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ymgve posted:Gene did the absolutely right thing by blasting Barry away. Like, the people in this show are so indecisive that a stray phone call during the trip to the police station could have turned Barry around into "must kill Gene" mode again. Gene must have the absoulutely worst lawyer ever, because shooting a known fugitive killer that's in your own home is one of the clearest cases of self defense ever. Gene went to prison for having Moss killed.
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# ? May 29, 2023 16:37 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 13:28 |
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:I'm legit sad we didn't get a straight ending and a feature length "Mask Collector." Yeah, if a 60 minute tv movie just hit HBO a few months later with zero fanfare and just waiting for the internet to pick up on it, it would’ve been so much better.
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# ? May 29, 2023 16:45 |
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live with fruit posted:Gene went to prison for having Moss killed. the text at the end specifies he is in prison for the murders of both Janice and Barry
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# ? May 29, 2023 16:45 |
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I saw someone on Twitter comment that the show started suffering when Hader began directing all of the episodes instead of just some, so his focus skewed more on the directing with less focus on the writing, and I tend to agree. The scene by scene scripting and jokes are still solid, but the overall plotting and themes feel kind of haphazard in the final season. We get almost no interiority into Barry himself this season, the Death Beach and the desert winds are completely abandoned. I get that Hader didn't want people to sympathize with Barry but you can't write your show for the Comments section.
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# ? May 29, 2023 16:52 |
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Definitely a mixed bag. I like the idea of the movie and it felt inevitable, but also the execution just didn't work for me. It would have played better if the movie itself felt more technically well done, like something that would actually be well regarded in the universe. Oscar bait instead of made-for-TV trash. It just didn't hit for me, and the kid never really got a chance to be enough a character for me to be invested in his reaction to it. For that matter, I never quite connected with Fuches after his heel turn as the Raven. It really felt like it needed more episodes or even another season to actually make that time jump work. I did like his last moment with Barry, and Hank's end was kind of perfect and more heartbreaking than I ever thought it would be
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# ? May 29, 2023 17:05 |
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https://twitter.com/alecrobbins/status/1663216271998222336?s=46&t=uiUehxbkNdNcN0PmfZ4Vaw
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# ? May 29, 2023 17:35 |
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Tender Bender posted:I saw someone on Twitter comment that the show started suffering when Hader began directing all of the episodes instead of just some, so his focus skewed more on the directing with less focus on the writing, and I tend to agree. The scene by scene scripting and jokes are still solid, but the overall plotting and themes feel kind of haphazard in the final season. Especially after finding out that Hader's going to direct a horror movie. The final scene with Sally was really tense for ultimately no reason. The more I think about it, the less I understand what Hader was going for with the movie. If it's a commentary on true crime obsession, that doesn't feel earned. It seemed like a commentary on stuff like Peters' Dahmer but looked more like Renner's. And if it was a commentary on Hollywood, making it Lifetime movie quality undercut it.
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# ? May 29, 2023 17:38 |
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I'm a proud member of the Lifetime Movie Club and the Barry movie was 100% spot-on.
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# ? May 29, 2023 17:45 |
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Endings are always hard. I found the finale... fine? Way fewer laugh out loud bits than pretty much every other episode. I actually would have preferred to see a little more Mask Collector with a little more production value too.
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# ? May 29, 2023 18:15 |
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What Hader is going for with the movie is that this lovely TV movie is all anyone will ever know about Gene Cousineau and Barry Berkman and all the events of the series. People relate to the world through stories and they kind of need to- Barry did it in a ton of ways from "starting now" to flitting through different religious broadcasts until he found one he liked, Hank wouldn't let go of his romanticization of Cristobal's death literally to save his life and dies clutching the golden statue, Fuches has a whole monologue about how he lied to himself until he was forced to face reality, and John looks actually happy when he sees what he knows to be outright lies in the movie, because they're comforting lies. Put well on the last page:Paper Lion posted:unorganized rambling thoughts after having just watched it, but very surprised to see people be down about the ending. this show has always been against hollywood in many forms, and one of those forms is it being against conventional storytelling, and what our consumption of that storytelling does to our ability to understand our lives and the events around us. we see this repeatedly, like the way so many people came back around on gene, the cop that was ready to be cool to barry just because he was on tv, fuches seeing himself and barry in rainman, these are just examples from this season because its freshest to me. this is a criticism that is being extended out to you, the watcher as well. anyone saying it "needed more impact" or it "wasnt big enough" or whatever are completely missing the contention by hader and berg that no story really NEEDS more of anything. a story is a series of events being told to you in a particular way, and that particular way can be whatever makes it have the secret sauce that turns it from raw information to entertainment. and, to storytellings detriment, any craft or care in that particular way has been replaced with "more impact" or "bigger". sometimes the pieces dont all fit together, sometimes people miss things that help explain it all. and, most importantly, sometimes people are trained by poor narratives into thinking about their lives as though they are the stories they see on tv, so you end up with people that should know better like moss leaping to stupid conclusions, or to the cyclical nature of the ending where this story where everyone bungles everything due to this poor ability to narrativize their lives then gets filtered back through the machine of lovely hollywood writing and spit back out to them. this is a show about hollywood, and all the humanity and nuance of our characters was reduced down to nothing. barrys most traumatic moment through a funhouse mirror where afghanistan is a deciduous forest, gene as a cynical mastermind and not the oblivious narcissist. there can be no justice in a world where the people are incapable of understanding the facts presented to them, or where presenting those facts wouldnt be entertaining enough so they must be altered from the get go. its bleak. and all i can do is laugh at it.
