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[Editor's Note: The post-obit review containsspoilers for "Barry" Flavour iv, Episode iv, "It Takes a Pscyho."]

Open Mike Hawkeye's 2020 album "Anime, Trauma, and Divorce" has a dandy runway, "The Black Mirror Episode." It details a couple deciding to split up after watching the Netflix show together. When Eagle (who confirmed the vocal is largely autobiographical) sing-shouts the one-line chorus "The 'Blackness Mirror' episode ruined my wedlock," you believe what he's saying and feel the dark, absurd edge to the truth beneath it.

It's the same sentiment explored in "It Takes a Psycho." Episode 4 of "Barry" Season 4 is filled with people running away from relationships that seem to be working and running toward ones that announced doomed. People become what they claim to desire and find that what they've acquired is rotted from the inside. It's a half hour of delicately crafted misery, something that's become a "Barry" calling menu.

Bill Hader at the "Barry" Season 4 premiere

"Barry" has been slowly deconstructing the thought of a partnership — Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Cristobal (Michael Irby) are the latest in a line of cocky-delusional betrayals past people who endanger some of their about prized relationships out of ignorance, or arrogance, or a primal misunderstanding of what ties them to each other.

It seemed like they might be the ii people who escape the Barry (Beak Hader) vortex with their lives and dreams intact. (For a while, in New Mexico, information technology seemed similar they already had.) But i fateful trip to the top of their newly caused sand silo alters the prospects of their shared concern and their shared lives. A selfies-and-sand-angels session devolves into a mass execution in one case Hank flips the switch and sends all of the Bong support team to suffocate inside the product they were hired to protect. In a panic attack-inducing scrap of camera movement, sound pattern, and sensory impecuniousness, Cristobal gets caught with them.

Even earlier that sequence, Hank's eyes testify that something has changed. Carrigan'due south always been so precise in showing the vacant stare of someone who knows trouble is on the horizon. Sensing an imminent threat from Barry, Hank makes a covert deal with his old Chechen colleagues to swap his current ragtag band of karaoke-loving henchmen for protection and command over the LA smuggling operation.

Cristobal manages to survive his accidental inclusion in that plan, simply his rescue only leads to more than bug. He doesn't fifty-fifty go enough fourth dimension to launder the sand off his face before finding out that Hank was an orchestrator of the group hit. By the time they're back at their identify, hosting Andrei (Michael Ironside) and his crew, things have shattered. Hank has gone Full Barry, morphing from deeply flawed and outwardly affable to fully embracing the mindset that shows of force trump all.

When Cristobal tries to leave, Hank does his all-time to dispense Cristobal into staying. When that doesn't piece of work, Hank faces the panicked realization that Cristobal isn't just walking out on their partnership merely walking to his death. Whether or not Cristobal shares that same realization, it ends in good day, so tragedy.

Barry Season 4 Episode 4 Cristobal — Michael Irby in "Barry"Merrick Morton/HBO

Once again, "Barry" Season four underlines i of its themes: Dear used in agony tin be a nasty weapon all its ain. Andrei puts just every bit much, if not more, 18-carat conventionalities in saying that Hank and Cristobal love each other than Hank does in saying "I beloved you" as an endeavour to get Cristobal to stay. That last Hank/Cristobal fight is vicious for the speed at which the ii diverge before i of them fifty-fifty realizes it. It ends with Hank sobbing, drowning out the sound of gunshots right outside. (It'southward a subtle and cruel costume blueprint choice to put Andrei'south henchman in an outfit just similar enough to Cristobal'southward then that, for a second, it seems like everyone'due south avoided disaster.) The front door closes and, in the span of only a few minutes, both men meet a fate worse than drowning in construction-course silicate.

Emerge'due south (Sarah Goldberg) also gets everything she wants while underestimating the physical and psychological price. For the second fourth dimension in as many weeks, "Barry" calls on a Best Picture director, this time enlisting Sian Heder ("CODA") for some other round of pointing fingers at the manufacture from the within. MCU parodies are plentiful in the comedy globe these days and, while Taofik Kolade's script does add the specific angle of the "indie director to franchise behemoth" conveyor chugalug, the telescopic of this fake project is more designed to put Emerge's last-ditch efforts in total context.

Sally's interim-grade teardown of Kristen (Ellyn James) in last week'southward episode didn't cease her career; it got her an invite to the set of franchise blockbuster "Mega Girls." (It's probably not a coincidence that Kristen's costume is just as much Queen Maeve from "The Boys" as it is anything from a motion-picture show set on Themyscira.) When Kristen goes up on her lines during the monologue that sent her to Sally in the start place, her new instructor steps in with some… unconventional shows of back up. When sense memories don't do the play a trick on, Sally delivers Kristen's monologue to her face up before spinning around and finishing those sentences directly to Heder. The director is stunned earlier damning Sally with faint praise: "At present if I could merely become that to come up out of that."

It'due south more than than the manufacture'south callous nature of referring to actresses every bit objects, or that Kristen'southward agent later telling Sally that at that place are other roles that she would be "appropriate for." Actor-manager Hader frames manager-actor Heder as literally moving her paw by the camera. Emerge wanted to be a star, only now she's become a literal physical obstacle to the more valued performer and face behind her.

Last season brought Sally a major rejection from network Television receiver; this smaller rejection in the blockbuster globe proves to be Sally'southward final straw. When Barry emerges, Marley-like, from Sally's kitchen, she doesn't accept to hear an amends. She's set for the two of them to get out of town.

Barry Season 4 Episode 4 Sally — "Barry"Merrick Morton/HBO

The bumbling, blunt-object policing we see in "It Takes a Psycho" includes LAPD cars slamming into each other exterior Gene'due south (Henry Winkler) identify and an inept raid on the Dave & Buster's. Contrast that with the careful patience of Jim Moss (Robert Wisdom) staking out each new location, waiting for whatever trace of Barry at homes of former friends. He waits out Barry's return the same way that Hader directs this season: steady, purposeful, and presenting each character'south waking nightmares in an unadorned, unsparing manner. Among a sea of assuming character swings and disastrous outcomes, Jim'south particular make of revenge suddenly seems the about competent.

Meanwhile, Fuches' (Stephen Root) cries echo throughout the prison, existence punished in exchange for trying to audio the alert on the Barry assassination plot. Gene arms himself, a self-proclaimed sitting duck upwards at the Big Comport cottage, assertive that Barry is destined to return to one of his crime scenes. That anxiety results in him shooting his son Leo (Andrew Leeds), who was trying to bring him comfort nutrient all the fashion from the Valley. More than kindness repaid with pain.

Afterwards putting Barry'south psyche forepart and heart for the first three episodes, "Information technology Takes a Psycho" is an episode-long misdirect. Barry'southward hardly there only he casts a long shadow, especially in how his manipulative ways seem to accept transferred to Hank. (That last Cristobal goodbye has chilling echoes of Barry's attempts to go along Emerge in his life.) But "Barry" is just fine even without Barry.

Until, in a disorienting episode button, he is. It starts out like a replay of Barry'south early-season daydreams, with a young boy escaping a fight and retreating to a abode in the middle of an empty field. Within, Barry and Emerge wait. The reveal that it'south them in that unidentified, remote location is shocking, but not exactly surprising. If this isolated house really is their future and not another peek into Barry's hidden, it'due south some other instance of someone getting what they claimed to want and feeling pretty disaffected by the results. The just move at present is to wait and see if the pattern of misery holds.