"a nice meal" is the seventh episode of the fourth season of the American dark comedy crime drama television series Barry.
The series follows Barry Berkman, a hitman from Cleveland who travels to Los Angeles to kill someone but finds himself joining an acting class taught by Gene Cousineau, where he meets aspiring actress Sally Reed and begins to question his path in life as he deals with his criminal associates such as Monroe Fuches and NoHo Hank.
According to Nielsen Media Research, the episode was seen by an estimated 0.237 million household viewers and gained a 0.07 ratings share among adults aged 18–49.
Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom) psychologically tortures Barry (Bill Hader), making him experience losing his loved ones.
Meanwhile, Gene (Henry Winkler) and Tom (Fred Melamed) mount a well-received campaign to boycott the production of Barry's biopic.
Iserson's meeting is a trap, and Gene is confronted by Jim, DA Buckner (Charles Parnell), and Leo (Andrew Leeds) over the $250,000.
For a show that's never cared much what the audience thinks of it, 'a nice meal' plays to the rafters, giving us one last reminder that Barry is a comedy.
"[6] Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone wrote, "We head into the finale with Barry once again shot from behind, a motif Hader has used multiple times this season.
"[7] Ben Rosenstock of Vulture gave the episode a 4 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "Even aside from the strong punchlines, though, there remains something essentially comic about Barry's view of people trapped with themselves, totally unable to resist the pull of the dark side.
Even in some of the grimmest scenes, I can see Bill Hader's sense of humor shine through — his amusement at people pathetic enough to compromise every second chance the universe graciously provides them.
Add a few extra corpses to the Dubek family's peaks and valleys and you get something roughly approximating where Barry finds itself now: desperation, death, and jokes.
"[9] Josh Spiegel of /Film wrote, "'a nice meal' does a lot of what this season of Barry has done very well — balances a sense of unavoidable bleakness with some solid inside-baseball humor as well as some visually effective gags — while also making me wonder about this being the endgame.