YMMV / Barry

• Adorkable:
  • Barry, in no small part due to being played by Bill Hader, is likably awkward for a hitman. He has difficulty interacting with people due to how shy he is, and it makes him a fairly endearing presence.
  • Hank is a grown man who acts like an energetic little boy. That he happens to be a mobster just makes it funnier.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Who is Barry, really? A good yet weak-willed man who's the victim of manipulative stronger personalities? A war criminal who also suffers from PTSD and depression who's barely in control of his own actions? A self-serving doormat who's perfectly willing to murder innocent people to secure the happy life he thinks he deserves and absolutely refuses to face any responsibility for his actions?
  • Is Sally a good person struggling to make it in the world, who is teaching Barry to have humanity or does she have a deeply selfish abusive streak that Barry can't see because he has no model for good, healthy relationships?
  • Hank could be either a man escaping a horrible life back home with a dream to go straight. Or, a hopeless sociopath who deliberately ignores all the pain and suffering around him for selfish ends.
  • Why exactly did Gene turn Barry over to the police in a sting in the season 3 finale? Was it simple revenge for Janice's murder, or out of guilt for taking Barry's bribe money and covering for him so he wouldn't screw up his second chance in Hollywood? Or is it a bit of both?
• Award Snub: Bill Hader’s widely acclaimed directorial work in ronny/lilly lost the Emmy to Fleabag.
• Awesome Music:
  • The shows theme: "Change For The World" by Charles Bradley.
  • "Journal of Ardency" by Class Actress from the first episode of Season 1.
• Base-Breaking Character: The perpetually self-centered Sally is a flawed person, which becomes a problem for some viewers when they're called upon to legitimately sympathize with her.
• Bizarro Episode: The entirety of "ronny/lily," the fifth episode of Season 2, qualifies as one long BLAM. In the span of the half-hour episode, Barry gets in multiple fights with a stoned taekwondo master and his feral, almost superhuman daughter. It's so bizarre that Fuches and Barry himself can't help but lampshade it. Bill Hader admits that he was worried how the episode would be received simply due to just how surreal and different it was, though these fears proved to be unfounded when it ended up being one of the most acclaimed parts of the season.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Seeing Barry beat Fuches bloody before abandoning him at the airport after years of being manipulated by him is nothing short of satisfying. There's also him running for his life during Barry's rampage at the Burmese monastery knowing that Barry is there to kill him.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Barry offering to help Sally get revenge on a TV executive who cancelled her show by gaslighting her into suicide would, in any normal circumstance, be horrifying. But his plans are so bizarre, he's so nonchalant about the whole thing, and he's so genuinely lost as to why Sally gets upset, that it comes off as hilarious.
  • Gene kills Barry just as he finally decides to turn himself in, and completely ruins his own chances at being exonerated in the process. Barry's final words upon seeing Gene advancing on him with a gun being a completely deadpan, almost befuddled "Oh wow" winds up making this grim finale to both of these characters' arcs darkly hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Stoned martial arts master Ronny and his possibly inhuman daughter Lily due to giving Barry the fight of his life in one of the series' most popular episodes.
  • Akhmal due to his foul mouthed reactions to the surprisingly high number of times getting shot and the time he called Hank "King of Suck Balls Mountain".
• Genius Bonus:
  • At the end of Season 1, Barry and Sally are starring in The Front Page, meaning Sally is again in a Crosscast Role as the play's two lead roles are both men. And it had already been subjected to this, as one of them was changed to a woman, and the other's ex-wife, in the film adaptation His Girl Friday.
  • One of the students comments on the fact that Sally is playing the role of Macbeth, then clumsily corrects himself to say "the Scottish king." It's an actors' tradition to refer to the play and the title character euphemistically when within a theater to avoid bad luck.
  • Cousineau tells Barry to perform a monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross, specifically the film version. Those in the know will be amused by this unnecessary clarification, since he wants Barry to play Blake, who is only in the film.
• Growing the Beard: The show was always well-received, but the penultimate episode of Season 1 in which Barry kills his innocent friend Chris marked a turning point in quality for critics and audiences. The second season expanded on this, giving deeper characterization to Barry and the rest of the main cast, as well as bringing bigger laughs and thrills to the story, being widely regarded as superior to the first year.
