I almost titled this “I’m Back – Again!” but you can only really say that you’re back once, tops. Though I guess the phrase “many returns!” counters that sentiment, so. Who knows.

It’s been 37 years since my last post – or perhaps since March of 2020 when the US came to a grinding halt, and that’s fine. In the mean time I’ve finished my classes for my master’s, with only my capstone project (which I’m extremely excited about) to finish. I work from home, I pull weeds, I try to buy my cat’s affection and she consistently rejects me, it’s a lot of the same. I found my pandemic lewk, which starts out in the morning as “1930s Cabaret Star” and by the end of the day is “1970s ‘Cabaret’ Star When Arriving Home After a Fever-Dream Post-Show Hang at Studio 54.”

I’ll be honest: I’d forgotten that my lil’ corner of the Internet existed. I’ve been glued to a computer screen typing up papers about curriculum and educational coaching/leadership and while I genuinely enjoy the work, I found myself coming up empty a lot when it came to, like . . . emotional fulfillment? Lolz. Meaning, the intellectual stimulation was top-notch, 10/10, “would learn again,” and all of that, but I missed falling head over heels in love with some piece of art or work and just getting to live with it for awhile. I’ve said before that I am a “pop culture vampire,” in that when something tugs at a certain heartstring of mine, I can’t rest until I’ve chased every little creature skittering from it onto foreign paths and ultimately stranded myself with a seemingly disparate collection of animals in an echoing cave. And I live there for awhile, as I said.

ANYWAY.

I haven’t been able to do that until recently, with starting a new job and school. I had to live firmly in reality, a stance I despise, but what can we do. But one of the gifts of the current . . . “situation” . . . is the ability to start that up again, that consistent drifting off into other worlds and places, and I got very lucky, very early with one such adventure. I, like most of the country, have taken to long walks; the other day I was deep, deep in my own head about this latest obsession, and I was a bit sad about it. Because I didn’t have anywhere to put it. I’d read a bunch of articles and read a bunch of interviews and done all the things that let me stay a little longer with it but that was all done now. And then I remembered this blog!

The thing by which I’ve been most undone as of late is the HBO show Barry with Bill Hader. When I say “undone,” I mean that particular kind of feeling when something is just so unbelievably perfect, so viscerally relatable in very specific ways, that it almost makes you mad. There are feelings! Deep, zapping feelings that now you just have to . . . live with? You can’t really talk to anyone about it?

I cannot stop thinking about this show.

And when I get like this, about anything, I start to pick it apart – in the best way possible. I’m a very emotional person, but when it comes to The Undoing, it is imperative that I tease out exactly why the thing affects me so much, so positively. Maybe this is because I’m a bit of an Eeyore in a lot of ways, and don’t care for that particular quality in myself, and this self/art-analysis will lead me to other things that cause the same reaction. But if that is the reason, it doesn’t work. I can never replicate it, it just happens. I’m sure a lot of people are the same. However, as I discussed earlier, at the very least I can live with something I love a little longer.

So what is it about Barry? Why am I most likely going to restart it a mere three days after I finished two seasons – something I have literally never done before?

Well, first is the absolute ache caused by a classic theme: A Bad Person Who Does Not Want to Be That Way. Truly, truly doesn’t want to. It gets me every time (when done well, which it is, which I’ll talk about in a minute). There’s a jolt I experience, and I’m sure a lot of other people do too, when this is on their screen or in the pages of the book they’re reading, because I have my own extremely deep-seated fear that I am, in fact, a horrible person, the worst person,  and that obviously I don’t deserve anything good, ever. And every wrong move (the “wrongness” of it, of course, extremely subjective if it even exists to anyone but you anyway) is that voice whispering, “See? See? You’re bad.”

