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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
85
Mixed:
0
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Apr 12, 2023
Season 4 Review:
More remarkable is how Hader hones his nascent directorial flair. Season four’s most striking moments are quiet and still, the air filled with tension and regret as terminal winter descends on this whole sorry scene. ... When the season does get loud, it does so in arresting fashion—comic and terrible at once, sideways and weird but, most crucially, controlled. ... The plot is constructed as a mesmerizing Rube Goldberg machine, a bloody sequence of cause and effect that makes nihilism engaging.
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Apr 11, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Hader masterfully captures the many elements of the series. In one episode a character says, “Barry is a very complicated guy, but a sympathetic soul.” That’s true of the character and also the show. It sounds like a contradiction, and it is. It’s also what makes “Barry” one of the best shows on TV.
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IndieWireApr 11, 2023
Season 4 Review:
It’s a show able to look beyond what happens and enjoy how it happens — whether that’s how it’s plotted, how it’s shot, or how it’s performed. “Barry” is hurtling toward an ever-narrowing conclusion, but it’s already so much deeper than a good guy/bad guy story. It’s more than a Hollywood satire, an antihero’s journey, or a morality play crossed with a comedy of errors. It’s “Barry,” and no matter how dark things get, I’ll miss it when it’s gone.
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RogerEbert.comApr 11, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Impeccable dark comedy. ... [Hader] has a master’s command of blocking and pacing, each episode an exercise in prismatic stillness, often giving way to explosive violence. ... It’s hardly the original premise, but it’s hard to think of a show that explores it with as deft and devilish a hand as “Barry.”
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Apr 18, 2022
Season 3 Review:
A richer and deeper character study than “Barry” has previously been. ... “Barry,” then, is as juicily tense as it’s ever been. And it sets a new high for itself. ... The question the first six episodes of this fantastic season of television ask is put plainly, but might take the rest of the show to answer.
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The PlaylistApr 18, 2022
Season 3 Review:
The third season take a little while to build momentum but that’s intentional. These characters are lost emotionally and disconnected physically for a few episodes, trying to figure out for themselves what the next chapter looks like. It makes sense that the storytelling drifts a bit, but it really locks in around episode 4 and the next two are among the best in the history of the series. ... It’s also just still so funny and smart.
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RogerEbert.comMar 27, 2019
Season 2 Review:
The best comedy on not just HBO but all of television (at least while “Atlanta” isn’t on the air). The first three episodes of “Barry” are flat-out brilliant, balancing the show’s dry wit and humor with its increasingly dark edge that sometimes makes it feel more like “Breaking Bad” than a traditional laugher.
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Mar 26, 2019
Season 2 Review:
While the new episodes maintain the show’s satiric view of self-interested Hollywood types, a poignant theme emerges which represents an evolution for the series. As an introspective Barry takes inventory of his past misdeeds, the show’s storylines cohere around the reflexive lies people tell themselves, and the myriad factors which comprise the masks they present to the world.
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ColliderMar 26, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Everything about the series is so carefully crafted, though, that even its smallest moments are pure joy (most especially when it riffs on cut-rate movies and TV series in the roles Sally and others get). But there is never a danger of superficiality, even when a recurring theme is how Barry is able to achieve this duel life largely because the people around him are so self-absorbed.
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ColliderMar 22, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Barry proves that by honing in on a specific narrative with razor sharp focus and excellent craftsmanship, you can stand out. You don’t need a massive budget or a high-concept premise. You just need good storytellers willing to put in the work, and talented performers ready to play.
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RogerEbert.comMar 21, 2018
Season 1 Review:
One of the best new comedies of the last few years. This clever surprise is an eight-episode series that starts strongly and only gets better as its plot becomes more brilliantly complex and its characters are more fully developed. And it’s a wonderful showcase for Bill Hader’s dry sense of humor.
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TV Guide MagazineMar 19, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Barry scores as a wildly original and sensationally entertaining hybrid of dark comedy and delirious action. ... Barry kills--in every way imaginable. [19 Mar-1 Apr 2018, p.13]
Apr 18, 2022
Season 3 Review:
Barry Season 3 is all about second chances. There are various seeds of revenge being planted, but also the powerful idea that forgiveness must be earned. Where Barry or Barry goes next is an exciting, if trepidatious mystery. But both the man and the show are earning every step.
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The PlaylistApr 11, 2023
IndieWireApr 18, 2022
Season 3 Review:
Attention to detail — the performances, the direction, the awareness, the comedy, the sense of purpose — all come together to make “Barry” great. Dramas pretending to be comedies can be exhausting, and we’re finally starting to move past the age of antiheroes, but Hader and Berg’s series distinguishes itself from such comparisons by refusing to fall neatly into either category; it’s trajectory is dictated by Barry and the extremity of his situation.
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IndieWireMar 22, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Barry not only shifts from comedy to drama convincingly and at the drop of a hat, but it dispenses various shades of each so that all eight episodes hold together as a grounded, honest story with a long road ahead. Bill Hader and Alec Berg’s series is highly entertaining and acutely heartbreaking, and that’s pretty damn special.
