Hader's HBO hitman series is essentially the anti-antihero. "Barry, a people-killing protagonist, is a throwback not to the distant past, but to just a few years ago, when the antihero was TV’s cutting-edge archetype," says Willa Paskin. "But Barry is also an of-the-moment leading man, which is to say, he’s actively difficult to like. Atlanta’s Earn Marks and Girls’ Hannah Horvath are objectively less evil, though purposefully less appealing than Walter White or Tony Soprano, horrible men whose charisma drew audiences to them anyway. Barry is akin to the first set of characters, even though he breaks the law like the second. Like Earn, Barry’s depressed, repressed, lethargic. He’s a uniquely passive gunslinger, a sad man with a self-serving interior justification that’s as dull as it is twisted: He’s a middle manager of violence, just doing what he’s told. Barry’s the unappealing, unambitious antihero, a villain who dreams of being a boring suburban dad."
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TOPICS: Barry, HBO, Alec Berg, Bill Hader