Summary
The darkly comic penultimate episode of Barry’s third season is the calm before the storm that should be an explosive finale.
This recap of HBO’s Barry season 3, episode 7, contains spoilers.
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Barry season 3, episode 7 recap
The episode begins with Ryan Madison’s father at a church service, still standing after everyone sits down. He is deep in thought. Then, for the first time in the series, Barry does not end its first scene with its trademark bombastic music accompanying the slide that says, “Barry.” Here, Barry falls onto the ground and is foaming from the mouth. Sharon, angry and practically breathing fire at the end of the last episode, grab a nice tablecloth and covers our beloved anti-hero’s face. She then grabs the car keys, and we see her run past Barry. We hear the door open and close, and a car engine turns and speeds off.
Barry wakes up and walks out of the home, feeling his neck. Except when he turns down the road, he sees water washing ashore into the road and service miles down the beach. He walks there and sits down, a few hundred feet away. Ryan’s father walks up to him, looking down at him. Barry, with a slight beard and grey in his five o’clock shadow, smiles back. Except, it is a hallucination. Barry is slumped next to a dumpster, with Mr. Madison looking down at a man involved in his son’s death circling the drain. He drives him off and stops somewhere reclusive. Mr. Madison then pulls out a revolver from the glove compartment.
They appear to have been sitting there for a while. It is now dark, and Mr. Madison tells Barry he can let him die but needs to kill him. Why? Because he killed his boy. And he has been suicidal and depressed about it for years. When Barry returns to that beach place and the gathering, which turns out to be everyone he has killed during his day job, you have all your favorites, including Goran, Chris, and Mayrbek. Barry waves at his former friend, who wonders why he does so. They all then look out to sea and hear a loud, metallic rumbling. Barry then wakes up on a gurney and sees that Mr. Madison has a gunshot wound in his temple. He has committed suicide.
Sally (Sara Goldberg) finds out her assistant, Natalie (D’Arcy Carden), now has her show that is mildly ripped from the canceled Joplin. In true Sally fashion, she doesn’t take anyone else’s success well, cornering poor Natalie in the elevator and berating them for stealing her idea. Except Natalie had a camera on her as she yells at her, “Entitled cunt!” She is fired and her agent drops her. Sally has now indeed hit rock bottom.
Fuches finally has met his match. When he meets Mr. Moss at his home, they go for a drive, and he casually mentions to him how he was an expert in interrogation. While Fuches begins to ramble, he doesn’t realize that Moss has driven him right to the police station. There, it comes out again that Fuches mentioned to Moss that Barry was involved in his daughter’s death. Albert, who is in the room, appears to have finally heard enough. He demands to interview him alone, and the LAPD graciously offers him a phone book to hit him with.
Gene is shooting his Master Class and has Annie Eisner (Laura San Giacomo) producing the show as penance for his misdeeds to her years prior. Except, Annie admits to her assistant she has no idea what she is doing. But, at the after-party, Mr. Moss questions Gene about Fuches and Barry. Gene, who now is fully invested in his career, begins to stammer about how Barry is a good kid. Except, the camera closes in on Gene’s forehead, and we see he has begun to perspire.
The ending
The episode ends with Fuches telling Albert all about his little operation and how he used that day when Barry snapped, killing the wrong people responsible for Barry’s scar to harness a trained killer. And Fuches drops Chris’s name and how Barry caused so much damage to that family yet still shows up to those charity runs every year. Albert, visibly upset, leaves the station, but not before grabbing his gun.
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