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TV Guide MagazineApr 21, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Laughter sticks in the throat in a savage satire that never plays it safe. [24 Apr - 7 May 2023, p.6]
Apr 13, 2023
Season 4 Review:
We no longer feel much pathos for Barry, but the show is acutely aware of his collateral damage. ... As “Barry” starts to cement its legacy, though, “funny” is only one adjective to describe its overall effect; “eerie,” “melancholy,” and “gutting” would be equally as accurate. The show continues to take risks through the eleventh hour, shifting gears halfway through the season in an audacious twist. But it also has a firm handle on what the story seems to call for in terms of its tone.
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Apr 13, 2023
Season 4 Review:
In its fourth and final season, the HBO dramedy lays out some of its most thrilling and most ambitious moves yet, pushing its characters into territory we scarcely could have imagined at the start of their journeys. But it never loses sight of its darkest, funniest and most fundamental truth: Wherever these people go, there they are.
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Apr 11, 2023
Season 4 Review:
If Season Three proved there was more life in the concept than it appeared at first, Barry is still not a series built to run forever. Credit to Hader and Berg for recognizing this, and for making a final run of episodes(*) that feels true to the spirit and ideas that have typified Barry at its best.
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Apr 24, 2022
Season 3 Review:
Barreling forward without much apparent thought to its own longevity, “Barry” returns without missing a beat, fearlessly racing through story with a mix of darkly comic violence and drop-dead-funny visual gags. Delving deeper into Hollywood’s quirks and its title character’s double life, the crackling third season continues to operate like a high-wire act without a net.
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Apr 19, 2022
Season 3 Review:
The third season, thus far, is even more confident in its ability to be zany one moment, scary the next, silly for a little bit after that, and unexpectedly emotional throughout. It’s held together by Hader’s Emmy-winning performance, which continues to exhibit some of the widest range of any acting on television. ... Every performance is a treasure, nearly every piece of comic business is a delight and every undercurrent of sadness and remorse is earned.
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Mar 23, 2018
Apr 14, 2023
Apr 20, 2022
Mar 25, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 remains tricky TV, juggling out-loud laughs with raw human embarrassment and an expanding universe of SoCal skulduggery. [29 Mar 2019, p.45]
Mar 23, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The result is very dry comedy early on, which can be a bit frustrating if you were expecting the kind of rapid-fire jokes from Berg’s and Hader’s other work. But when the wheels come off, as they do in the second half, the tragicomedy that ensues is one of the most compelling on TV. Viewer patience is definitely rewarded, but some of the characters still get the short shrift.
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Apr 17, 2023
Season 4 Review:
There is certainly a relentless darkness about Barry that gets even darker in its final season. But Hader and Berg still throw in enough absurd moments and character-based humor to keep things from careening into full-on drama. But we’re definitely expecting the final season to be heavily dramatic, and we’re on board for it.
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Apr 14, 2023
Season 4 Review:
The uniform consistency of these performances doesn’t quite match the season’s writing; there is a convolutedness to how Barry arranges these characters for a shared season-long arc, and a certain twist is somehow both bold and anticlimactic at the same time. But the penultimate episode, “a nice meal,” is so clever in how it strips Barry, Gene, Sally, and Fuches to their core pernicious impulses that it makes the early meandering worthwhile.
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Apr 25, 2022
Season 3 Review:
Barry’s runtime always whizzes by like a hitman’s bullet, the laughs constantly killing and the tone hitting an elusive bullseye. Aside from these richly layered plot developments, the characterization and performances of Barry, Gene, Hank, and, above all Sally, help this hilarious and occasionally heart wrenching dramedy once again — just like its title character — hit the mark.
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Mar 29, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Through its first three episodes of the season, Barry has simply become a half-hour drama, albeit one with occasional snarky jabs at the entertainment industry and a Chechen mobster with alopecia, but a drama nonetheless. I miss the punchlines, while finding plenty to admire in the show's not-totally-new incarnation.
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Mar 30, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Barry does get good comedic mileage from juxtaposing the exotica of the contract-killer life style with the mundane flavor of the straight world. Yet the comedic ambitions of Barry--which Hader co-created with Alec Berg--are large enough to accommodate deathly seriousness.
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Mar 23, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Barry is a bit betwixt and between as a viewing experience: too violent for people who don’t like violence, not energetic or dramatic enough for people who do. (And for people looking for a comedy: Well, it’s as sporadically amusing as any prestige comedy these days.) Over the course of the season, Barry amounts to something, locating a hit man’s shared humanity not in his competence, his guilt, or his remorse, but in his delusional belief that he’s a decent person.
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Mar 23, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Plain broth is a good description for Barry’s personality early in the season, which makes it challenging at first to invest in what happens to him. Stick with it, though. Hader, best known for his comedic skills, has shown off his dramatic range before in films like The Skeleton Twins, but he’s the best he’s ever been here.
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Mar 20, 2018
TV Guide MagazineMar 27, 2019
Season 2 Review:
As a character study of a sad yet dangerous man who should never be encouraged to "access some rage," Barry is a triumph--as long as you're not expecting a laugh riot. [1-14 Apr 2019, p.13]
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