Created by Alec Berg and Bill Hader, Barry is absolutely one of the best shows on television. The third season recently wrapped, and fans are eagerly waiting for what’s next after a cliffhanger ending. It’s been quite the ride, especially with the long wait between seasons two and three. It’s an emotionally driven, dark, violent, and often hilarious show that stretches the talent of everyone involved to the best of their abilities. Everyone in this show is giving career-best performances.
It goes without saying, but there are a lot of heavy spoilers in each of these entries. With so many incredible episodes, it can be difficult to rank, but these are the absolute best of the best.
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7 S2/E8 - berkman ﹥ block
Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Finales generally leave a mark because they’re closing up storylines and setting up new ones for the following season. Each season finale of this show ended up on this list, and this is the first one so far. It’s an absolutely incredible way to end the season, and perhaps the most white-knuckle inducing ending out of the finales. Not only does Barry storm the monastery in a blind rage to kill Fuches, but he ends up killing almost every character he has trained throughout the entire series. There’s an extremely tragic scene where one of the Chechen gang members recognizes Barry and smiles, only to get shot by him.
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The whole thing ends on a perfect note, where Gene suddenly remembers what Fuches whispered in his ear: “Barry Berkman did this.”
6 S1/E3 - Make the Unsafe Choice
Season one of Barry doesn’t start off slow - but it does take time setting up the characters and their intricacies. This episode, in particular, is one of the first cases of Barry showing how dark and dismal it’s willing to go with these characters. Particularly, the scenes with Fuches (Stephen Root), and the hired assassin, Stovka (Larry Hankin). Played for laughs at first, this darkly comedic scene starts to lean into the tragedy of the characters living in this type of world. Stovka is hyped up before his arrival as one of the greatest assassins in the world. He’s brought in to kill Fuches and Barry, but, after a conversation with Fuches, he doesn’t do it. Instead, he recounts the tragedy of his life surrounded by death. In the end, he kills himself rather than take another life.
It’s an absurd scene - but it works on multiple levels. It works as a character spotlight for Fuches, who shows that he’s able to weasel his way out of anything. More importantly, it serves as a subtle foreshadowing of Barry himself. An assassin surrounded by death, unable or unwilling to find a real life.
5 S2/E5 - ronny/lily
This season two episode is easily one of the wackiest of the entire series, and an absolute fan favorite. Loach (John Pirruccello) has been trying to get Barry to confess to the murder of Detective Moss (Paula Newsome) all season long. The audience has been led to believe that this is a revenge tour, but it’s revealed at the end of the previous episode that he simply wants Barry to kill Ronny (Daniel Bernhardt), the man dating his ex-wife; he’s only using the confession as leverage.
Barry goes to Ronny’s house, but attempts to talk to him instead of kill him. Through clever camera angles and editing, it’s revealed that Ronny is a Taekwondo expert with numerous awards. Eventually they do end up fighting, and it’s one of the most incredible and drawn out fights in the entire series. It’s visceral and violent, and Ronny’s daughter gets involved too, as an apparent Taekwondo expert as well. The whole thing is played for laughs, but it’s the excellently directed fight choreography that makes this one of the best.
It’s an absurd scene, but it works on multiple levels. It works as a character spotlight for Fuches, who shows that he’s able to weasel his way out of anything. More importantly, it serves as a subtle foreshadowing of Barry himself. An assassin surrounded by death, unable or unwilling to find a real life.
4 S2/E4 - What?!
There’s a lot going on with this season two episode. Each of the main characters is getting fully developed story arcs, but it’s really the finale scene that sets this episode apart. This whole season, Barry has been dancing around what really happened to him during the war. He’s told half-stories, and avoided details. In a moment of desperation, Barry reached out to Gene (Henry Winkler), and tells him the dark story of what really happened. Gene is shocked, of course, but they bond over their own faults and find a common ground of wanting to be better. Henry Winkler is giving an all-time great performance as Gene, and it sounds like he’s having a great time doing it too. There’s a line he gives near the end of this scene that totally encapsulates everything that creators Hader and Berg are trying to say. After confessing to a horrible thing that he has done as well, Gene says this: “I don’t want to be that guy anymore, I pray that human beings can change their nature. Because if we can’t, you and I are in deep trouble.”
The relationship of trying to be a better person, but never knowing if it’s too late, is the driving impetus of the entire series.
3 S3/E7 - candyasses
Season 3 may be the best season of the entire show, and episodes like this really help make the case. Any of the top three episodes could have been ranked number one, and that’s saying a lot for an episode where the titular character barely says a word the entire time.
Instead, he’s having hallucinations based off the poison that was given to him in the previous episode. He seems himself on a beach, surrounded by people he’s killed throughout his career. It’s a tragic highlight of the characters we’ve seen come and go, and really highlights all of Barry’s crimes in one nice scene. Outside the hallucination, George Krempf (Michael Bofshever) finds Barry dying on the street. George has seemingly come there to avenge his son, whom he believes death was the direct result of Barry. His monologue in the car may be the best in the entire series. Ultimately, he drops Barry off at the hospital and takes his own life. Unable to do the things that Barry does. This entire show plays on expectations, and this scene does it perfectly.
2 S3/E8 - starting now
The finale of season three has some of the most intense filmmaking of the entire series. Directed by Bill Hader, the finale closes up almost every major storyline, and gives some of the most intense scenes to date. The entire season plays into the idea that eventually Barry will be caught. He’s seeing everyone from his past, dead and alive, start to come back. All of his actions and his mistakes are tangibly coming back to bite him. In a twist, the final scene has Barry tricked by Gene to go into a house surrounded by cops. Gene is finally able to get his revenge, and gives a performance of a lifetime. Bill Hader had this to say about the big reveal: “The very beginning of the season, I think we knew the first day that Gene was gonna catch Barry. He gives the performance of his life to convince Barry to go into that house, and then [Barry] does it, and then he’s caught. When I talked to Henry, that look he gives him is just, “I got you. We’re done.” And he got what he wanted, which was to avenge the death of Janice Moss.”
The storylines that Sally (Sarah Goldberg) and Hank (Anthony Carrigan) go through are equally tragic. Playing into the idea that no one on this show can have a happy ending.
1 S1/E8 - Know Your Truth
Every great show has that one episode that completely changes everything and separates itself from the competition. With Game of Thrones it was “The Rains of Castamere”, and with Breaking Bad it was “Crazy Handful of Nothin’”. For Barry - it would be “Know Your Truth”. The finale of Season one is an absolute gut punch as we start to see the transition of Barry from a tragic but ultimately sympathetic character into someone truly lost. The impassioned speech he gives to Moss is incredible because audiences still don’t know what either of them are willing to do.
This episode is the best because it set the precedent for everything that followed and showed that Barry isn’t just a comedy with that guy from SNL, but it’s also an important drama that knows exactly what it’s doing and has something to say. Barry can be very funny, but this episode shows that they know how to drop the hammer. Barry was recently renewed for a fourth season; here’s hoping that season four brings just as much heat.
