[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Barry, Season 4 Episode 5, “tricky legacies.”]
There’s nothing like a well-executed time bounce, particularly one which efficiently elevates the stakes for the endgame to return. Now that Barry has leapt ahead eight years in its personal timeline, there’s a lot to uncover about the established order, however first, in “tough legacies,” director/co-creator/star Invoice Hader focuses in on Barry and Sally, and what life on the run can appear to be after you’ve spent sufficient time working in place.
Earlier this season, we’d gotten glimpses of the desolate panorama the place Barry grew up by way of flashbacks to his childhood, which made final week’s reveal all of the extra surreal — relatively than the flat dry horizon signifying a visit again to the previous, we discover ourselves sooner or later. Episode 4 solely offered us with only a scant few particulars as to what sort of existence “Clark” and “Emily” have been experiencing, although: a desolate home on the sting of nowhere; a fridge stocked solely with canned beer, white wine in bulk, and a partially-eaten single donut; somewhat boy with numerous questions and the innate information that he shouldn’t ask them.
Then Episode 5 dug in deep, revealing a lot with such financial system. Perhaps there have been particulars buried within the manufacturing design that exposed whereabouts Barry and Sally have been residing past “I dunno, the center someplace?” however actually, that’s not important information. Whether or not they’re in Texas or Missouri, they’re in a spot the place it’s simple to get misplaced. And that’s precisely what they’ve performed following Barry’s escape from jail, with Sally sporting “hair on prime of her hair” to go to work at a crummy diner, whereas Barry homeschools their son John by way of YouTube movies.
All the things about Clark and Emily’s life is distant, in a means — large-scale on-line purchasing brings them most requirements and so they attend church on Sundays by way of on-line sermon. Even when John in some way manages to make a brand new pal (after beforehand getting right into a struggle with the child, after Travis made enjoyable of him for not being aware of Name of Responsibility), Barry does his finest to sever that real-life connection by concentrating on John’s newfound curiosity in baseball, scaring him with movies of youngsters getting harm whereas enjoying. As father tells son, his job is to guard him, and in Barry’s world, meaning attempting to maintain issues as beneath management as doable.
Barry’s pure reserve has calcified round him as “Clark”; a level of tight management that appears like a rubber band about to snap. In the meantime, Sarah Goldberg’s gorgeous efficiency on this episode is a haunting portrait of what it means to be damaged, to have surrendered absolutely to a meaningless life. Watching Sally prepare for work at her vainness desk — the cautious utility of make-up and wig — reveals that no less than for some portion of the day, she’s approaching her life within the wilderness like immersive theater; a job she’s enjoying, even in entrance of her personal son, with some liquid help as the times stretch on.