And that’s another place you might live for awhile, and that’s where this series starts: A hitman just at home with his own evil, if he even thinks of it as that, if he even thinks about anything at all. But then that glimmer of an out comes (in Barry’s case, an acting class), and it’s so fucking cool, because that really happens! There are moments when you’re lost and sort of just accepting of The Suck of your life and something just sparks you to think that maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. I considered this when contemplating What Is It About This Show, that it’s been a minute since my last “spark” (barf) and maybe the whole show, with all the other shit I’m going to talk about, also made me a bit hungry, a bit jealous . . . of a fictional hitman who has a reason to go for something.

(I have to go back to the word “spark” being used in a metaphorical way. It sounds so . . . gross? Like something on a tea towel at Marshall’s? That you put into your Fourth of July picnic church drawing to raise money for feral pig control? “All You Need for a FIREWORK is Just a Little SParK!” Oh, God, I hate it so much, but I don’t know how else to put it, there it lies . . . with my pride and any semblance of cool.)

Back to Barry. That yearning for Better has to be believable. As a viewer, you have to believe with every ounce of your being that this person wants to be better, and is really trying. And good God, does Bill Hader do that. It’s unreal. He rips me apart in this. For the first season at least, I want to take poor Barry’s feelings and put them in a safety deposit box. His wardrobe had a large part to do with this. I had a whole other heartstring YANK at his wearing the same thing to his acting classes: button-down shirt, and what look like . . . chinos? Are those chinos?

Look at how set apart he is from the rest of the group. Aside from how beautiful these shots are, the first breaks me because the contrast with everyone else in the class shows that gorgeous earnestness that makes you want to coddle him. It’s clearly his best “outfit.” Barry dressed special because this is his acting class, and you gotta break out your best for special occasions. His murder outfits are probably more in line with what the Cool Acting Kids wear, but you can’t wear your murder outfit to your acting class. It’s so dear. You can see the gap between his exiting Normal Life and then attempting to renter some semblance of it; how do you dress for it?

A Special Note: I didn’t know what those pants “are,” despite them being The Pants Dudes Wear. They looked like cargo pants but also nicer, and I was like, “The word ‘chinos’ comes to mind, but chinos aren’t a thing any more, right?” But the word felt right so I googled “men’s chinos” and I found the ULTIMATE pair of chinos, given that their name is literally ‘Slim Ultimate Built-In Flex Chinos.” And they’re only $15!

I can barely even discuss what he wears to the party hosted by D’Arcy Carden’s character. That first shot – oh, God. I think I actually said out loud, “. . . My heart.”

It’s almost immediately commented on by another character, and the earnestness with which Barry tells them he saw it on the mannequin at J. Crew just sent me. The slow roll-out of comments, increasingly negative, and his subsequent realization that this ensemble wasn’t the right move was such a nice touch to the entirety of the scene. So much going on (trying not to spoil, even though it’s been out – there’s never any need to be a jerk about people who don’t have time to watch stuff immediately yanno?) and this underlying pure, simple embarrassment just elevates all of it. It’s that sort of “normal” or typical emotional theme that makes everything about this show work. No matter how utterly absurd the main idea is, the writers manage to weave in threads of pure, cutting feeling that are just magnetic.

A show that makes me google the costume designer is a winner for sure, and her name is Audrey Fisher, so thanks to her and I hope she gets everything she wants in life because of how simple and sharp the wardrobe is (I’m also a big fan of Sally’s stuff cuz it’s how I dress in real life and I feel seen, but enough about me – haha jk never enough about me!!!). Her insta is lit, check it out. I love the pictures of vintage clothing labels.

The earnestness present in the costumes is also a nice contrast to how truly awful acting classes can be. You may not know this, dear reader, but I myself once had aspirations for the theaahhtaahhrr. In my careful analysis of how a very popular show relates to me, I couldn’t ignore the deep, gag-inducing pit in my stomach that manifested as soon as Barry first walks into the class and watches as Sally gets eviscerated by Henry Winkler.

I’m so thrilled this is online.

The Acting Class is captured so well as to make me incredibly uncomfortable. I always loved – loved – acting. It’s the best, and honestly I’m not bad! Ha! While I didn’t really want to pack my bags and head to L.A., I figured it was something that I’d always do, just for fun. Not even necessarily perform in anything, just take classes here and there. I majored in Educational Theater mostly because I thought it was a way to do this thing I like without any sort of pressure or way of making myself vulnerable because God knows I won’t have that!