• Heartwarming Moments: Cousineau's speech to Barry after he confides in him in the fourth episode of season 2 is a shocking moment of genuine empathy and guidance from the normally inept and self-absorbed character. Them hugging afterward seals the deal. Doubles as a Tear Jerker due to the Dramatic Irony at play during it (Cousineau is unknowingly excusing Barry for killing his girlfriend by telling him it).
  Barry: Do you think I'm a bad person, Mr. Cousineau?
  Cousineau: I think you're deeply human. You did a terrible thing. But do I think that defines you? No.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Bill Hader does an incredible job throughout the show (with him managing to convincingly play an efficient and sometimes scary hitman) but in Season 1 Episode 7 he's downright phenomenal, showcasing Barry's emotional turmoil at being forced to kill his friend Chris. The episode won him an Emmy award. He further shows this at the end of Season 2 during his rampage at the temple where he's at his most terrifying.
  • From Season 1 Episode 7, there's Chris Marquette as Chris who is able to convincingly portray someone slowly freaking out and losing it completely.
  • In the Season 2 premiere, Anthony Carrigan gets to show what he's really made of as NoHo completely drops his usual Affably Evil demeanour and tells Barry in a dead serious tone that he'll give him up to Goran's family as the real killer if Barry doesn't kill his new rival.
  • Henry Winkler really shines in episode 4 of season 2 by surprisingly showing genuine empathy and guidance when Barry talks to him about his incident in Korengal (see Heartwarming Moments above)
  • After acting like a pathetic Butt-Monkey for so long, Stephen Root comes across as genuinely threatening when Fuches starts to go after Gene. Not to mention his nightmarish, silent appearance in Barry's flashback during "ronny/lilly".
  • In "The Audition," there's Sarah Goldberg's delivery of the lengthy monologue she gives to Barry. All done in one take too. It has to be seen to be believed.
  • In-universe, Gene Cousineau proves his acting chops in the season 3 finale by performing the scene of a lifetime: convincing Barry he intends to kill Jim Moss and begging Barry not to confront him, when in fact Gene is helping Jim and the police lure Barry into a sting operation.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Cousineau is a pathetic has-been whose only chances at true success are long gone, while the role got Henry Winkler the first Primetime Emmy of his legendary TV career.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Barry. A deadly and efficient hitman and former Marine suffering from depression and PTSD who truly doesn't like or want to kill people. He desperately wants to leave the business to live a normal life only to fall deeper due to having people like Fuches. Episode 7 and onward has him in a downward mental spiral from killing Chris and Moss, encountering Sally's abusive ex Sam, being abused by Sally herself, discussing his guilt over the Korengal incident to Gene, Fuches' continued manipulation, and more. Even when he seems to turn his life around, it never lasts long before he gets pulled back into the world of crime, with Barry finding it more and more impossible to deal with his immense guilt, eventually having a full on mental breakdown when confronted by Albert, unable to do anything more than fall over screaming and crying. Then come season 4, Barry is now an emotional wreck that can barely function some of the time. And when he finally decides to face the music and turn himself in to prevent Gene from going to prison for Barry's crimes, Gene kills him.
  • Sally is an ever worsening narcissist whose so self absorbed that she either doesn't care or doesn't even comprehend how awful she treats others. But despite being an abuser, Sally herself was the victim of an abusive marriage, which she never properly dealt with and continues to despise herself over, with her horrible sense of self being further exacerbated by her nonstop struggles as an actor, resulting in a very mentally disturbed individual. It's also shown that her mother is a very selfish person who cares more about image then Sally's struggles which might explain some of Sally's own selfish behavior.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Sally tends to attract a significant portion of the audience's vitriol despite being an innocent in a cast filled with criminals and murderers by virtue of being selfish and inconsiderate. This despite the show going to great lengths to explain her behaviour and depict her as being no more or less flawed than Barry himself. Ignoring the obvious culprit for this trope, it could be argued that the comparative mundaneness of her problems relative to Barry's cause viewers to hold her to an unfair standard.
• Love to Hate: Monroe Fuches is a horrible person who manipulates Barry for his own ends, is willing to kill anyone (up to and including children) to achieve his ends and never shows a single spark of empathy. All the same, he's a hit with fans due to the character walking a fine balance between hilarious and threatening, coupled with an excellent performance from legendary character actor Stephen Root. The fact that his horrific actions are balanced out with him constantly suffering misfortune helps as well, as he's able to escape justice time and time again but never quite slips away unscathed.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Some people believed Barry had already crossed this before the first episode (what with him being a hitman and all), but the one event people can unanimously agree on is when Barry murdered his innocent friend Chris in episode 7 to prevent him from going to the police. In Season 2 it's discovered that he may have crossed it even before he became a hitman due to him murdering an innocent civilian in front of the man's wife after he mistook him for a sniper during his service in Korengal. His murder of Jeff and his client in the very first scene of season 3 might be another example. While he had killed innocents before, this was the first time he had done so for no reason; it's not even selfishness or anger, just pure spite.
