Barry keeps killing it, and that’s the problem

polygon.com:

Barrybegan its very first episode with the violence already over. Bill Hader, playing the eponymous hitman, walks over to collect his gun from the nightstand next to his victim, who lies in a bed stained scarlet from the bullet in his head. He unscrews the silencer from his pistol and pockets it with the discomfort of a man who quit smoking a year ago yet couldn’t help but buy a pack of menthols. He knows where the gun belongs and feels better with it there. But he doesn’t necessarily like himself at the moment.

Partway through the third season of Barry, which premieres on HBO this weekend, the show returns to this moment. The series, about a hitman who decides to give up his murderous career and take up acting classes, is on one level a fish-out-of-water comedy about a killer discovering a love of theater. On another level, it’s among prestige TV’s most thoughtful ruminations on violence. After a three-year, COVID-19-related delay in production, Barry returns to continue cracking jokes and contemplating violence — especially the sort you don’t do with a gun.

When season 3 returns to the moment Barry began with, it does so by quietly expanding the scene. We see the victim take a phone call. The episode makes it clear: This victim, like every victim, had a family, a life. And none of the jokes the uncomfortable man with the gun makes throughout the show are funny enough to take that away.

This is a grim way to set up comedy, but Barry is at its best when the show’s writers are putting their protagonist through the moral wringer while also learning how to act, help his girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg) navigate showbiz from its bottom rung, and deal with frequent frenemy NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), a Chechen gangster