His fear of Barry coming to kill him provides a perfect smokescreen for what he’s dreading most: sabotaging Cristobal’s sand operation and killing all their partners. But his refusal to rat finally earns him some street cred in the cell block, illustrated in a wordless sequence of his fellow prisoners waiting for him to eat before they dig in.Ĭan you tell that I’ve been putting off discussing Hank? It’s tough to talk about. He couldn’t tell them where Barry is if he wanted to. What he knows, and what we know, of course, is that Fuches wasn’t the one who smuggled the assassins in. Ironically, Fuches might be in the safest spot right now, even though he spends most of this episode getting tortured by the guards and warden for information about Barry’s whereabouts. Gene’s story is a good example: If the second half of the season does indeed pick up almost a decade later, will we meet a Gene who accidentally killed his own son? Typically, I’d assume Leo would survive this, but with that time jump as a cushion, anything feels possible. Practically everything that happens in this episode, of course, will take on more significance in retrospect after we see that final scene. It was his son Leo, who was coming with food. He instinctively shoots through the front door, using the Chekhov’s gun gifted to him by Rip Torn … but it’s not Barry standing on the other side. Pure fear comes into play when Gene wakes up to the shadow of a tall man in the porch light. This was where he killed Janice, and the paranoia that he could do the same to Gene is all too real.

Then again, Barry would know to look here when he didn’t find Gene at home. Both seem to understand they’re in danger and at least Gene has somewhere to hide away: his cottage at Big Bear Lake, a remote place without internet where he won’t be able to blab to the press. Using Barry’s logic, Gene and Hank both make sense as targets: the former tricked him into getting arrested and has been telling Barry’s story as his own, while the latter put a hit on Barry’s life, like, yesterday. Who will he go after first? That’s the terrifying question that keeps this episode going. For most of the run time, we’re left to panic alongside Hank and Gene - and to feel a little bit of dread every time Sally ignores a phone call. It comes down to a smart trick: Barry doesn’t appear in the episode until the final scene. It helps that while a lot is happening everywhere, a simple structure makes this work well as a suspenseful, self-contained episode. And yet … it’s hard to argue with the result when the lurching is as thrilling and devastating as this. All of that is truer than ever in “It Takes a Psycho,” an episode that lurches forward in every storyline, racing ahead to a truly wild conclusion.

While Bill Hader’s proclivity for tight, ruthlessly efficient storytelling is mostly an asset on this show, sometimes his more ambitious character arcs could use a little more time to percolate. If season four of Barry has one issue so far, it’s just how much is crammed into each episode.

Shooter at psycho silo