Jesus Christ this was one of the most cringy episodes of TV I've ever seen! It's like if you stretched that "Happy Birthday" scene from Breaking Bad or when Jesse was invited to dinner in Walt's house into 20 minutes of non-stop cringe daggers into your brain.
This episode reminds me of Better Call Saul's Waterworks where we see how Kim's life was after the events of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. I'm 99% sure Bill Hader took inspiration from Better Call Saul for this episode.
I do feel like an idiot for only realizing now after half the season is gone, that these future scenes in the desert are actually happening and aren't "possible" futures or Barry just dreaming. I guess I should've figured it out that since the flashbacks of him as a child meeting Fuches for the first are happening in the same desert, and them actually happening, that these flashforwards, therefore, are real too. I don't know how I didn't put two and two together. It's not like I was 100% completely thinking that they're not real, I just wasn't sure if the intention is to say they're real or not. I guess he would've chosen to show this on a beach since that represents the dream state and we've seen that happening in the third season if I recall correctly.
Now, there still might do a 180 degree and say this isn't actually what happens and it's just one boring possible future that might happen, but I'm not sure. Because now that I think about it, it makes total sense that they would skip into the future (8 years apparently), and show what happens next. The plotline of NoHo Hank is clearly done and I don't remember that having any loose ends after Cristobal's demise. Barry and Sally decided to gtfo in the previous episode so it makes sense that they would go to the country and start a new life. And with Barry gone from the lives of Gene Cousineau and Monroe Fuches, there's not much to show from them since nothing probably happened.
So while it makes sense in hindsight, I doubt they would just go into the future where Fuches and NoHo Hank are presumably out of the picture and they would just focus on Clark wanting to kill Gene Cousineau. And we still have 3 more episodes left! I seriously doubt we're stuck in this hellish future.
As for the episode itself, like I said, at the least, the first half of it was excruciating to sit through. Barry has always had cringey moments here and there and probably mostly when Sally was on screen. But this episode just takes it to another level and the writers probably went "Hey, remember all the brief cringey scenes we did in some episodes? Why not make a whole episode like that?"
The scene of Emily and her coworker guy - which I forgot the name of - sitting in the dinner must be one of the most excruciating scenes of media to sit through. I'm pretty sure force-watching this scene is gonna be used as a method of torture in Guantanamo Bay, and is gonna be against The Geneva Conventions.
At the same time, this is probably one of the funniest episodes of Barry I've seen. It's probably because there are so many cringe-inducing things happening, that a small funny scene makes me laugh harder to forget those scenes happen. The whole relationship Clark has with his son and the things he teaches him are sad and really funny at the same time. What Clark did after he found the baseball mitt is one of the funniest things this show has done. And his monologue about Abe and Gandhi is hilarious too.
Emily and Clark's relationship is also really sad and Bill makes it his obligation to hammer this broken marriage home. Emily probably would've had a more exciting life if she stayed Sally and just played small roles in tv shows or did regular jobs being single than living this utterly boring country life with her utterly boring husband who's only interests are history trivia presidents of the United States.
I also love the shot of both of them sitting far from each other looking at their laptops with two huge pitch-black windows over their heads. I thought it was a brilliant composition.
Now like I said before, I know that it makes total sense that this is actually happening and it's the present now, and it makes sense that there would be no more story and plot after Barry and Sally were out of the picture until Gene, or rather Warner Bros. Decided to make a biopic about Barry. But I'm still not sure why they would keep up this flashback flashforward feel of the scenes by showing the desert all throughout. Since the desert around them on the surface and on a technical level has always been there to represent that we are watching a flashback or a look into the future, I feel like we're still not done with the present when Barry and Sally decided to run away together. I just think it's a jarring transition for the audience (or at least for my dumb brain) to fully go into the future and keep it on the desert without establishing before that we are actually watching a real timeline and these are actually happening. I guess Bill Hader thought his audience would be smarter and didn't anticipate my dumb ahh watching this show! Or I just didn't pay attention enough and didn't get the memo.
Anyway, we have to wait and see if this is actually happening or not and if we're gonna go back to the present (technically the past) and see what happens to NoHo Hank and Fuches, or if we're just gonna meet them in this future instead.
I am also not really sure why a biopic would endanger them more than they already are. Their faces were already all over the internet and everybody would've seen them, no? But I guess it's been eight years and nobody remembers them, so a movie about them with their faces on it would definitely put them under the spotlight again and expose them. I guess I just answered my own question! What an utterly useless paragraph to end your review on...
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