The Barry Series Finale Finally Gave Sally And John A Connection
This post contains spoilers for "Barry" season 4.
As soon as "Barry" jumped ahead eight years and gave Sally and Barry a son, one thing's been made clear: Sally's not that great of a mother. She's not outright mean to him, sure, but she's definitely checked out of this relationship. Throughout "tricky legacies," it's Barry who's putting in all the effort to raise their kid, and Sally can't be bothered to step in even when Barry's parenting methods skew towards insanity.
When Barry leaves Sally alone with John in the episode "the wizard," her parenting skills are revealed to be even worse than we thought. Not only does she make him the world's worst grilled cheese sandwich, but she pours vodka into the seven-year-old's drink to calm him down.
It's hard to be too mad at her for all this. The Sally we follow throughout the second half of season 4 is as depressed and unhappy as she's ever been, and John is the manifestation of all of that. He's the direct result of the devastating choice she made back in the episode "it takes a psycho," in which she gave up on her career for the sense of safety Barry provided. We don't approve of Sally being a completely checked-out mother, but we can at least understand.
Luckily for Sally fans, the series finale of "Barry" wasn't nonstop gloom and doom for all the characters. Hank and Barry may have met their bitter ends, but Sally's still alive and finding her calling as an acting teacher. Things are looking up for her, and this all started with her conversation with John early in the finale where, for the first time, Sally lets herself be a mom.
She may not be a good person, but John is
In a recent interview with Vulture, Sarah Goldberg talked about what she thinks of Sally's moments with John in the finale. "She's looking at this kid like, 'You've come from all this ugliness. You've come from a serial killer and a broken person and you're actually alright. How the hell did that happen?'" Fans have always joked about how much of a psychopath a Sally/Barry child would likely turn out to be, but as far as we can tell the opposite is true: John is an aggressively normal, well-adjusted, empathetic kid. Despite his absolute mess of a childhood, there's no real indication that he'll ever go down the same dark paths as either of his parents.
The scene where Sally tells John that both his parents are murderers, and where John hugs her anyway, is one of the most heartwarming scenes in the whole show and also one of the most important. For Sally, it's vital because it's the moment where she's able to look at John as more than just the manifestation of her worst decisions. For John, it's important because he's finally getting some actual clarity. His mother might be a murderer, but at least she's finally telling the truth.
Sally making a connection with John is also what motivates her decision to leave Barry while he's sleeping, just as she left her abusive husband years before the start of the show. Sally hadn't cared enough about herself to escape this new, equally-terrible relationship, but now she at least cares enough about John to get him out of it. As Goldberg put it, "She needed to redeem herself for being such a terrible, absent, and abusive mother."
Breaking the cycle
From the moment we met John, fans have interpreted this family's dynamic as being a tragic repeat of Sally's own upbringing. Just like Sally grew up with a cold, uncaring mother and a cluelessly positive father, it seemed like Sally had become the type of mother she grew up with, and Barry had become like her father.
But "Barry" only plays around with this idea for a few episodes and in the end, Sally chooses to change for the better. Her final scene has her calmly rejecting a man's advances without any drama and having an easygoing conversation with her son. She drives home alone, content with her work on a well-received student theater play. Her relationship with her son is a still little more distant than we'd hope for — when teen John says "I love you" to her, she doesn't say the words back — but it's still far more gentle than what we've seen from Sally's own mom.
Although "Barry" has stirred up a lot of controversy for the incredibly bleak direction it went in for its final two seasons, it's nice to know that at least Sally got a hopeful ending. In a show that's seemingly all about how people can't change, Sally's shown some actual growth in this final episode and it's nice to see. As Sarah Goldberg put it, "I don't think she's winning any awards for the mother she's become, but she's done the best she possibly could have under the circumstances." Sally might not have achieved her biggest Hollywood dreams, but she's found some semblance of peace. For this show where most of its main characters have ended up dead or in prison, Sally's quiet happy ending is a nice minor miracle.
We'll take what we can get.