Picture: Merrick Morton/ HBO
Invoice Hader doesn’t communicate a single full phrase in “Sweet Asses,” the penultimate episode of Barry’s third season. For Barry, that is an episode of introspection: excited about what he’s performed and whom he’s damage essentially the most. His voice, for as soon as, is taken from him; there’s no alternative to rationalize, backpedal, or glean some false message of empowerment from a lazy try at redemption. He’s right here to hear.
The morning after being poisoned, Barry is alive however too paralyzed to make it far, his poisoner nowhere to be discovered. Whereas he’s slumped towards a dumpster in actuality, he hallucinates himself calmly strolling to some purgatorial seashore, the place he’s intercepted by Ryan Madison’s father, George. George drives the real-life Barry to some undisclosed location — we, like Barry, don’t perceive what his finish aim is at first — and tells him about Ryan, the attractive son he misplaced due to Barry. If Barry may communicate, he’d most likely level out that he technically didn’t kill Ryan; he was on his method to kill him however came upon the job had already been performed. But it surely doesn’t matter who pulled the set off. What issues is that it may’ve simply as simply been him.
All through “Sweet Asses,” Barry sits on that mysterious seashore, listening to solely the breeze and the ocean waves. He retains glancing over on the crowd of individuals congregating a bit farther down. Who’re they? He appears curious, however there’s a cause he doesn’t run over instantly. Deep down, he instantly understands who they’re. And he doesn’t know if he can face them.
George’s ache absolutely will get by means of, even when Barry can’t reply and even react. The person needs to harm Barry — hurting his youngster might be the one factor an individual may do to make him contemplate homicide — however ultimately, that’s not him. Letting this man die would go towards George’s virtues, and ultimately, it wouldn’t carry Ryan again. There’s just one method, in his thoughts, he can actually be with Ryan.
So whereas George is swarmed after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the top, Barry is rushed into the ER for a second probability — one thing that no one on that seashore will ever get. Not Traci, not Goran, not any of the mobsters who Barry massacred on the monastery, and positively not Chris. Barry joins all of them ultimately, attempting to mix in however failing. There’s no camaraderie right here between previous pals, no letting bygones be bygones. They’re all right here due to him — Barry included.
If Fuches’s revenge military was meant to be made up of credible threats to Barry’s life, George’s suicide could be a bit low-cost; so many of those grieving members of the family have been taken care of in handy methods. However George isn’t a Large Unhealthy, and Barry’s life has by no means really been what’s at stake right here. What’s at stake is his soul.
Although Barry and Fuches have solely shared one scene this season — and that one scene was a telephone name throughout continents — their historical past nonetheless performs a major function within the sequence. It’s Fuches who sees Barry for what he really is. It’s solely Fuches who understands, like Barry’s previous vet buddy Albert, the deep-seated rage that leads Barry to kill, repeatedly, regardless of whether or not the goal is somebody who personally damage him or not. After assembly with Janice’s father, Jim, and telling him Barry was the one who killed his daughter, Fuches winds up in jail; not one of the individuals he’s come to have outsmarted him earlier than, however Jim is totally different. He was shot down as a fighter pilot in Vietnam and satisfied an interrogator to kill himself in spite of everything. He’s the true deal.
When Albert lastly will get in a room with Fuches, all the pieces comes collectively. But it surely’s the ultimate element Fuches names that actually conveys Barry’s twisted psychology: In any case this time, Barry nonetheless attends charity runs for Chris. It’s sufficient to make Albert seize his gun from his desk and go away the station angrily.
It’s an exciting setup for the finale subsequent week, however none of “Sweet Asses” appears like table-setting, as transitional as it’s. Hank seeks Cristobal out in Bolivia to hash out their points, solely to be knocked out and imprisoned alongside together with his few remaining pals. (The second when Hank patiently waits as the person he’s talking to hundreds a blowgun is likely one of the episode’s funnier moments.) Cristobal’s absence from the final couple of episodes raises the stakes: We nonetheless don’t know exactly the place his allegiances lie, even when his coronary heart remains to be with Hank.
No less than Hank has hope that Yandar and Akhmal can come by means of and assist him escape. Sally’s present place feels bleaker, even when her life isn’t in peril. We watched her rise early this season, and now we’re witnessing her fall: Sally retains getting new alternatives to show herself, however she retains letting herself down.
Take the writers’-room scene early in “Sweet Asses.” Sally’s writing model doesn’t mesh with the showrunner of The New Medusas — she’s extra excited about getting inside characters’ heads than empty shock worth and unmotivated intercourse and violence — however the ideas she makes are obtained surprisingly nicely by her different new co-workers. Possibly there’s a path ahead for her if she’s humble sufficient to just accept this studying expertise and work with new collaborators. She ought to understand that she doesn’t want her personal present instantly; she will be able to really make connections by serving to enhance the exhibits that wouldn’t exist with out cynical algorithm-driven decision-making.
