S04.E05: tricky legacies

[meep.meep]

Who sent them the big framed case of Barry and his medals?  The same person who knocked on the door?

I want to know about Gene's son also - he didn't deserve to be shot.

They can't be living on Sally's earnings as a waitress, even if she's stealing from the till.  That was a huge pile of packages on the porch.

[Dev F]

38 minutes ago, meep.meep said:

Who sent them the big framed case of Barry and his medals?  The same person who knocked on the door?

I think Barry just got it out of storage put it there as a lame special surprise for his son.

Quote

I want to know about Gene's son also - he didn't deserve to be shot.

The way the "Previously on . . ." scenes juxtaposed Gene's shooting with Barry's confession to Gene about what happened in Korangal made me wonder if accidentally shooting his son is going to change the way Gene thinks about Barry and his crimes. Obviously, he's not going to suddenly feel great about the guy who murdered his girlfriend, but I wonder if it's made him rethink his earlier conclusion that the Korangal story is an unthinkable crime that Barry should never mention to anyone, since he himself is now guilty of something eerily similar.

[Pike Ludwell]

I liked this episode and found lots of humor in it. E.g., the table scene with the chicken pot pie. That was the worst looking cpp I've ever seen! LOL And then the way Barry says "chicken pot pie". And the discussion about Lincoln where Sally pipes in about how he's on the penny, etc. Just hilarious. There was lots of subtle humor throughout.

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, Pike Ludwell said:

I liked this episode and found lots of humor in it. E.g., the table scene with the chicken pot pie. That was the worst looking cpp I've ever seen! LOL And then the way Barry says "chicken pot pie". And the discussion about Lincoln where Sally pipes in about how he's on the penny, etc. Just hilarious. There was lots of subtle humor throughout.

Playing drunk can be hard to do , and she really nailed the level Sally was at. I agree, I thought a lot of the episode was really funny.

I once heard Bill Hader doing a sort of impression of his father, and I feel like he pulls from that a bit in this episode. Not that his father was like Barry, but the authentic Dad-type voice really sells it.

[shapeshifter]

8 hours ago, pasdetrois said:

This episode personified "bleak." That cheap little (modular?) house on a barren landscape. Shudder.

That "house on a barren landscape" could be an artist's retreat, a la Georgia O'Keefe. 
It's what's going on in Barry brain that mades it creepy. 
IMO.

[Superb Owl]

22 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

 

If anyone's taking a vote, I didn't hate this episode and I also didn't think it was funny. I just felt so sad for John.

Yes, exactly, I said something similar earlier in the thread. Seeing how they both treated John, I said to Mr. Superb Owl while watching the episode that "this is child abuse". Maybe it wasn't meant to be taken so seriously but man, it was brutal to me. 

Question, was the kid that John was fighting with when the episode started the same kid who was teaching him baseball? Maybe when the shit hits the fan with Barry & Sally, John can go live with that kid's family who at least seemed closer to normal. I'm obviously thinking about this too much.

[Cosmocrush]

7 hours ago, meep.meep said:

That was a huge pile of packages on the porch.

Sure but it looked mostly like staples a household would need for a month:  paper towels, toothbrushes, pens and pencils, new power strips, etc.   Nothing  more extravagant than a monthly trip to the store. 

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Superb Owl said:

Yes, exactly, I said something similar earlier in the thread. Seeing how they both treated John, I said to Mr. Superb Owl while watching the episode that "this is child abuse". Maybe it wasn't meant to be taken so seriously but man, it was brutal to me. 

Question, was the kid that John was fighting with when the episode started the same kid who was teaching him baseball? Maybe when the shit hits the fan with Barry & Sally, John can go live with that kid's family who at least seemed closer to normal. I'm obviously thinking about this too much.

Yes, I thought it was the same kid. Ironically, his father seemed to be doing a great job raising him to be kind even in the face of John hitting him!

[arc]

19 hours ago, pasdetrois said:

I guess no cable/satellite service, as they used laptops for all of their entertainment, even worship.

If you can stream to a laptop, you can stream to a TV. Worst case you need an intermediary device like an Apple TV or a Chromecast.

 

On 5/9/2023 at 8:39 PM, Dev F said:

Some of those scenes were memories of real past events (e.g., young Barry meeting Fuches)

Y’know, I took it as a memory of a real past event but I didn’t think it was literal. Something about it felt deliberately surreal. Like, if instead of a vast open plain it was in a black box theater, I wouldn’t think Barry actually met Fuches in a black box theater.

[Amarsir]

Do you think the story is about committing your heart to a part instead of just being convincing?

