Barry: the wizard (4x06)

I was legit terrified that kid was dead on the couch. Yikes.

Cons:

I think Jim, Janice's father, is one of the least rounded-out characters on the show. He kind of exists to be this ultimate threat, constantly hiding in the shadows. And that's... fine, I just always like it better when Barry's own actions directly lead him into danger. And I get that that's happening here, because he murdered Jim's daughter, but I still wish there was a tad more meat to his character and his motivations. A father wanting vengeance for his murdered child makes perfect sense, but what else does he have going on?

Pros:

Everything with Sally and John home alone was... pitch perfect in how insane and scary it was. First the chilling ennui of John's sadness at being left alone with his mother, and Sally's attempts at mothering quickly pivoting into drugging her child into a stupor so as to put them both out of their misery temporarily... God, it was just awful to watch. When Sally was trying to wake him up from the couch and he wasn't moving, I was super scared he was going to die of alcohol poisoning or something. Terrifying.

And then even more terrifying, we've got the figure all in black following Sally around, locking her in  her room... I love the way they shot that, because for a split second I thought the figure had slammed the door while inside the room, trapping Sally alone with the mystery person, but then instead it was locking her in. The circumstances of what exactly happened here are completely obscure to me. As John wakes up from his deep stupor on the couch, it's to hear his mother talking on the phone to Barry, leaving a message, asking him where he is. The mysterious assailant could be anything, from a crazy hallucination of Sally's, to vengeance from the guy she choked in the bathroom at the diner, to someone from Barry's past coming to haunt them... it's really not clear, and I love how messy it is. Frankly I was just relieved Sally was unable to figure out how to load a gun properly.

Meanwhile, Barry is listening to religious podcasts about the nature of sin, literally hunting through different talks looking for a justification for committing the sin of murder. This is so twisted, I love it. He's not willing to abandon his new belief system, his new framework of goodness and morality in this world. So he has to find a way that killing Gene Cousineau fits into that framework, and he'll bend and twist and shape it however he can to make that happen. Finally he gets that justification, only to see that Gene's grandson has come home, just as Barry was about to go in and kill him talking to his son, Leo.

But something Barry doesn't know? Gene isn't here to cooperate and tell the story of what happened. He's here to kill the movie project, because he doesn't want Barry immortalized, and he doesn't want Janice's story to be treated with disrespect. He claims he's a different man than he once was, no longer the narcissist who would have loved a project that painted him as a hero. The nature of this show is that it's difficult to know how much to believe him. His apology to Leo for shooting him left something to be desired, just kind of an "aw shucks, glad you didn't die" thing, although he does say he'll be making amends for the rest of his life. It's so difficult to know how much he means what he's saying!

Barry ends the episode trying to creep into the house after Cousineau, but he gets grabbed by Jim, who has him tied down in a secure room. Dun dun dunnnn.

The last subplot is of course Noho Hank's. We see that he's formed a company called "Nohobal", and that Fuches, released from prison, is there to join as security. Hank's business has a legit pedigree to it, but he's clearly still playing dirty with the way he runs things. Fuches makes the mistake of congratulating Hank on getting rid of Cristobal, which makes Hank kill the deal and threaten to kick Fuches and his men out of their nice digs, that Hank offered to them.

This is so true to Hank's behavior over the whole course of the show, that he would keep pushing forward even after tragedy, but he would try to build a narrative in his head about how the business started, paint Cristobal as a tragic hero who was killed by Hank's enemies. Hank gets praise for the sand pit thing, and takes that praise gladly, while mythologizing Cristobal's death and painting this picture of himself as a grieving supportive partner, fulfilling his original vision. It's a lie, but a comfortable one to justify the grand life he now finds himself living.

I can't believe how insanely close to the end of this show we are now. I truly have no idea where all these characters are going to be at the end of the show. What is the ending for Barry that doesn't just continue a cycle of violence, or leave him dead? Does it exist?

8/10