Barry Star Breaks Down HBO Series' Finale

Last night saw the series finale of Barry, HBO's series that starred Bill Hader as a former hitman trying to turn his life around as an actor and a family man. The ending as as shocking as the rest of the series, and has been generating social media chatter since it aired. Along the way, a number of the actors have stepped up to give their point of view, including TV icon Henry Winkler and Sarah Goldberg, who played Barry's ex-girlfriend Sally. The ending for Sally was apparently a bit of a conflicting one for Goldberg, but she learned to love it, even though both the ending and the character herself have obvious rough edges. From this point on, be aware that there will be spoilers for the series finale of Barry, which aired last night on HBO.

At the end of the episode, after Barry has been shot and killed, Sally finds herself living a simple, modest life. Not the Hollywood star she fantasized about being, Sally is instead a drama teacher, putting on a school play and going home with her son, and a bouquet of flowers from her students.

"After all the crazy dramatic highs that Sally has in this season, to end her story so simply, I thought, was so poetic and beautiful," Goldberg told TVLine. "When I saw it on the page, I did have a moment of, like, 'Huh, that's it? She's just riding in the car with flowers on the passenger seat?' And then when it came to shooting it, it was just so beautiful. Such a beautiful quiet moment after all the chaos. And I kind of love that here was this actress who came to L.A. wanting an Oscar and wanting all these accolades and wanting to be a star, and actually, she's just got this bouquet of s–tty supermarket flowers, and it's enough, you know? She's actually kind of content. It may as well be an Oscar. I thought that was lovely."

There's an inherent darkness to the end of the series. For the handful of people still left rooting for the title character, his death is a downer -- but for the rest of the audience, the degree to which Barry "won" is disheartening, too. In the end, Gene goes to jail for killing Barry, and is framed for a number of Barry's crimes. Barry, meanwhile, comes off looking fairly innocent, and his life is turned into a movie, which Sally's son has to sneak off in order to watch because his mom has banned it from the house.

"I think there's a real bleak message somewhere in there that I haven't fully digested," Goldberg said. "I mean, he finally pivots and understands he needs to do the right thing. The thesis of the show was like: Am I a good person? Ultimately, there was something in Barry that was good-natured. It's what made him an interesting character, that somebody who's seemingly good-natured could behave so abysmally. But the truth is: He's a bad person. At every juncture, at every fork in the road that he has over the four seasons to do the right thing, he chooses the selfish thing. He chooses self-preservation. And because of that, the death toll accumulates. When you think all way back to Chris getting shot in Season one, it's devastating. So I think he finally has the epiphany of, "Oh, I need to do the right thing," and I think it's genuine. But yeah, he's shot dead before that's allowed to happen. There's something very bleak and beautiful about that."

Here's the official synopsis for Barry:

Disillusioned at the thought of taking down another "mark," depressed, low-level hit man Barry Berkman seeks a way out. When the Midwesterner reluctantly travels to Los Angeles to execute a hit on an actor who is bedding a mobster's wife, little does Barry know that the City of Angels may be his sanctuary. He follows his target into acting class and ends up instantly drawn to the community of eager hopefuls, especially dedicated student Sally, who becomes the object of his affection. While Barry wants to start a new life as an actor, his handler, Fuches, has other ideas, and the hit man's criminal past won't let him walk away so easily.

You can catch the whole series on Max.

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