But then . . . The Acting Class.

When I got to college and attended The Acting Class, I found that there is a very, very big distinction between that and a kid’s/young person’s acting class. The thing is, with kid ones the main point is to not let the student lose their faith in humanity whilst learning the craft of acting. With an adult one, the point is to definitely lose one’s faith in humanity in order to learn the craft of acting. “Suffer for art,” and all that. And so when I found myself muttering, “I hate this, I hate this” as Henry Winkler (what?!) mocks her and uses her trust in him for a better performance, it was because well duh, I knew that was a particularly gross real thing that happens.

I actually scowled at the television, thinking of my awful acting teacher who picked on me constantly. The peak moment was when she screamed “Then DO IT, for f—‘s sake!” at me in front of everyone. Which turned out to be a pivotal moment. When you consider your life and all the “stuff,” there really are split seconds when something dawns on you – a clear, resonant truth you can’t ignore – that totally pivots what you thought was going to happen. I had always taken for granted that I’d want to continue taking acting classes, maybe even give it a go professionally sometime down the line, but in that moment? I was like, “Huh. Wow. Nope.” I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t upset, I didn’t run off telling everyone how she ruined mY aRt for me, I didn’t feel anything about it. Just the truth: This is not fun any more. If this is what this is, I’m out, thanks.

She sort of did me a favor, because I ended up finding the fun again because I taught toddlers and preschoolers theater for ten years and let me tell you something: If you can’t have fun doing that, you’re sort of a butt. (Quick story: One of my favorite moments from that part of my career is when I was leading the toddler, meaning two-year-olds, class in pretending we were at a “fancy” party and eating cupcakes. I asked them all what kind of cupcake they had. They’d say things like, “Chocolate with sprinkles!” or “A rainbow cupcake!” Then I got to one kid and said, “And what about you? What kind of cupcake do you have?” and she looked at me like I was a moron and deadpans, “It’s a fake cupcake.” I’ve never admired anyone more, before or since.)

The real clincher of this Barry moment is that the scene that got me yelled at was when I was playing Oberon to another student’s Titania. In a scene that’s, like, 98% Titania and I had four lines, smack in the middle of a long soliloquy by my scene partner (I remember being so relieved that I didn’t have be her, thinking I’d really sidestepped a landmine considering my teacher despised me, but not knowing that I’d manage to get a dressing down anyway). And, of course, because Barry creepily reflects a part of my life I’d long forgotten about, the same freaking thing happens to him. He has one line in the middle of a soliloquy from MacBeth that another student is doing, and he can’t do it right. Ugh, it was so painful. Because again: too real.

While there wasn’t any contrariness or defensiveness in my being like, “Wow, this isn’t for me,” the facial expressions Hader makes as he listens to Sally and Cousineau are so good because you see as the viewer what a moment he’s having. I read somewhere that a lot of people who are into being, uh, dominated are very high-powered executives/top of their field folks. And how it’s such a fantastic choice to have a hitman get into acting when watching someone get brutalized into showing their feelings, something he can’t ever allow himself to do. Think of any book or television show or movie about a person who wants to get into showbiz. It isn’t the brutal work of it that inspires them; it’s the glossy, finished production. Or, at the very least, seeing someone they relate to become rich and famous, being universally adored. But nobody in this class is famous or honestly that successful. He wasn’t watching a finished show. He was seeing how he could be a person through . . . pretending to be a person.

There’s this other thing with craving someone to take over your life and tell you what to do that I think softens me a bit with this character. Themes of power and control and who has it and what it really is and all of that. Again, it’s not a super new theme, but how it’s done is here is so much better than usual. There’s some gender stuff here (yes, I always find the gender stuff, even though gender is a construct) that I’m so absorbed by, even if it’s only my own interpretation. I appreciate the utterance of the phrase “toxic masculinity” on a show about a hitman.