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# ? May 29, 2023 18:16 |
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:I liked the poetic (depressing) irony that Gene hosed himself over, finally doing the type of thing he was previously accused of. Especially since it looked like Barry was about to turn himself in. I think Gene knew that he was screwed either way: even if Barry had confessed, the story of Gene as his accomplice being blasted across all the entertainment blogs meant his life was effectively over. Even if he didn't go to prison, so what? His son hated him and any reputation he ever had as an esteemed actor (even if most of it was in his mind) was tarnished forever. Killing Barry was a revenge for something that couldn't be fixed by that point.
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# ? May 29, 2023 18:24 |
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I still don’t get why Hank just didn’t give Barry Fuches address instead of his own.
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# ? May 29, 2023 18:25 |
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Fred Melamed (Tom?) was with him the whole way
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# ? May 29, 2023 18:26 |
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ruddiger posted:I still don’t get why Hank just didn’t give Barry Fuches address instead of his own. He wanted to hand Fuches over to Barry to get Fuches out of his life, not to kill either of them. If he makes those two go to war, the survivor invariably comes back to kill him.
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# ? May 29, 2023 18:32 |
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Really didn’t like the last few episodes and that finale kinda sucked. Hank’s death scene was pretty schlocky, but I think that was intentional. Overall I don’t think it stuck the landing. At all. And watching it after the spectacular Succession finale did it no favors, like that other poster mentioned. Pretty disappointed.
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# ? May 29, 2023 18:59 |
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Great TV in general, but: 1> The whole baby-brain level Christian nonsense was weak and cheap fake "characterization." Yes, I know there are crazy people, but it just felt forced and obnoxious. 2> You can't go into a wal-mart, especially in California, and buy rifles with expensive optics no less (and pass a background check as a fugitive.) 3> Barry's end was just kinda mean-spirited, pretty clearly an expression of Bill's disillusionment with the audience's attitude toward him. I think you have to forgive a ton, though. Rare to get anything this creative and fully realized, especially over six seasons.
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:34 |
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AlternateAccount posted:
I mean this is 10 years in the future. Look back to 10 years ago and compare it to the way things are going...
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:35 |
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Medullah posted:I mean this is 10 years in the future. Look back to 10 years ago and compare it to the way things are going... For gun laws in California? Yeah, I am okay assuming that will still be the case.
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:36 |
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Actual favorite bit is the fake-movie's million little pieces/this is us/whatever unnecessary shaky cam.
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:37 |
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this comedy show isn't realistic
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:42 |
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It was too brightly lit to be a Wal Mart. It’s obviously whatever brand of Kroger grocery store they have in LA. (Ralph’s?)
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:53 |
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A lot of the complaints in this thread are wild. Barry has always existed in a GTA style hellverse. Barry buying those guns and then striding through the toy section isn't a mistake. It is both a joke and part of the point it's making about the US. Great season. Great finale. What a great loving show.
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:57 |
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Detective No. 27 posted:It was too brightly lit to be a Wal Mart. It’s obviously whatever brand of Kroger grocery store they have in LA. (Ralph’s?) It looked like a CVS.
