Previously in Season 4 of Barry, Berkman went into Jesus-loving-desperation mode as he tried to keep his family together with the help of Christianity while going after Gene Cousineau for trying to make a biopic on his life. He spent most of that episode seeking out Gene, only to end up being kidnapped by Jim Moss and landing in the infamous garage. Gene apparently showed a change of heart, as he had appeared out of his self-imposed exile not to help with the biopic on Barry and himself but to stop it from getting the green light because it’d tarnish Janice’s memory. But the fact that he went to the studios first instead of his son (who he had accidentally shot!) indicated that he was still the same old Gene Cousineau. As for Fuches, well, he showed up in an all-new avatar since he had fully embraced the myth of The Raven. And the first thing that he did was go up to NoHo Hank, who had become the owner of a sand mining company, to cash in on the time he had spent in jail for him. Amidst all this, Sally suffered a full-on mental breakdown as she couldn’t deal with the pressure of her past, her future, and her present.
Spoilers Alert
NoHo Hank Tries To Kill Fuches And Fails
Episode 7 of Barry Season 4 opens with Berkman in the middle of Jim’s torture session. Jim has tied up Barry’s hands, slapped a pair of light-blocking sunglasses on his face, and maybe a saline IV, and is forcing him to reckon with his actions. He wants Barry to realize that his whole Christianity act is a facade, and it’s not going to absolve him of his sins. In addition to the open fields and the beach (which is purgatory for Barry’s victims, as shown in Season 3), Barry does see his son, John, which means that that’s the first thing that he wants to live for. As Barry struggles with all this, the episode cuts to Gene, who has apparently written a Medium article where he’s pleading with the general populace to protest against the Barry-Gene biopic. That’s a new kind of desperation because he has boasted about being so powerful that he can take Warner Bros. to court. Yet here he is equating positive comments in the reply section to actual pushback. The only way Gene can fight Warner Bros. is by joining the WGA strike. That article will amount to nothing.
Now, while that’s a case of words amounting to nothing, NoHo Hank displays how actions can also amount to nothing by hiring “The Four Ultimate Badass Killers” to annihilate Fuches and his army. Why does Hank want to do that? Well, because he dislikes Fuches for arrogantly calling him out on his attempt to whitewash the act of killing Cristobal by naming his company after him and putting a statue of him in the lobby. Anyway, all four of those assassins end up getting slaughtered, thereby proving that Fuches and his army shouldn’t be taken lightly. To be honest, up until this point, I was taking them lightly because I assumed that Fuches’ whole “tough guy” act was just an act. However, it’s evident that he’s the real deal, which is hilarious because he used to be the most pathetic character in the show.
Coming back to Barry, who is having a vision of Gene at a dinner party, he reveals that he had given him 250 thousand dollars (the money that Barry had gotten from Hank for killing Fernando and the rest of the Chechen soldiers and saving Cristobal) so that he could restart his life, and Gene had taken it. Jim corroborates this piece of information with the notes that Lon had taken from Gene’s one-man show and realizes that Gene is guilty of taking blood money. The episode doubles down on Gene’s hypocrisy by showing that he wants to cease his boycott of the biopic as soon as he learns that Daniel Day-Lewis allegedly wants to return to acting by playing the role of Gene Cousineau. I was sure that Gene’s hermit act was a load of nonsense. I didn’t want to believe it. But he’s still spineless as hell, clearly. The hilarious thing is that Gene gets yet another chance to prove that he has some kind of humanity left in him as he is given the choice to help Sally and John by postponing his meeting with Matt from UTA (United Talent Agency). Sally and John are in Los Angeles, and she wants to talk to someone who isn’t Barry. Due to Gene’s selfishness, she’s left to fight her demons on her own again.
NoHo Hank Wants Barry
There’s this hilarious conversation between Fuches, his army, the barista, and the barista’s daughter as they try to come up with ways to ensure that the two women don’t have to endure another bloodbath. One of Fuches’ henchmen brings up playing a Fast and Furious movie very loudly, which is either coincidental or intentional because Fast X was released this week. By the way, the conclusion that the team arrives at is that they should be whisked away to a secure location as soon as the action begins. I must point out that the women don’t get to have an opinion here. They are just there to listen to all these knuckleheads deal with this whole situation while allowing Fuches to pretend that he is a family man and a gangster now. I think the two women essentially parted ways with Fuches because it’s not a healthy or safe lifestyle. And their timing is apt because, after the failure of the FUBKs, Hank and his driver take matters into their own hands by heading over to the villa Fuches and his army are living in to blow it up. Of course, the plan goes sideways, and Fuches retaliates by killing Hank’s driver and sending Hank hurtling down the side of the mountain. It’s all done in one uncut take. I know that Bill Hader and his team don’t have to prove how good they are at this. However, I’m glad that they keep showcasing that they’re putting out some of their best work in the fourth season of the show.