But I appreciate even more that any of Barry’s attempts to utilize the violence/toxic masculinity he has to deal with in his “work” into his new personal life totally falls flat. To have it rendered useless on the journey to self-actualization is pretty baller, and a relief – even though there are times when keeping the performance of being a normal person means it has to come back out. The violence might run parallel to normality, but if forced to interact with it, it messes everything up – rightfully.

Recently there was a tweet about another show I adore, Schitt’s Creek, about how while the show was widely seen as a sort of “safe space” for LGBTQ folks, it also functioned similarly for women. Meaning, you don’t have to worry about seeing some homophobic or sexist garbage on Schitt’s Creek, even in a “realistic” or plot-driven way, and that’s really a relief when you’re a member of a community whose trials and tribulations are utilized as the basis for jokes and entertainment. While it isn’t like nothing bad ever happens to women on Barry, there’s this way they write both male and female characters that I do feel a sort of safety with, at the very least because it seems quite considered and deliberate (I mean or maybe not, I don’t know these people and why they do what they do). Aside from making toxic masculinity something that doesn’t “work” for the main character in his aspirational life, there’s the time dedicated to Barry’s fantasies about that life that – aside from being yet another thing that tugs on ye olde heartstrings – was refreshing in that the sort of fantasies he has are, throughout entertainment, relegated mostly to women. Now, maybe there are more examples of men having fantasies about marrying a woman and having cute couples’ conversations, hosting barbecues, and being a good dad – but I don’t know that you could argue that it’s typical or even remotely the same level of association with men as it is with women.

So then I had this tickle in the back of my brain like . . . is this an indication that traditional masculinity (not just toxic, traditional) is detrimental to self-actualization?

Wait – wait, please, where are you going??!!  Nooooo don’t walk away! Ahhhhh!!!

But I do think that, so. I mean, hold that with you for as long as you want, but know that it’s there, as well as the fact that I think an HBO show about a hitman who wants to be an actor is a phenomenal example of this perspective.

If you’re sick of me ruining a show you like by framing it in a gender discussion, you’re in luck, because I’m gonna keep doing that a bit longer.

I’m one of the folks on the side of firmly adoring the “ronny/lily” (NYTimes) insanity episode, in which a little girl kicks Barry’s ass in the most bizarre series of scenes I’ve ever seen. It’s divisive, I guess, because it seems so absurd (which is always funny to me, when a show with an overall absurd premise decides to highlight another absurd thing and people are like TOO FAR!!!). But what a fun discussion that creates in my brain. Why is a little girl kicking a grown man’s ass so funny? There’s this animalistic thing the actress does that I’m obsessed with; I was in stitches partly because she was so incredible and partly because there was a definite relation to wanting to just go totally feral on someone who’s profoundly wronged you. And again: When does that happen?

If the whole point of this particular blog post is to get to the bottom of myself (ew?), I guess I have to think about where I’ve seen it before and it’s clicked. Mostly in my favorite show of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there were vibes of that in this episode that took me back. Mainly, when there are these moments of Lily looking so, so sad, exactly how a little girl who thinks her dad is dead would feel. And then come the outburst of violence again, from a totally unexpected source, and the relative balance between the two was really well-done. Feelings/ass-kicking/ass-kicking/feelings. One informing the other, instead of replacing each other.

I mean I’m probably making up stuff at this point but oh well. I just like when little girls are strong and cool and that a show working through themes of toxic masculinity made a point to have an episode showcasing that – someone’s got their eye on the theme long-game. All this talk about how it sticks out and honestly I think it highlighted some stuff in an incredibly fun, meaningful way.

I’ll let you take a moment before I finish talking about gender and Barry, but only to take some time to consider your own role in the patriarchy. Or to feed your cat. But only one of those two things, nothing else. If you don’t have a cat, you’re stuck contemplating patriarchy, those are the rules.

Ok, ready now?

