‘Barry’ Recap: Season 4, Episode 5 — Bill Hader Interview

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Sunday’s Barry.

Barry just threw us a big curveball… one that took eight years to develop.

This Sunday’s episode confirmed what we suspected from the end of the previous episode: We’ve jumped forward eight years in time, with Barry and Sally now living under new names (“Clark” and “Emily”) and raising a son named Jack in a bleak rural town somewhere in middle America. Barry seems happy enough with this new life — we can see he truly loves his son — but Sally is definitely not, swigging vodka and resorting to a near-affair with a sleazy diner cook just to feel something.

For Barry, “he’s in heaven,” star/co-creator Bill Hader tells TVLine in the above video. “It’s a very safe place for him.” He notes that Barry has also become very religious: “He can’t really find redemption with anybody else, so he’s turned to God for redemption… but again, I don’t think he really understands religion.” Barry is dedicated to being a strong father figure to Jack, though: “He’s very much trying to paint the version of himself that he wants to be to his son… How his son sees him is how he’s always wanted to be seen by everybody.”

For Sally, though, “she’s safe and miserable” in this new life, Sarah Goldberg (who plays Sally on the HBO series) tells us. “She’s in some ways resigned to it, and in other ways is drinking her way through.” But Sally sees this as an opportunity to scratch that acting itch of hers, complete with wig and accent: “She’s like, ‘If I’m going to live in the middle of nowhere and live this miserable life, I’m going to go to work every day and give the acting performance of my career.” (Sally’s fake accent is “totally unnecessary,” she points out with a laugh.)

It’s Sally’s way of fulfilling her frustrated acting dreams, Goldberg adds: “In many ways, it’s the part. Everybody wants to play the small-town lost soul with a drinking problem, so she’s going full Method on it.” She doesn’t seem to have much of a maternal instinct, either: “I think that motherhood was something that she would never have walked towards. That very much feels like Barry’s choosing… She’s not taken to motherhood under these circumstances, and I think she’s restless living out in the middle of nowhere with somebody who she knows is not well.”

Press PLAY above to hear Hader and Goldberg talk more about the time jump, and tell us in the comments: What do you think of Barry‘s big flash-forward?