[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4 of Barry.]News about Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) biopic causes embarrassment for many people on HBO Barry. It continues the show’s tradition of drawing on reality to create its own story, as the very real trend of true crime and serial killer content seems to have no end in sight. By now, it’s hard to meet a person who doesn’t watch at least one series or doesn’t like at least one movie in this genre, and that’s quite a metaphor. Barrypart of using him as the main driving force for the end of the show, but we know that’s exactly what he likes to do.
The entire plot of the Berkman biopic began in the previous episode “The Wicked Legacy” when Gene Cousino (Henry Winkler) showed up in the Warner Bros. parking lot demanding to speak to the CEO about the entire project. He is met by the leaderAnnie Chang), who doubts he is even the real Cousino after going missing eight years ago. This all develops until, in this week’s episode “The Wizard”, Jin openly attempts to stop the film from progressing further. Far away in the middle of nowhere, Barry, now living with SallySarah Goldberg) and their son John (Zachary Golinger), decides to return to Los Angeles to finally get revenge on Gene.
What is behind the true crime trend?
While the real trend towards crime is relatively recent, people have been fascinated by serial killers and horror stories for as long as we can remember. In that sense, real crime is the natural next step in this craze. People have been watching popular crime series for a long time, for example CSI, dexter, mind hunter… Even classic films like Se7en influenced the way we consume this kind of content. They incite us by developing a whole narrative of crime so that we can try to understand why a person did such unimaginable things.
Going further, the current entertainment landscape is a machine that runs on viewership and crime will never stop starting a conversation. Remember tiger king? Everyone was talking about it, and suddenly biopics began to be made about her. Joe Exoticand he and Carol Baskin became celebrities, despite the fact that it was all rather strange. When the audience of such a show grows, it immediately attracts the attention of studios and production companies. Right now, for example, Love and death brings together a killer combination (no pun intended) of love, intrigue, sex and true crime in one show - how can people not want to watch it?
However, in order to capture the attention of the public, a real crime cannot have a traditional forensic narrative - otherwise it would be boring. That’s when the real producers, writers, and directors come into play to make terrible people attractive to the audience. Jeffrey Dahmer not really someone we would like or need to talk about so often - he is a terrible person who did terrible things and deserved to be punished. But because of Evan Peterspicture of him and Ryan Murphyworking on Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Storyhe went from a real person who committed real crimes to a character we couldn’t take our eyes off of, no matter how much we wanted to.
So this atmosphere of mythology around the true trend of crime makes it so easy for people. It’s not a real psychopath, it’s just O their. But because these movies and TV shows focus on these killers, it often feels like the movies and TV shows glorify them in some way.
What about the Berkman biopic in Barry?
What is he doing Barry such a great show how it uses traces of real psychopathy and immediately points out how bad and wrong it is. We’ve seen Barry try to be better because he knows what’s wrong - there’s even an iconic dialogue with Noho Hank (Anthony Carrigan), in which he asks, “Am I evil?”, and replies, “Absolutely! Am I not telling you enough about this?” Over the course of the seasons we see him unable to escape his nature and becoming a total psychopath, his narcissism even leads him to choose podcasts that justify his evil deeds so that he can feel good about them.
In The Wizard, we hear Warner’s proposal for a Berkman biopic as a “cat and mouse thriller between a teacher and his murderous student”, with Barry as the protagonist and villain, and Gene as the hero who ultimately defeats him. . . The problem with this is exactly the same as, for example, in the Jeffrey Dahmer show, since such an approach inevitably puts the killer in the spotlight and emphasizes his abilities and reasoning. He does not portray them as despicable people as they are, but simply portrays them as people who cannot be understood. There would be no reason No put him as the main character, because fewer people will be interested in seeing it. In this sense, even the role of Cousino is not really the role of a hero, because heroes are the focus of their stories. It will also not be the one who outsmarted the villain, but something like Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to the real Michael Myers Barry.
However, the film would not have worked without the proposed fictional twist. Cousino confronts the supervisor about this, stating that the story is not true, though she ends up making him a hero for outliving Barry. When the executive claims the film is telling the truth and “what happened”, she knows that deep down it is not, as the studio is determined to make the film with or without Cousino. What they are really doing is giving him a chance to get a piece of that pie in order to have legitimacy for their views on history. After all, that’s what turns “real” into “real crime.” Jin responds and calls the movie “mindless fun” because, well, that’s how it is. There’s no need to “tell the truth” as it’s pretty well known that Barry is the culprit and no one questions it. Telling the truth about a serial killer should not be a studio, but the authorities. They just hide under this pretext to make more money.
Of course, we can understand why he didn’t want the film to be made because he doesn’t know if he survived the whole story as it is still playing out. It’s been eight years, but Barry is still at large, so he’s still a target. Maybe when it all ends, who knows? Given that Barry has just been captured by Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom), the movie can still be made after Barry finally stops being a problem because Gene is also very opinionated, but until then the story isn’t over yet. So much so that, as we know, Barry goes to Los Angeles to kill Cousino and stop the movie. Deep down, it’s likely that Barry wants the movie to be made because he’s a narcissistic psychopath.
New episodes Barry Premieres on HBO Max every Sunday night.
Source: Collider
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