Barry threw everyone on a loop a few weeks ago when he introduced an unexpected and seemingly permanent eight-year time jump at the end of Episode 4. Barry (Bill Hader) et Sally (Sarah Goldberg) have left the network and now have a child, named John (Zachary Golinger). Barry is now “Clark” and Sally is “Emily”. John doesn’t know his parents’ true identities and wonders why his mother wears hair on her hair (a wig, but chances are John didn’t learn that word). If you think you grew up protected, think again, because the life Barry has created for his child is utterly terrifying.
Barry tries to change his past thanks to his son
Barry tries to escape the life he leads and start over. We’ve all seen the “leaving the past behind” and “changing identities in favor of a new life” trope countless times in other shows and movies, but BarryThe interpretation of seems much more sinister. For what? Because Barry is trying to rewrite his story through his son. It’s not as simple as living happily ever after, free from harm. It seems like that was both a possibility but it’s not the route the show has gone for. Barry is perpetually paranoid, clinging to some kind of evangelism, and asks John to recite several Bible verses he has chosen for comfort. He converted (or at least convinced himself that he did) to a life of faith, as long as the beliefs corresponded to his own interests. (Thanks to Bill Burrappeared recently.)
Barry has created such a sheltered life for John with the main tenant that practically everything is a sin. When John wants to play baseball, Barry posts several worst-case YouTube videos of little leaguers dying in freak baseball accidents. I imagine Barry’s plan is to keep any form of violence, no matter how small, from manifesting in John’s mind, so that he never ends up like his father, but he goes about it in the wrong way.
Remote location is nightmarish material
Set in the middle of nowhere in a house that could easily be mistaken for one of the Three Little Pigs’ estates, Barry and Sally try to live a normal life with John, but it’s clearly anything but. Mundane scenes have never been so difficult and deeply disturbing. It’s a combination of many things that causes unease, but it’s mostly because it’s just a facade masking a prison of Barry’s own making. He trapped himself there with Sally, and they even delivered a child only to keep him locked up with them. Their daily life is comparable to that of any dystopian tale, except that everything in the outside world is still perfectly intact. Things reach an unexpectedly terrifying level in the episode called “The Sorcerer” when Barry leaves Sally and John at home to kill Gene Cousineau (Henri Winkler) back in LA.
Thing is, while Barry might have convinced himself that he’s adjusted to his new life as Clark, Sally is the least convinced. It’s rare to find a scene where she’s not drinking or completely drunk, resorting to questionable actions at her job just to feel something. Sally makes a healthy (albeit burnt) grilled cheese lunch for John, but he doesn’t want to eat it. Frustrated by his moans, Sally looks defeated at her bottle of vodka and slips some into John’s juice.
John passes out soon after, and Sally considers his shitty life for about the millionth time. It’s then that we see the figure in an all-black skin suit looming behind her. It’s the scariest and most shocking scene in recent television, especially for a show that isn’t billed as horror. For what seems like an excruciatingly long duration, the figure stalks Sally but holds her back. The dramatic irony is heightened Sally reaches her bedroom, still pursued by the home invader, until she walks through the door. The door closes and locks behind her and two things immediately become apparent. Someone is at their house and John is sleeping right next to them.
Although not revealed in the episode, it’s likely the invader is one of the aforementioned badass, as another party begins ramming their truck into the house over and over again in a scene that makes it seem like it can only happen in the worst nightmare. Sally tries to assemble the gun Barry left her, but by the time she does, her house has been ransacked and evacuated, with John still lying on the couch. The scene itself is an outstanding masterclass and all the proof one needs that Bill Hader deserves to direct a horror movie a la Jordan Pele, but the scariest scene here isn’t about the skin-suited house invader… it’s Sally’s parenthood. As Barry tries to instill confusing morals in his son, it seems Sally has just given up. And while it may seem easy to blame Barry for locking them up, she’s been just as complicit as him since she decided to run away with him.
Barry and Sally’s past haunts their present
At the time they fled Los Angeles, Barry and Sally were battling their personal demons. Sally watches her former assistant and friend, Natalie (D’Arcy Carden) find fame and success, as she tries to upstage her acting mentee in front of a high profile director, to boost the mentee’s confidence tenfold. And Barry is of course on the run with his face in the center of several people’s dartboards. Their decision to run away was exhilarating at the time, a promise of a better life together, far from the mistakes of their past. Instead, their trauma only grew and spread to their parenting.
The couple bend society’s rules and edit the story as seen when Barry tried to explain Abraham Lincoln to Jean through half-truths and lies. And since Clan Barry is virtually entirely isolated from the outside world, John has no one else to turn to to correct him. Essentially, Barry and Sally are playing God as they mold John’s worldview into the likeness of their distorted personal view. It’s very disturbing to think about the potential ramifications for John’s future, as this kind of practice unfortunately happens in the real world and never ends well. In the end, Barry does his best to keep his son out of harm’s way, to keep him from turning the way he did, but if things continue to progress as they are, John will turn out worse than his father did. never has been.
2023-05-20 23:55:41
#Barry #Season #Isnt #Heading #Happy
