Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Fall Finales: Barry - Season Four/Series Finale

Did Barry go for a season too long? HBO had a real run of series/season finales this week! Onto Barry which first lit up our screens late March, 2018.

Following a long ass break between seasons two and three, three and almost aired exactly a year later. So following COVID normality in HBO programming was returning. Well until the writers strike

Created by Alec Berg and Bill Hader, Hader is Barry Berkman. Barry and Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg) have a couple of time jumps in the final season, with the ending tying up nicely.

The fourth and final season premiered mid April, concluding on Monday.


In the finale moments of the dark (sometimes amusing) HBO 30 minute drama-comedy (after another time jump) Sally basking in applause after directing a high school production of Our Town, with a teenaged John in the audience. 

A male teacher at the school invites Sally out for coffee, but she gives him a firm “no.” Instead, she drives home alone and happy, with flowers beside her on the passenger seat, while John hangs out with a friend, who shows him a movie called The Mask Collector. 

The Mask Collector for me wraps up the series perfectly for me. It's a movie about Barry’s life, with a former soldier getting off the bus in L.A. and stepping right into an acting class. The movie version of Gene encourages Barry to find his acting voice.

However Gene also has a nefarious mob connection, and Barry finds him standing over Janice’s dead body. Gene orders him to help him cover it up and Barry ends up in prison, later breaking out and rescuing Sally and John from armed thugs before Gene shoots him dead right on the theater stage.

The movie’s end card tells us that Gene is now serving a life sentence for killing Janice and Barry, and Barry was buried at Arlington with full military honors. John seems satisfied with this ending — no matter how far it is from the truth.

The "movie" tells the four series of Barry in around three minutes. Could I maybe have just watched that in place of 32 episodes of the latest HBO series to wrap. Thank god a new The Weeknd led series The Idol and exceptional The Righteous Gemstones is almost back on our screens. Via Binge all these HBO series stream right now.

Tomorrow another Fall Finale. Music posts again live HERE. Bye!

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