When I started writing this blog, I looked up the actress’s name that plays Sally (Sarah Goldberg) to make sure I had it all shipshape (i.e., spelled correctly) and this is what the headlines looked like:

I also didn’t care for Sally, but dear reader, the reason I find this quick google so hilarious is that I was all set to write a whole thing about how clever I thought it was that . . . Sally just acts like a man. I’ve dated Sally, in male form. More than once. The character is painted as “unlikable” (wow, the gender stuff there! hooooo boy!) when discussed, but I was totally bowled over with how much I thought they literally just wrote her like how a man with the exact same life would be. This exchange in particular just made me D I E, doubled-over-laughing style:

Goldberg brings up as much in that (very, very excellent) Vanity Fair article, noting:

This bottomless appetite we have for male violence and this absolute allergy we have to female ambition . . . If it were a male character, no one would even notice.

I don’t know if it came from me compulsively analyzing everything I think or do or say (I am, yes, a blast to be around), but that *click* when I thought she was just acting like a man and not an “unlikable woman,” reflected out in the world, was just another level added to my deep adoration of this show that I didn’t even know was possible.

Later on, there’s . . . stuff revealed with Sally and an abusive relationship. Can’t lie, I tensed at the hints of it – and still did until the last moment of the second season. That idea of a “safe place to watch” for women looked super shaky, and I was just waiting for total horror, and knew that if what I was afraid would happen, happened, I’d be a firm out. Because if you’re talking about redemption, there are some things that are just irredeemable. But not only did it play out so realistically as to be borderline cathartic, the already-mentioned piece with Goldberg described how she was a large part of that. And fuck. Wow. That’s really good to hear, when you like something, that there’s a point in the making of it, by those in power, to take in perspectives that typically aren’t considered. What a testament to the best part of not being big jerk-wads too: The final product is always loads better when you listen to an informed source and not your own ideas of what you wish something was.

Thanks for going on a long Barry gender journey with me, it is truly appreciated. But before you leave me, also know that, all of this to say: This show is so unbelievably funny. It is so, so, so funny. And despite my ideas about gender and acting classes and whatever, there’s a scene in which Henry Winkler, as Mr. Cousineau, walks Barry through a big audition and I think I did, in fact, pee in my pants. And immediately rewound it and watched again. And I just watched it now, in celebration of finding the clip and discovering my new best friend, the person who uploaded it in its entirety to the internet. PLEASE PLEASE HBO don’t make them take it down. I just . . . please don’t make them take “shit pie” down.

Look at Bill Hader’s face. The earnestness. How he says “Jay Roach.” I can’t. I’m hyperventilating. Henry Winkler’s performance in this scene would have been more than enough, it really would have been. But I swear I am not lying when I say that sometimes, when I’m randomly going about my business in day-to-day life, I’ll think of Barry saying, “Cuz I taught her how to swim!” with that look of total triumph and just burst out laughing.

I honestly almost didn’t post it because I didn’t want to ruin the joy of seeing it in context, but then if you were on the fence and “shit pie” made you decide to watch Barry I think it’s worth the risk.

Watch Barry, guys. Get that joy where you can. And if that joy lies more in my reviewing products than gender analysis of popular television shows (how dare you), look at this bad boy I’ll be reviewing soon:

Yep, that’s right. I swam through the chaos of the Sephora VIB Spring Sale and walked away with one of the most coveted facial products of all time. Ok, really I just was like, “Oh, is this the last day of the sale?” and took my sleep mask off and, before my eyes had totally adjusted to the blaring sunlight charging through my window, had ordered via my phone a gross amount of stuff off the website before replacing my sleep mask and getting back to sleep-thinking (the best kind of thinking there is, when you’re mostly asleep and every thought you have is brilliant and possible). And then, well, they took so long to ship it because everything is so overwhelmed I figured I’d dreamed it. So the Baby Facial blog will be one of making dreams come true, yay! Also my skin isn’t thrilled with the quarantine conditions and is creating a whole new landscape of which the world has never seen.

Oh wow! That was fun!

If you like my nonsense, more of it is available on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Email me at whatthehellisonmyface at gmail dot com.