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Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4, Episode 3 of Barry. When the buzz in advance of Barry’s fourth and final season included talks of a number of cameos, it was enough to raise a few eyebrows. True, Bill Hader’s hitman dramedy had already established itself as one of the best shows of the 21st century, a miraculous mix of searing character drama, surreal Coen-esque dark comedy, and acidic showbiz satire. But while Barry featured a number of cameos in the past, they were unobtrusive and functional, including the sort of journeyman directors and character actors one would expect to find in a show set in Hollywood. Jay Roach would play himself as a hack director, and Joe Mantegna would step in to advance Gene Cousineau’s (Henry Winkler) plot line. They served a purpose and didn’t draw too much attention to themselves, and yet, leading up to Season 4, cameos were being touted as one of the highlights. Would Barry cave to fan service?
Pop culture is currently saturated with cameos. This is especially the case with comic book properties, where multiverse shenanigans provide fan service opportunities too obvious to resist. (Looking at you, John Krasinski and Michael Keaton.) Star Wars media has become overloaded with cameos, too, both from obscure characters in the expanded universe (a practice derisively referred to as “Glup Shitto” by critics) and real-world celebrities (the recent Jack Black and Lizzo debacle in The Mandalorian). Even ostensibly original properties, like Glass Onion and Ghosted, feature a few too many cutesy drop-ins.
Happily, Barry avoids these indulgent pitfalls. There is no five-minute scene where, like, Barry (Hader) meets a character played by Kristen Wiig and recites road directions like in the popular Saturday Night Live sketch “The Californians.” It might have been silly to doubt Hader and the rest of Barry’s creative team, who have run the show with astonishing discipline and restraint, but it’s still reassuring to see them use cameos right. Whether they’re playing themselves or another character, the cameos in Season 4 of Barry all serve a purpose, sharpening the show’s message or playing to a performer’s strengths.
Guillermo del Toro and Fred Armisen Nail It
Consider a trio of one-scene appearances in Season 4. In the third episode, “you’re charming,” Guillermo del Toro plays a stern figure called Toro who NoHo Hank and Cristobal (Anthony Carrigan and Michael Irby) meet in order to put a hit on an imprisoned Barry. Del Toro’s performance here is much more restrained than his rambling lunacy as Pappy McPoyle on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but he slots easily into Barry’s heightened criminal underworld. His grizzled appearance and gravelly voice make him quite credible as a hardened gangster, but his real-world persona adds a hint of whimsy that makes him believable as someone who would send a couple of goofy gadget podcasters to carry out a hit. Del Toro ably downplays all of this, lending a “speak no more of this” gravitas to his declaration that a gadget his duo reviewed “works fine” over Hank’s objections. There’s a bit of winking, sure (He says “podcast is voice” in just as the real Del Toro says “animation is cinema”), but on the whole, it’s seamless work.
One of the assassins Toro sends after Barry is played by Hader’s old SNL coworker, Fred Armisen, who is used perfectly. At Studio 8H, Armisen was capable of stealing sketches without uttering a word (remember his stupidly brilliant appearances as Prince?), and the climax of “you’re charming” allows him to do just that. As Barry meets with an FBI agent (Dan Bakkedahl) willing to put him in the Witness Protection Program, he tilts his head and furrows his brow at the sight of a curious man in the agent’s police entourage. It’s Nestor (Armisen), glazed with sweat and glaring at Barry like he’s trying to make his head explode. The camera cuts back and forth between Barry and Nestor as Armisen’s face contorts with fear and rage, the sound of panicked, shuddering breaths growing steadily more audible. It’s deeply funny, (even a little Lynchian) and it all builds to a climax that lets Armisen show off some of his other skills: physical comedy and anguished screaming in Spanish.
Sian Heder Strengthens ‘Barry’s Biting Satire
Perhaps the best cameo comes from a director playing herself, or at least, a version of herself. Sian Heder’s cameo leans into the show’s spiky Hollywood satire by addressing delusional actors and algorithm-obsessed streaming services. In Barry-wood, the Oscar-winning writer and director of CODA is directing a superhero movie called Mega Girls, which she is not at all pleased about. When actress-turned-acting coach Sally (Sarah Goldberg) gushes over her “masterpiece,” a harried Heder can only manage a weary grimace. “I’m clearly switching gears with this one,” she says, dryly. “On CODA, I worked with committed actors to tell a deeply personal story, and now I’m working with models in Halloween costumes fighting over a blue glowy thing.” (“Infinity Orb,” a PA chimes in. “Infinity Orb, yup,” Heder sighs.)
Anyone who has followed the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s hiring practices over the past decade will recognize exactly what this is sending up. The MCU has taken to hiring indie filmmakers with little or no blockbuster experience to direct their films, such as tapping Jon Watts for their Spider-Man trilogy or Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck for Captain Marvel. The optimistic take is that Kevin Feige is populating his universe with a variety of creative perspectives who think outside the box; the more cynical take is that he’s treating independent cinema like a farm league, advertising the artistic credibility of directors while smothering their voices in the MCU house style. Either way, it’s easy to see what side Barry falls on.
Choosing Heder as this put-upon director is an inspired casting choice, and not just because it would have been too on-the-nose to have Chloé Zhao show up. As the director of a beloved Sundance dramedy, Heder is exactly who a superhero film studio would hire for a movie like Mega Girls. Her status as an Oscar winner makes the joke even sharper, suggesting that, in the world of Barry, receiving one of the most prestigious awards in cinema is just a warm-up for directing generic franchise slop. (The fact that filmmakers from Jane Campion to Sarah Polley have fielded interview questions asking if they would direct a Marvel movie adds a few more barbs to the stinger.) And CODA’s status as the big-hearted indie movie that could in the 2021 awards season becomes bitterly ironic as Heder takes on the cold, impersonal demeanor of a Hollywood big-wig. When Sally delivers a monologue and upstages her student Kristen (Ellyn Jameson), Heder’s response is simply to demand that “that [her monologue] comes out of that [Kristen].” By saying “that” in place of “her,” it’s clear the warm-and-fuzzy indie director now sees actors as interchangeable parts.
What all these cameos have in common, aside from being written by a very talented team, is that they achieve something. They serve a purpose within the story and are never thrown in simply for fan service. In a time when so many shows seem desperate to please their audience, Barry’s strategic approach is an approach worth celebrating.
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