However Sally just isn’t humble sufficient as a result of any strides she could have made are forgotten when she realizes her pal/ex-employee Natalie now has her personal present. It’s referred to as Simply Desserts, and it copies concepts from Sally’s previous present Joplin, particularly the central mother-daughter relationship. So Sally instantly squanders her personal potential by cornering Natalie in an emergency-stopped elevator and screaming at her, calling her an “entitled get it on cunt” again and again.
There’s lots to unpack about Sally’s self-sabotage right here, particularly her declare that this was Sally’s story to inform as a result of Natalie by no means struggled. “You don’t also have a get it on daughter!” she exclaims, and Natalie factors out, “Neither do you, Sally.” That’s Sally in a nutshell: She determined {that a} story was hers alone; in addition to, she deserved it, she went by means of the trauma and did the work, and it’s disrespectful to take that away from her. Her close-up yelling is strikingly paying homage to Barry’s scary rant from “Limonada”; Sally retains unwittingly re-creating the dynamics she’s accustomed to, and it’s making her into the kind of monster she at all times feared. The identical has already begun to occur to Natalie, who already treats her new assistant the best way Sally handled her.
However Natalie had the foresight to report the elevator outburst and ship it into Hollywood Drama Report, a TMZ-esque tabloid, so Medusas is already dropping Sally. By the tip of the episode, she doesn’t even have Lindsay in her nook anymore; she went towards her agent’s recommendation to let her deal with the fallout, prematurely sending in an “apology” video that incorporates each bad-apology cliché within the guide. She throws her second mood tantrum of the episode, this time with Lindsay on the receiving finish, stepping backward into the empty blackness as she shouts about how Lindsay works for her, not the opposite method round. Lindsay has no selection however to drop her.
It’s each painful and darkly satisfying to see Sally expertise such swift comeuppance, dropping the very best advocate she ever had. This can be a breaking level for her: Both being introduced so low will make her keep in mind her unique targets and achieve some actual self-awareness about how she comes throughout, or she’ll lean even more durable into bitterness and megalomania. Barry could be the solely individual left she will be able to flip to — a miserable thought.
In contrast, Gene has had essentially the most unexpectedly heartwarming arc within the time since Barry left his life. We get a primary have a look at his televised appearing grasp class this episode, directed by his ex and collaborator Annie. It’s very well-received by Bob Jacobson, who even needs to run another tasks by her. However Annie has been out of the business for 20 years, and she will be able to barely maintain again the load of the strain. It’s lovely to see the help and reassurance she will get from her new script supervisor Sheryl, and normally, it’s very nice to see Annie getting a voice regardless of being a lot much less central to the narrative than Gene. Possibly nothing will totally make up for the years she couldn’t work, however Gene’s need to do higher is honest. She’s getting again on the market and figuring it out.
Gene being on the peak of his redemption arc makes me apprehensive about him going into the finale, given Jim’s data that he’s mendacity. It’s not simply Jim’s spectacular items of commentary, depicted with an ideal zoom-in on the sweat on Gene’s forehead. He is aware of for a truth that Gene wasn’t at all times on Barry’s facet as a result of the cops on the station talked about Gene initially pointed the finger at him.
In the end I feel Gene is secure, and this scene is simply meant to verify Jim’s suspicions about Barry. But it surely’s fascinating, at this juncture within the sequence narrative, to contemplate how this solid may match collectively in a fourth (and maybe last?) season. Few of the opposite regulars have spoken to Barry not too long ago. And whereas I hope the sequence does discover a logical and satisfying technique to maintain these characters in the identical story, a giant a part of me hopes none of those individuals will return to Barry. You already know, for his or her sake.
• There’s no method Albert leaving the LAPD with out debriefing the opposite cops (or getting backup) doesn’t chunk him within the ass, proper? I figured he was good sufficient to try this first, however perhaps he has a special plan solely.
• Natalie bossing round her personal assistant, persevering with the cycle of bullying: “Make me an appointment on the acupuncturist the place Chloë Grace Moretz will get hers performed, however be sure that it’s with the tattoo man and never the fangs woman as a result of I didn’t like her.”
• Fuches can’t wrap his head round Jim being gifted sufficient to persuade his interrogator in Vietnam to kill himself: “Did you get any sense of his dwelling life? I imply, he labored in a jail camp within the jungle throughout Vietnam. Looks like he may need been a ticking clock. It is likely to be a proper man, proper day state of affairs.”
• One in all my favourite appearing moments of the episode is the delicate shift on Stephen Root’s face as Fuches realizes the implications of Albert’s story.
