Emmy nominees to watch before the telecast: Bill Hader and 'Barry'
Bill Hader stars as a hit man with acting aspirations in HBO's "Barry." Credit: HBO/John P. Johnson
This week I'm taking a look back at key nominees for the forthcoming 70th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (NBC/4, Sept. 17). HBO's "Barry," its star, Bill Hader, and supporting actor Henry Winkler are nominated in the comedy categories.
I was lukewarm about "Barry" back in March when it launched. Too violent. Too flat. Too obvious. A hit man seeks to discover his humanity in acting class? That's nice. But — and these are hard words to write — I was wrong, or specifically wrong about the one central animating force that turned this into the Emmy-nominated sensation it has since become.
That would be Hader's performance. Until "The Skeleton Twins," Hader's 2014 tragicomedy about a suicidal man and his estranged sister (Kristen Wiig), it was easy to pigeonhole Hader as the "SNL" impressions guy or the prolific voice actor. He was brilliant, but also a blur of faces and names — Vinny Vedecci or Stefon or "Scaramooch" or the President of Hollywood or Dr. Malocchio ("The Awesomes") or Ike Broflovski ("South Park") or Flint Lockwood ("Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs").
Who was the real Hader? That didn't seem to matter when everyone else was so good. With Milo ("Twins"), then Barry, Hader began to offer answers. They were — and are — compelling ones.
Before we get to those, here's a quick overview of this eight-parter, created by Hader and Alec Berg. Barry (Hader) is a Marine veteran who fought in Afghanistan, and back stateside, fell into a gig as a hit man. His partner and handler, Fuches (Stephen Root), decides the two of them should go to Los Angeles. The head of the Chechen mob, one Goran Pazar (Glenn Fleshler) and his henchman, Noho Hank (Anthony Carrigan), have a job for Barry — to kill the personal trainer who’s been having an affair with Goran’s wife. Barry trails him to an actors studio, run by the blustery Gene Cousineau (Winkler). Barry is suddenly intrigued by the idea of acting and especially by one of Cousineau’s thespian wannabes, Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg). But where Barry goes, so go the cops, and one of them, Det. Moss (Paula Newsome), becomes suspicious of the new student.
With dead-fish eyes and an expression as blank as a corpse, Barry Berkman (or Block — hit men do need aliases) goes about his business efficiently and joylessly. We first see him in the act of symbolic absolution, washing his hands, then in a shower. He's not fully dead inside, but near enough. There's a spark of remorse, hardly even that. The act of killing is unremarkable — the mere act of changing a tire. That will evolve as the series progresses, but Hader walks this knife edge for eight episodes. He's an empty vessel who must ultimately confront the void of himself.
Barry, in a sense, is the anti-impressionist, or the antithesis of one. He's everything Hader is not: No impersonations, no voices, no comic effect. He's a nobody, or no one. That's also what's behind the power of this performance. Hader created someone uniquely damaged and hollowed out. Watch these eight episodes on hbogo.com to see why he's also favored to win at the 70th Annual Primetime Emmys.
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