wow (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.
In the finale, Barry sets out to save Sally and their son John, while the conflict between Hank and Fuches reaches its end, and Gene's life faces severe consequences.
According to Nielsen Media Research, the episode was seen by an estimated 0.234 million household viewers and gained a 0.05 ratings share among adults aged 18–49.
Buckner (Charles Parnell) and Jim (Robert Wisdom) announce that Janice Moss's murder case has been re-opened with Gene (Henry Winkler) as a suspect.
Fuches arrives at Nohobal with his gang, demanding to see John, then offers to disappear if Hank admits to killing Cristobal.
Barry (Jim Cummings) is portrayed positively as a traumatized Marine who moves to Los Angeles and joins Gene's acting class to cope.
His hitman career and war crimes are left out, and he is instead manipulated by Gene (Michael Cumpsty), portrayed as a British-accented Chechen mafia leader who uses his class as a criminal front for employing his students, including Ryan Madison.
Gene murders Janice (Kimberly Hébert Gregory) while she is investigating Ryan's death and forces Barry to dispose of the body.
Bill Hader explained, "What happens in Season 4 is structurally radical in some ways, but it made sense for what I think the characters needed to go through, and what I think the whole show is always kind of headed towards.
"[1] In May 2023, the finale's title was revealed as "wow" and it was announced that series creator and lead actor Bill Hader had written and directed it.
[2] Bill Hader came up with the concept of Gene killing Barry while developing the second season, where the writers introduced Rip Torn's gun.
Hader viewed it similarly to the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, but chose to not depict it as the writers felt it was "needless bloodshed.
"[8] On Hank dying while holding the hand of Cristobal's statue, he said, "it's him seeing very clearly what he has lost in this life based on those choices.
"[9] Commenting on Sally's final scene, Sarah Goldberg said, "She had these huge ambitions and, and what's lovely is, you know, she's sitting there in the car with this bouquet of supermarket flowers next to her.
The site's consensus states: "Clever and tidy, Barry's finale lacks a certain "Wow" factor but serves as a fitting coda to a series that always defied audience expectations.
"[15] Ben Rosenstock of Vulture gave the finale a perfect 5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "It isn't a huge surprise that the show does grant Sally and John some way out in the end.
"[16] Stuart Heritage of The Guardian also gave the finale a perfect 5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "Barry has concluded with 'wow', an episode of television that pulled off the remarkable job of creating a definitive ending and leaping forward a decade (for the second time in a month), while still managing to be the bitter Hollywood satire it always was.
Club gave the episode a "B+" and wrote, "Over its short run, Barry became a show about the ways we perceive, mythologize, and try to shed ourselves of the responsibility of the violence around us.
"[18] Brian Lowry of CNN wrote, "In metaphorical terms the Barry finale, similarly, couldn't entirely redeem the season's shortcomings.
With John's slight smile of relief, the mayhem that Barry presented is now fodder for mindless entertainment that belittle the real victims.
"[18] Alan Sepinwall said, "Even beyond all the facts it gets wildly wrong, The Mask Collector is the hacky Hollywood version of the story we've been watching for the last four seasons.
The dialogue is laden with clichés, Barry and Gene's early teacher-student relationship is uncomplicated and straight out of the inspiring professor playbook, and the action has absolutely none of the distinctiveness that Hader and company have deployed on the series.
In some ways, the sequence plays less as satire than as a celebration of Barry itself: reminding us one last time of how great and unique it was by letting us see how bad this material could have been handled.
Club deemed it fitting with the theme of the series, "Barry was a bad guy with no heart, a product of a violent culture that gave him nothing but a gun and told him to kill.
"[18] Vulture was also positive, writing, "the most curious, ambiguous aspect of this ending is the episode-ending expression on John's face: grief, but also catharsis.
It brought me back, again, to all the distorted narratives that have provided these characters meaning over the years: Sally's portrayal of her marriage, Gene's one-person show, or the various embellishments of Barry's military stories.
