Five quick thoughts on “all the sauces”: BARRY Season Three

Things are heating up this week. Literally! Because a house exploded! Here are five quick thoughts on “all the sauces”.

• Using comedy to enhance tension. Easily the star sequence of this week’s episode is Barry on the phone with the Detonate App tech desk. It stood out for a few reasons, the top one primarily being that the idea of an app almost certainly only used by criminals and terrorists would have a customer service desk (the tech hearing the explosion in the background and going, “oh good, it sounds like we fixed the issue” is top-tier shit).

  But! Consider the misdirect this sequence pulled off. It was expressly stated at the top of the episode that the bomb has to go off in the afternoon, during a midday meeting, since Cristobal is off doing pilates. My immediate thought at that point was, “oh, there’s going to be a complication and Cristobal’s going to be in the house when it’s detonation time.” And it turns out there was! But because the shit with the help desk was so unexpected and so funny, I completely forgot that it’s all of a sudden night-time. And when Cristobal comes home….well, my heart sunk.

• The Natalie disrespect continues. I’m glad Sally had a good night at her show premiere and, frankly, I’m happy she dumped Barry, since it shows she might indeed be growing as a human. But, fuck man, you can’t get your friend a seat in the limo?

• Annabeth Gish! For whatever reason, I was really happy to see her pop up in this episode. I’m not exactly a fan or anything, but after having to suffer through the final two seasons of The X-Files (plus a couple episodes of the revival seasons, I think? Those all feel really blurry to me for the most part) and costarring alongside Shaq in STEEL, I was happy to see her get a potentially meaty part on a great show. Especially since she’s part of Fuches’ insane revenge plan. Speaking of…

• “What are we, some kind of Suicide Squad?” Leave it to Fuches to come up with the most batshit idea ever, that of taking back on his secret identity of Kenneth Goulet, Private Detective and recruiting family members of Barry’s past victims to take arms against him. I have no idea how it’s really going to play out, but I’m imagining this Suicide Squad of hitmen so amateur they have nervous breakdowns about the path they’re taking in front of nonplussed gun store owners, and I get really excited. Considering these are characters that have nothing to lose (Gish’s son gave up on his entire career path as a result of Barry’s actions, as evidenced by the logo on his work shirt), anything could happen next.

  And that’s where BARRY does its best work.

  (Also, my wife thinks the murder of Gish’s husband is a reference to the first hit we see in the pilot. Did anyone else think the same?)

• “fuck fuck” Fred Melamed, everybody.