Clark espouses values that aren't anything like how Barry lived. He didn't temper his feelings, never avoided danger, and certainly didn't accept responsibility. But if we didn't know Barry I would think Clark was genuine (if deeply misguided) and was content with this life. He's throwing himself into the part every day.

Sally wanted acting as a path to fame and excitement. No doubt she thought being on the run would be thrilling too. Now she acts every day and hates it because she's anonymous and bored.

Unfortunately this view treats John as a prop, not a person. He's not too old for the lack of socialization to be fixed, but everything he thinks is real is just an act and I don't think the show will have time to do him justice.

[Ottis]

Perhaps the whole point of this episode was to be boring and dark. THIS is the life Barry so wanted, as he tried to escape his past and its violence. Is it worth it? No one is happy. Barry seems quietly desperate. They are damaging the poor kid. And in the end, they are not actually free.

Maybe we needed to see all that to arrive at, “sometimes you just need to be who you are.” 

[heatherchandler]

On 5/9/2023 at 7:55 AM, aemom said:

I did not really like this episode because I kept waiting for someone to wake up/stop hallucinating.  We've already seen Barry hallucinating many times with scenes in the desert, and this did not look like a real way to live:

A house quite literally in the middle of nowhere.  How are they getting electricity, internet access, and cell service?  How far does Sally drive into town to get to her job?  It seems like such a fake scene and they are both so awful to John, that it was very hard for me to become invested in any of it.

But wow - full credit to Sally for her commitment to this whole life being an act.  Not only does she wear her dark wig all of the time, but she keeps dying the hair underneath it blonde.

Wondering what happens next.

I went to college in Illinois with a bunch of people who lived literally in the middle of nowhere. I was surprised at first, having grown up in a suburb, but it was normal for rural people.

Who was knocking?

[KittyQ]

On 5/7/2023 at 8:16 PM, Irlandesa said:

I still struggle with Sally's choice to leave with Barry, live in the desert, and procreate with him.  But the biggest stumper of them all for me was her decision to wear a wig instead of dying her hair dark at this point.  Just practically, it'd make sense if she did that.

I wondered the same thing about Sally's hair. I could see wearing a wig at first, but eight years on? She also wears the wig at home, which is strange. Dying her hair would at least make her life a little easier, since there would be a little less active deception because her appearance would be consistent. Even her kid wonders why she "wears hair on top of her hair". Dying it would at least let her explain that she just prefers the other color to her natural color.

[shapeshifter]

14 minutes ago, KittyQ said:

I wondered the same thing about Sally's hair. I could see wearing a wig at first, but eight years on? She also wears the wig at home, which is strange. Dying her hair would at least make her life a little easier, since there would be a little less active deception because her appearance would be consistent. Even her kid wonders why she "wears hair on top of her hair". Dying it would at least let her explain that she just prefers the other color to her natural color.

To me, all of the above points to Sally wearing the wig because she still clings to her old identity. She is ready at any moment to take off that wig and be herself again.

[KittyQ]

The setting is so very strange; it is as though the house was plopped down in the middle of a plot of land with nothing at all on it - no grass, no trees, not even any kind of desert flora. Compare this location to the locations in "Dark Winds", for example, where some of the people live pretty far off the grid in the southwest - granted DW is more "realistic" in all ways than "Barry", but at least there is some environmental context for living "in the middle of nowhere", while in "Barry", this looks like a dire fantasy setting, similar to the memory / hallucinational settings Barry experienced before.

I started thinking about this and wondered if the idea was that this setting is just how Barry and Sally perceive their existence. Even if, in reality, they are living in a modest house in a non-descript town somewhere far from LA, with a regular landscape and all, they see it all as if it were really this desolate flat location where they are isolated from regular life and living because their most important goal is to stay low and off the radar of the dangerous people they were involved with. However, even official Witness Protection wouldn't put someone in such a place*. 

 

* I don't have personal experience of this, just drawing on what I saw on "In Plain Sight".

[rmontro]

On 8/28/2023 at 3:40 PM, KittyQ said:

The setting is so very strange; it is as though the house was plopped down in the middle of a plot of land with nothing at all on it - no grass, no trees, not even any kind of desert flora.

If Barry has any sort of influence over where he's living, maybe he wants this kind of setting because you can see anything coming in such a place, it's highly defensible.  

I wasn't a big fan of the episode, it's kind of dull.  And you can see that the series is winding down, and things will be coming to a head shortly, and probably not in a particularly happy way.  This was like the calm before the storm.  I've never really liked time jumps so much anyway, it's a little jarring.