The following contains spoilers for Barry Season 3, Episode 4, “all the sauces,” which aired Sunday, May 15 on HBO.
Bill Hader’s titular character has been going off the deep end in Season 3 of Barry. He was turning into a villain by holding his ex-mentor Gene hostage and thinking he could make amends by getting Gene an acting gig. Barry thought he had dodged a bullet and would be able to keep quiet that he had murdered Gene’s girlfriend Janice. However, Gene subsequently had a shocking meltdown on set that hinted he might still snitch on his former student.
This led a frustrated Barry to seek out another assassination job — suggesting he wanted to get his mind off Gene’s potential betrayal. But it didn’t help with his stress the way he’d hoped. Barry was even more flustered than usual when a moment that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Looney Tunes cartoon happened, compounded by a plot twist that made the situation even more ridiculous.
In “all the sauces,” Barry was hired by NoHo Hank to blow up the Bolivians. Hank wanted them dead so he and Cristobal could be free to remain in the show’s best relationship, and he paid Barry to place a bomb under their home. However, when Barry tried to trigger the explosive using the Detonate app, it wouldn’t go off. That was a fail similar to the Looney Tunes moments in which Wile E. Coyote botched his attempts to blow up the Road Runner. In those scenes, the bomb would backfire and blow up Wile instead.
The Barry joke was enhanced by relying on technology. Barry called the app’s customer service number, trying to sync up his Bluetooth and the wi-fi signal so he could detonate the bomb. The agent on the phone asked Barry to just turn the wi-fi on and off, after he’d hid behind the car initially and tried to hold his phone higher for better signal. When he did so with the live help on the other end, he (and the audience) expected another fail — but this time, the house did blow up. That delivered a hilarious payoff that was also quite horrific.
The bomb stunned Cristobal, who’d somehow showed up at the home. Luckily, he fled when the Bolivians exposed his romance with Hank and tried to kill him; Barry found him and safely dropped him at Hank’s. It’s also possible that as retaliation for the explosion, the Bolivians will go after the Chechens, creating another Los Angeles turf war. The HBO series has already gone that route once before.
This scene proved once more how unpredictable Barry’s world can be — and how unpredictable the series is. The writers have already faked fans out once in Season 3, having them think Barry would kill Gene to hide his secret. As Barry continues his downward spiral, the back-and-forth with the bomb was another example. However, if this continues to happen, it may not be as funny since people he knows keep ending up in harm’s way.
The first four episodes of Barry Season 3 are now available on HBO Max, with new episodes airing Sundays on HBO.
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