cognizance of the stained maladaptive nature of their behavior.

SpoilerShow

… A safe space was never created for her, so she mistakes Gene's faux-safe space of his acting class as an appropriate 'safe' space, which of course alienates people who grew up with secure attachment.

This illustrates much better the point I half-heartedly attempted to explain last week, because I don’t know why but I was just so angry at that whole scene.

SpoilerShow

While it feels so obvious that this girl she didn’t repel is maybe walking blind into this whole world of shit that is just within walking distance of Sally (far more if not completely aware now of the consequences of staying in Los Angeles) now is the kind of dramatic transference I’ve seen done just as good on The Shield and Breaking Bad, but to the power of modern awareness and where we are now as opposed to being post 9/11 America.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, though those shows had more synchronized and simplified culprits and prognoses for the casualties' pain, whereas Barry used this violent vehicle to go in those shows' directions, only to take a step back and reveal the multiplex of factors and sources yielding a personality and behavior patterns. It's not all on Barry, and it's a defense mechanism (that other shows engaged in a bit too much to cater to audiences who want that tangible 'answer') to assign all the blame onto on vessel.

I actually thought that scene was interesting because it demonstrated that, yes, the behavior is abusive, but I felt it also left room for the reading that these students are part of a generation where ultra-sensitivity has been conditioned and reinforced, who immediately point a finger when they feel triggered (talk about post-9/11 American, though more in the shift to coddling parenting and its consequences on adults' coping mechanisms). This isn't a bad thing, mind you - these people are calling out shit that needs to be called out in order to avoid harm, but Sally also belongs to a world where her resilience was in part born from her ability to withstand and engage with this kind of behavior, and she obviously feels that Gene's acting class did benefit her and was a safe space - which isn't untrue either. It's her experience, and how she feels, even if it won't feel that way to the next generation. The show continues to present these different ideas without siding with one over the other, but that temporal element and the loss that comes with irreversible history factors in here as well - since Sally is at odds with this new generation who will inherent the fruits of the industry she may be 'too old'/blacklisted/traumatized to realise her potential within - and sadly this may include socio-romantic relationships too

[flyonthewall2983]

This weeks episode feels particularly hard to pin down, but overall it was good. Major shifts occurred but it all felt more transitional then defining.

SpoilerShow

Very smart not to show Barry until the final scene and his line was perfect.

Sally blowing everyone away with someone else’s lines and with it all within her hands again, the decision to break bad at the end is maybe not as surprising given her alternatives.

The stuff with Hank and Cristobal towards the end was tragic. Hank’s circumstances crushing his dreams felt so deflating despite not really being as fully in for the character, short of his performance in the finale of S3.

[therewillbeblus]

Overall I really liked it too, but things are feeling a bit rushed in some areas as they try to close a bunch of loops in only four hours. After giving Winkler a rich arc and plenty of room to trace his complex experience over the course of the series, his brief activity and the consequences didn't carry the heft they deserved. Though I suppose this could be intentional to reflect how irreversible action is rapid and all the hand-holding audience associations are just artificial drama to engross the viewer, it's not how the show has really established itself

[therewillbeblus]

I didn't love this episode's new direction for the most part, except

SpoilerShow

Sally's tragic arc - particularly her drive to manipulate others in order to obtain some fleeting sense of power to cope with her trauma.. blaming her thievery on someone with a record, and physically strangling a man sexually submitting to her, to relive her experience being strangled and subsequently killing the gang member from last season. So sad and fucked. I love how we don't get to have the pieces filled in over the years, because they won't tell us anything - Sally knew she was fatalistically resigning her life to one of compromise and unfulfillment the moment she said yes to Barry last episode, surrendering to a self-diagnosed identity of a "broken" person with irreparable traumas, dreams, or promise.

[flyonthewall2983]

SpoilerShow

I’ll admit some difficulty processing this, mostly because Barry and Sally as parents was hard to watch. That’s certainly the idea and it was also fascinating to witness how fragile Barry appeared. There’s 8 years older but I clearly saw a man falling apart at even greater velocity than I sensed before. This all clicked into place for me when he declares that he’s going to kill Cousineau. Where this goes next could be very exciting.