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# ? May 29, 2023 19:57 |
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AlternateAccount posted:2> You can't go into a wal-mart, especially in California, and buy rifles with expensive optics no less (and pass a background check as a fugitive.) I think they are aware of this and just thought it would be funny in the heightened reality of the show (shotgun car salesman, tai kwan do kid, etc etc). It's not really a show about filling out 4473s and waiting a week and having a goofy rear end brundlefly paddle grip and 10 round fixed mag because it's cali. They could have done a scene where he buys them out of a guys trunk black market but that's a little narratively busy and introduces a new underworld character for the audience to wonder who's gang he's in etc etc. The ultimate narrative objective is setting barry up with Lots of Guns to drive home the irony of how it actually shakes out. Here in Wisconsin is was literally actually quicker to leave the sporting goods store with an AR, 1000 rounds and a few mags than a fishing liscence. If in 8 years the SC flattens things out to the least common denominator of restrictions nationally the most unrealistic part would be the rifles coming with presumably already zeroed optics. Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 20:09 on May 29, 2023 |
# ? May 29, 2023 20:03 |
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I love the complaints about the time skip because it's clear people aren't paying attention. "It's not even near future, they didn't change anything". The whole world is more cynical. They have things called phone movies, actors are referred to as their social handles, and you can just buy guns in the toy aisle. Of course it's not realistic in our current world, because it's a look at how things could be in 8 years if things go really shittily. "Barry couldn't buy all those guns as an ex convict". Yeah, maybe now, but after 8 more years of "guns have more rights than children" policies from the people whose first act of legislation in 2017 was to make it easier for mentally ill people to get guns? It's totally believable, especially in the GTA adjacent world of Barry where no one cares that there's a gun fight on the highway or in car dealership. And shooting Barry was the worst thing Gene could do. He's already suspected of manipulating Barry into killing Janice. Barry was the only person who could have vindicated Gene, and he's dead. I doubt Gene's agent (or lawyer?) saying Barry wanted to turn himself in before being shot would have helped against the narrative Moss created. Especially since Gene double tapped Barry. You can easily see that as Gene silencing him so he can't testify against Gene. I doubt Moss cares who really killed Janice, he just doesn't like Gene. Pinning the murders on Gene just gets the job done and there's not really anyone who can dispute it. A respected ex cop has a believable narrative about what happened vs a guy who has made himself look guilty every step of the way.
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# ? May 29, 2023 20:12 |
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:Fred Melamed (Tom?) was with him the whole way nah he was a ‘broken vitamix’ and a rolling luggage away from severing this show and its creators bought a lot of faith from me with the incredible first three seasons and I was ready to enjoy whatever ride this last season would take us on but I was left wanting by the back half. I was adamant they’d stick the landing with this last episode but it only gave middling and somewhat rushed denouement to what is otherwise an alltimer tv show. wish the show afforded a bit more time for post-timeskip, or even just didn’t timeskip at all. still a great show but I had sky-high expectations
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# ? May 29, 2023 20:14 |
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I just checked the App Store and there’s no bomb detonation app, my immersion!
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# ? May 29, 2023 20:18 |
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One thing that got me in season one is the big dumb Marines wear multicam/OCP instead of marpat, which they'd absolutely prefer if they identify with semper fi moto poo poo and would already have from their time in service. Ultimately though that didn't matter at all to the show, is a detail only a broken mind like mine notices, and I let it go.
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# ? May 29, 2023 20:26 |
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Wittgen posted:Barry buying those guns and then striding through the toy section isn't a mistake. It is both a joke and part of the point it's making about the US. \ Yes, it's SoCiAl CoMmEnTaRy, but done by stupid people. Sorry, just twists me up given that way too many people think that that's approaching reality. I wish I could buy a rock bottom price EOTech at Walmart/Kroger/CVS :\
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# ? May 29, 2023 20:29 |
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Barry going to a gun show could have worked comedy wise, but would have been hard to cut as short.
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# ? May 29, 2023 20:39 |
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AlternateAccount posted:Yes, it's SoCiAl CoMmEnTaRy, but done by stupid people. Sorry, just twists me up given that way too many people think that that's approaching reality. "This show doesn't hold up to scrutiny by people who get pedantic over gun types and purchase methods" is a feature, not a bug
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# ? May 29, 2023 20:42 |
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yeah i didn’t particularly like the finale or the second half of the season but Barry going to get a huge arsenal at wal mart and being in and out in five minutes is clearly a gag and a pretty good one
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# ? May 29, 2023 21:30 |
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I demand realism from the show where a feral 12 year old girl in a karate gi manages to beat up a former soldier working as a hitman.
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# ? May 29, 2023 21:36 |
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Fiction is not allowed to exaggerate about the stuff I have made a part of my identity.
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# ? May 29, 2023 21:38 |
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Mask Collector got me wondering how challenging it is for a reasonably skilled actor to deliberately play a poor actor putting in a bad or middling performance. The layers of abstraction at work to calibrate it just right, convincingly flat without being self-consciously so, makes my head hurt.
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# ? May 29, 2023 21:44 |
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Christopher in the Sopranos was great at playing a bad actor.
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# ? May 29, 2023 21:47 |
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Barry in Barry was great at playing a bad actor. but he was 6'2 so it's alright. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidjJB1p4G0 cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 22:00 on May 29, 2023 |
# ? May 29, 2023 21:56 |
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They were absolutely going for a Jim Caveizel type for movie Barry.
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# ? May 29, 2023 22:35 |
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AlternateAccount posted:I wish I could buy a rock bottom price EOTech at Walmart/Kroger/CVS :\
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# ? May 29, 2023 22:35 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 13:28 |
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absolutely shocked that the guy who watches barry and wishes he had those guns didn't like the social commentary
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# ? May 29, 2023 22:36 |