'Barry' Season 2 Teaser: Bill Hader's Pitch-Black, Pitch-Perfect Hitman Comedy Is Back
With its first season, Barry took a potentially hacky premise ("A hitman wants to become an actor!") and transformed it into the darkest, funniest, most intense crime show since Breaking Bad. Even with the comedy at the forefront, Bill Hader and Alec Berg's series bottled some kind of lightning – it was hilarious and it was intense and it was charming and it was horrifying.
The first teaser trailer for the second season of Barry has arrived and while there's not too much here, it's a reminder that the return of Game of Thrones in a few months isn't the only reason to make sure your HBO subscription is all paid for.
Barry Season 2 Teaser
The teaser doesn't even hint at the dark decisions that were made in the season 1 finale, when Barry (Hader) reminded us that while we may like him, he's still very much a rotten-to-the-core sociopath. However, it does promise more of what made that freshman season so incredible: Hader (who won an Emmy for season 1) playing it all very straight and really selling his character's bottled-up anger, Henry Winkler (who also won an Emmy for his work) espousing acting advice that sounds one part guru and one part used car salesman, and, of course, the return of NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), one of the greatest new TV characters in recent memory.
There's not much plot on display here, but we know Barry will continue to juggle his criminal and Hollywood lives, attempting to break into acting via a class full of total losers while also murdering people for money. Season 1 struck a perfect balance between Los Angeles satire and unnerving crime tale, surrounding the title character with delusional goofs but never treating Barry's violent and harsh work with anything less than dead-seriousness. Barry rightfully realized that Barry himself should be a terrifying force of precision violence, hidden in plain sight amongst people who are too self-centered to ever notice him.
The teaser does not provide us with a premiere date for Barry season 2, but it does promise to return this spring. Could HBO pair this with Game of Thrones, which returns for its final season on April 14? In the past, the network has often programmed its flagship series alongside two must-see comedies, so that feels likely. In any case, consider this your chance to rewatch the first season. Or watch it for the first time. Those eight episodes are a very easy binge.