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

I’ll admit some difficulty processing this, mostly because Barry and Sally as parents was hard to watch. That’s certainly the idea and it was also fascinating to witness how fragile Barry appeared. There’s 8 years older but I clearly saw a man falling apart at even greater velocity than I sensed before. This all clicked into place for me when he declares that he’s going to kill Cousineau. Where this goes next could be very exciting.

I had a very different response

SpoilerShow

Instead of a Barry who's matured, or broken down, he seems to be unchanged - the same guy who deludes himself into thinking people couldn't possibly be mad at him because he wants it to just "be okay" inside, the same guy whose face turns from grave seriousness to an "oh really?!" glee when Sally said "Let's go" before the flash-forward. He rags on her, homeschools his son from the internet with knowledge he doesn't have but claims to, believes his own lies, and then turns back to his old self on a dime. It's a radical decision the show's made, to keep us with this guy who just cannot access the basic straws to start a road of actual redemption, outside of one forced upon him (even Walter White had some kind of access to self-awareness and morality by this point). I saw no fragility or "falling apart" - at least no more than he was last season. He's composed until he's not, and then instead of resting in the dysphoric space of uncertainty or discomfort to do the actual 'work' and face himself, or his partner's feelings, or his son's actual markers of growth that might necessitate a non-pacifist intervention (the whole Christian facade of unconditional forgiveness is brutally comical), he just denies it. Either with subtle or assertive directness, passivity.. doesn't matter, as long as he doesn't stay there. Exactly what Sally has always needed and never received from her parents - here's Barry doing the same, acting as both the dismissive mother, or the 'desperate for everything to be okay' father; both of their stories have led to inert repetitions of traumas they've endured because that's how they see both the life they deserve, and what life is.

Barry declaring he's going to kill Gene so nonchalantly only proves his 'act' (cue the thematic undercurrent of the faux-premise in the show's network pitch?), the unwillingness to do work on himself, and the ignorance to acknowledge and own that. I suppose it's a fragility in the sense that Barry has always been averse to engaging in that grey space outside of binary solaces, but it was his shocking lack of development in either direction - evolution or regression - that stood out to me and shook me to my core.

[flyonthewall2983]

Quite honestly speechless at the last two episodes except to say this will probably go down with me as the best HBO series since Six Feet Under.

SpoilerShow

poor Gene

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

poor Gene

SpoilerShow

I felt similarly to some degree, but it's an interesting nuanced portrait of karmic fatalism. Here's a guy who behaved narcissistically and put himself first his whole life, treated people terribly from his own children to students to coworkers to lovers, and only started seeking tangible redemption once he himself was hurt but again in an effort to feel stable himself rather than for selfless reasons. He wanted to 'fix' things with people because he was vulnerable. He shot his son, went on a pilgrimage to Israel to 'work on himself' and 'change' but didn't bother keeping in touch or really doing anything of value within the relationships that (supposedly) mattered to him, and then expects to be invited back in nonchalantly. He comes back with a faux-moral high ground, where I believe he believed he was coming for moral reasons alone, but this has been a show all about how we delude ourselves from the discomfort of sitting with our own narcissistic parts and sensitivities. Gene partly came back to be in the spotlight again - getting power by stopping the film, or more likely, aligning with his preferred narrative of himself as a moral savior of Janice through the preservation of her legacy. But he throws it all away and begins to alter that narrative to convince himself of an alternative view as soon as his ego is stimulated.

We can sympathize with Gene's drive for control in a life where there's such a void of control. We can sympathize with the process of oscillating between narratives - and the show doesn't pass judgment itself on this very human process. I often tell clients in recovery that the mind is a powerful thing: with the right incentive I could list 500 reasons to relapse and drink today or 500 reasons not to, depending on the prompt and motivation, because my brain can convince myself that any of the multiple truths my internal parts feel is the 'right' one. The show has sympathy for Gene, Barry, Sally, Hank, Fucues, but also holds them accountable and shows it like it is.

