What I’m Watching: Barry

Barry: Season 2, Episode 5 “ronny/lily” (B-)

This episode was considerably less serious than nearly all of the installments that came before it, and while I appreciated the fact that it just followed and stayed with the action for the entire duration, I would have preferred an opportunity to see other characters like Sally, Hank, or even Gene, who could ground the story a bit. Barry decided that he wasn’t going to kill Ronny, but the way he went about breaking into his home and then trying to arrange for him to leave town to head to Chicago went all kinds of wrong. I do enjoy the way in which Bill Hader stays so calm and conversational, even as Ronny tried to kill him and then kept fighting even after he was severely wounded, and that for me helped to save the episode. It would be far too simple – and horrible – for Barry to kill a kid, and instead both he and Fuches got terrorized by the trained ninja. Fuches failed to acknowledge the seriousness of Barry’s condition when he just wanted to get him away from the scene and use superglue to deal with some of his more problematic injuries, and that led to more issues, namely Fuches supergluing his own hands to the steering wheel. Ronny was one bad/good guy who just wouldn’t stay dead, and Detective Loach really should have checked that before he tried to kill two birds with one stone by taking Barry in – or out – too. I don’t know what comes next, but Barry giving himself up after all this would be pretty crazy.