Now, while all this is going on, Gene has that meeting with Matt to discuss where he’s going to meet Daniel Day-Lewis. The show triples down on Gene’s hypocrisy as he shows his eagerness to retcon Barry’s whole character because Mark Wahlberg is apparently interested in playing him. He even agrees to meet Mark at a Four Seasons hotel (which is a lowbrow joke on the four seasons of Barry). I have a hunch that, like many things in this show, Liz Sarnoff is mocking all those people in the industry who still want to work with Wahlberg despite his criminal history. It’s a really smart bit of writing because Wahlberg, whose image has been whitewashed quite a few times, is being pitched to play a character who is being whitewashed by the man who sent him to jail.
Talking about the man of the hour, Barry regains consciousness and notices that Jim isn’t around to monitor him. So, he accesses the knife Jim was going to use on him to free himself. He does slice up his hand while trying to open the door leading into the house. This causes him to faint, probably due to his already dwindling blood pressure. It’s also possible that he hadn’t seen the sight of blood for quite some time, and that caused him to pass out. While Barry takes a nap, the episode cuts to Hank, who is hiding in an old lady’s house. Val arrives to take Hank back to his office and discuss the next step of their plan to eliminate Fuches. They arrive at the most obvious choice: kidnapping Gene Cousineau and using him as leverage to get Barry to kill Fuches.
Is The Old Barry Back?
Sally and John arrive at Gene Cousineau’s house. But he’s obviously not there. So, Sally starts to panic and lies to John about how they’re going to be a happy family again. After snapping out of it, Sally notices a police officer across the street, and she goes up to him to get herself arrested for killing Shane (the man from the biker gang). She imagines the police officer to be Shane, which renders her speechless. And while she’s dealing with all this, Hank’s men arrive to kidnap her and John, even though they were there to get Gene. Where is Gene? Well, he is in the middle of an ambush staged by Buckner, Leo, Jim, Chief Krauss, and Brad (who was pretending to be Matt), where he’s being forced to answer why he took 250 thousand dollars from Barry. Gene doesn’t lie about the fact that he took the money and spent it, but he feigns ignorance about the money being drenched in blood, metaphorically speaking. Yes, technically, he doesn’t know that cash came from the Chechens, but it’s not like he didn’t guess it. However, he probably couldn’t have guessed how he was going to pay for it.
Buckner accuses Gene of harboring Chechen drug money at his theater, which was where Janice killed a member of the Chechen gang. He says that Gene was aware that Janice was going to nab him for being in cahoots with the Chechens. That was why he called her up to his cabin and used Barry to murder Janice. Buckner also accuses him of being friends with The Raven. As the audience, we know that this is all false. Gene had nothing to do with the Chechens or Janice’s murder. That said, from the perspective of the characters in the show, it makes sense that they’d connect Barry, Fuches, and the Chechens to Gene like this. The only thing that Gene is truly guilty of is using Janice’s murder to gain popularity. And even that’s probably not a thing anymore because there’s no Mark Wahlberg or Daniel Day-Lewis who is interested in partaking in a Barry Berkman-Gene Cousineau biopic. Is the biopic even real, or has this whole thing been a ploy by the aforementioned members of the law to force Gene to come out of his den and reveal the truth? I think the biopic is true, and it’s happening, but Leo, Buckner, Jim, Krauss, and Brad have used it to arrest Gene.
At the end of episode 7 of Barry Season 4, we see Hank using Sally and John to get Barry (who has regained consciousness again) to kill Fuches. Barry doesn’t react explicitly, but he starts to shake and shudder angrily, and I genuinely don’t know what he’s going to do next. It’s a very obvious callback to the time when Hank tried to kill Barry when Sally was in the living room. Barry explicitly stated how Hank had made matters personal by endangering Sally. That said, I have a big doubt that this time around, Barry is going to seek revenge against Hank for harming John and not Sally. If you think about Barry’s visions in Jim’s garage, Sally never showed up. Barry saw John and Gene, and that’s it. This means that Barry doesn’t really care about Sally. He does care about John, though, as he sees him as this impressionable thing that he can mold into the person that he couldn’t be. Since that has been jeopardized, I think we are going to see a side of Barry that we have never seen before. I know that, except for that shootout in the jail, Barry has been quite non-violent throughout this season. With one more episode to go, it looks like the dam is going to break, and all we’re going to see is blood.