Yes, Gene took the money under dangerous, coercive conditions to give his son a better life, but not disclosing this ultimately left a string of a 'lie by omission' rather than actually purging himself of his relationship to Barry, because he saw his part in Barry's life as integral and worthy and it made him feel big and important. I actually think a lot of what he said about Barry to the "agent" is true, but something that deep-down -without glistening circumstances of fame and glory masking his self-exploration- would be unbearable for Gene to confront. Gene was given opportunities through Barry to bring his career back, was prompted to reconnect with his son and repair relationships, and was humbled into changing more than he seemingly did for decades earlier. But, ultimately, Gene didn't change. None of the characters in Barry really have, and... what an audacious show - to demonstrate resilience in the face of avoiding scary change; understanding it without supporting it. It's arguably humanistic in how it validates the part of us that resists something so exposed and unsafe and unsupported.

[swo17]

Also, very smart/satisfying plotting, with what you two are talking about

[cdnchris]

I don't think I've been laughing as hard this season as i have with tye last two, but this episode balanced things nicely with that absurd missile attack, and then a few of Hank's lines.

"Why am I still opening these?"

And

SpoilerShow

"Isaiah. Still a fox, even in death."

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

“Add to cart” and Fuches’ gang’s placid brainstorm sesh on how to protect the companions from the traumas they’ve already experienced were my favorites

[flyonthewall2983]

Seasons 2 and 3 are in Dolby Vision on max

[Murdoch]

SpoilerShow

I haven't liked a lot about this season but Hank's shift toward being a villain out of an 80s action movie ( e.g. taking Sally and John as hostages and trying to coerce Barry into action) certainly brings his character full circle.

I'm content with Gene's arc. His seemingly selfless assistance with Barry's capture last season felt false to me and I feared that his character would be stripped of his flaws by the writers in order to show him more as a victim of Barry's psychosis rather than someone driven by his own self-interest. Instead, he doubles down on his selfishness, leaving his son to bleed and returning years later to jump at the prospect of a movie about Barry once he hears Day-Lewis and Wahlberg are involved.

I'm interested to see how Sally's story unfolds with the final episodes. I feel as if she'll be given an option to ditch Barry and John and take the opportunity immediately.

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

I feel as if she'll be given an option to ditch Barry and John and take the opportunity immediately.

SpoilerShow

I dunno, there would be little point in showing the (last episode's strongest) scene where she approaches the cop, and then stops herself from abandoning her son (and Barry), if she was going to do that next episode. We already know she's resilient and will take care of self, but I think that scene was placed there to establish that she hasn't sunk to the point of moral bankruptcy where she'll completely disown her child (It's also a nice bridge from the previous episode, where she showed she can be abusive and sink low). I feel there's a quasi-redemptive arc emerging - she'll stand up for herself and protect her son, perhaps a bit savvily and a bit messily in her typical fashion, but she has strength and morals within her, and has spent the entire show talking the talk and struggling to walk the walk in facing the attachment issues ingrained in her as a child. Standing up to Barry and protecting her kid as she was never protected feels likely, though not in some unearned rosy catharsis that would ring false. Just a little bit of something.. a start in the right direction.

A lot of characters are going to lose in this show, and Sally certainly isn't going to 'win', but she can still be the one character to 'earn' something. Not necessarily because she "deserves" redemption the most - the show has made is clear that it's not about that - but because rehabilitation is possible with motive, and she has the motive in a child who doesn't need to be completely fucked up like she was.

[Matt]

SpoilerShow

Do we not think that Sally is suffering psychotic episodes? The imagined home invasion, the cop’s bleeding eye? The assault on her former co-worker and the compulsive theft from her workplace? The insistence on wearing that obvious wig even though it doesn’t really disguise anything?

But I don’t have any idea where that would lead her or her son immediately. Is it possible the kid is not their biological son?

Stay tuned, I guess.

[swo17]

SpoilerShow

For what it's worth, that "cop" was portrayed by the same actor that played the character she killed last season, and is credited under that name on IMDb. He was also the voice Sally heard during the home invasion

[flyonthewall2983]

SpoilerShow

The voice but everything else was the guy from the bathroom scene right?

[flyonthewall2983]

SpoilerShow

What this gave me was far more than I was expecting, or felt entitled to know. In the end for it all to play out in bastardized fashion to the child felt inspired as it also appeared a bit cruel and showing perhaps what burdens he will carry on further from here.