    • He crosses it even further when he takes Gene hostage and threatens to kill his son and grandson in season 3.
  • If Fuches didn't cross it with his abusive treatment of Barry he definitely crossed it with his despicable treatment of Gene which ended with him showing Janice's corpse to Gene before nearly killing him.
  • While Hank was obviously never a good guy he was still likable and relatively harmless by the standards of the show. However, he firmly crosses it when he kills his own men and leads his lover Cristobal to being executed in "it takes a psycho".
• One-Scene Wonder: Bill Burr makes a Voice-Only Cameo in "the wizard" as a hockey player turned fire-and-brimstone preacher and podcast host who believes the Bible justifies murder, and it's a hilarious example of the series's Black Comedy.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • An interesting example in that the character in question wasn't The Scrappy and he didn’t actually change. Some didn’t like Fuches at first because he came across as a snake who was awful to Barry. But by the end of the first season, it started to become clear that Fuches was meant to be disliked and that he was the true Big Bad of the series. And, if that wasn't enough, Fuches gets beaten up constantly and fails at just about everything other than making Barry miserable, with Stephen Root doing a perfect job selling the character's misery and misfortune just as well as his Smug Snake qualities. From that point on, the character became much more popular as a villain that audiences Love to Hate. So it wasn’t a change in his character exactly that made him more popular, but rather giving him a role that he’s more suited for.
  • While Sally remains a Base-Breaking Character, season 2 reveals her Freudian Excuse and provides her with several She Really Can Act moments, both of which have helped endear many more viewers to her.
• Signature Scene:
  • In the penultimate episode of Season 1, Barry reluctantly kills Chris after a solid couple minutes of begging, and trying to give him every chance to get out of it. It's a major He Really Can Act moment for Hader and a chilling statement on how far the show is willing to go in depicting its darker side. Made even moreso is his emotional breakdown afterwards, which is what really cements that moment.
  • From Season 2, either NoHo Hank's poorly planned assassination attempt on Barry, or Barry's rampage at the Burmese monastery are good candidates, the former for its comedic value and meme potential and the latter for its bleakness.
  • For Season 3, either the botched hit from the first episode or Hank killing a panther in the finale.
• The Woobie:
  • Chris. Poor, poor Chris. A former Marine who was able to adjust to a normal life and have a family after his service in the war, he had never killed anyone (and freaks out completely when he's eventually forced to do so) and in short order finds himself in a deadly situation that's hardly of his own choosing that ends up killing two of his (admittedly unhinged) fellow Marines and is subsequently murdered in cold blood by another man he counted as a friend sometime after he forcefully saved said friend from getting killed.
  • Gene Cousineau in Season 2, who's struggling with denial and grief in the wake of Janice's disappearance, clinging desperately to little shreds of hope while he tries to reconnect with the son he abandoned and is actively deceived by his surrogate son (Barry). Also, he finds Janice's body thanks to Fuches (and Gene can only watch in shock before sobbing profusely a few moments later) who then falsely reports to the police that Gene murdered her leading him to be briefly arrested before his son bails him out and is notified by Fuches that it was Barry who actually killed her.
  • That poor man who was killed in Korengal after Barry mistook him for an attacker. Same for his wife who watched and screamed in horror as her husband was shot to death for no reason.
  • It's kinda hard not to feel bad for Mayrbek. He becomes Barry's protégé only to be scared shitless when Barry shoots him near his ear and yells at him out of anger for losing focus during target practice. He eventually toughens up, thanks Barry for his help and even becomes the leader of the Chechan/Burmese gang only for it to be utterly destroyed when Barry goes on his rampage at the Burmese monastery to kill Fuches. And then he's shot dead by his own mentor in the process. Plus, he actually had the drop on Barry and with a more powerful gun, but hesitated upon seeing Barry, whereas Barry just shot him dead without a second thought.
  • Lily. Troubling Unchild Like Behavior it may be, but she was still reacting understandably to seeing her father murdered and she is just a kid. There are times you can tell she’s heartbroken.

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