[therewillbeblus]

What a great, absurd, messy finale to cap a show that has built itself to be an absurdist (and thus, arguably more authentic) take on the Breaking Bad formula, emphasizing the inherently messy processes of navigating competing wills and delusions, redemption, responsibility, forgiveness, morality, love, and self-preservation, without accentuating any one element as superior when it comes to our complex psyches.

SpoilerShow

Barry getting robbed of his ‘moment’ of catharsis - going out on a note of blindness with a silly exclamation of schoolboy innocence - aligns with Gene’s initial motive to stop the film and is the anti-Walter White finale, which felt disgusting on so many levels. This finale almost feels like a direct answer to that one, where Barry’s heroism is entirely detached from our relationship with the character or his finesse or activity.

I loved how the crystallization of the wrong narrative was ironically cemented by Gene engaging in his first honest action without thinking about the consequences of his relationship with external systems, after a lifetime of doing just that so consistently that it’s not so much karma as crying wolf. And (per usual, it seems like I see this show 180 degrees differently than flyonthewall..) I loved how Barry’s son got to hold onto the narrative he does. This is a show about the power of delusions first and foremost, but not always as a ‘negative’ implying weakness -nor is being sober to who you are a ‘positive’ (see: Fuches’ transformation, pre-final goodwill act). Delusion is something we all engage in for self and external preservation and selfishness and a whole lot of other reasons the show has covered and ones it hasn’t. Barry used his delusions to hurt people. Barry’s son gets to hold onto this delusion to evade some trauma, and that hurts no one in a vacuum. It’s a preferred narrative. Now, the history changing certainly hurts Gene, but that final shot refuses to weigh that with Barry’s son’s smile. That is valid and beautiful. What a wonderful final shot of supreme compassion, significantly amputated from foreboding pity that doesn’t belong in that moment.

[Matt]

SpoilerShow

I would have loved for the series to end with “Oh wow” as the final words, but I think it was both hilarious and touching that Barry’s kid (and everyone else) will know Barry as an honored war veteran and Gene Cousineau as a villain.

[flyonthewall2983]

SpoilerShow

I loved how the crystallization of the wrong narrative was ironically cemented by Gene engaging in his first honest action without thinking about the consequences of his relationship with external systems, after a lifetime of doing just that so consistently that it’s not so much karma as crying wolf. And (per usual, it seems like I see this show 180 degrees differently than flyonthewall..) I loved how Barry’s son got to hold onto the narrative he does. This is a show about the power of delusions first and foremost, but not always as a ‘negative’ implying weakness -nor is being sober to who you are a ‘positive’ (see: Fuches’ transformation, pre-final goodwill act). Delusion is something we all engage in for self and external preservation and selfishness and a whole lot of other reasons the show has covered and ones it hasn’t. Barry used his delusions to hurt people. Barry’s son gets to hold onto this delusion to evade some trauma, and that hurts no one in a vacuum. It’s a preferred narrative. Now, the history changing certainly hurts Gene, but that final shot refuses to weigh that with Barry’s son’s smile. That is valid and beautiful. What a wonderful final shot of supreme compassion, significantly amputated from foreboding pity that doesn’t belong in that moment.

SpoilerShow

I want to start this out by saying that while we have our different views on what we both think is an otherwise excellent show, that I really appreciate the depth to which you are giving your interpretations, regardless of how different they are from my own.

That said I had some second thoughts as soon as I posted and slept with more of the positives to come out of this ending. With the truly unpredictable element of Barry gone, and with Sally almost adjusted to a more normal routine John is perhaps more well-adjusted then I might give him credit for when his smiling face appears at the end.

I suppose the concern comes in at how the potential of how he balances what his mother has sworn to him, and his internalization of the Hollywood fantasy of his father’s life. The natural trauma (not just of a child but anyone who survived it, since I’m guessing by the final act Fuches is not in very good shape if any shape at all after the news of Barry’s death) arising out of the events he was merely a witness to as a child plays into a lot of this too, and definitely for me when the camera cuts to his reactions to the movie.