Season four episode five of Barry entitled “Tricky Legacies,” takes an eight-year time jump from episode four. Following Barry’s (Bill Hader) escape from prison and his and Sally (Sarah Goldberg) becoming fugitives, Barry and Sally live their lives as a married couple. Barry and Sally now live in the middle of nowhere under an alias with their son John (Zachary Golinger). Barry homeschools John during the day while Sally works as a waitress at a diner. Barry and Sally try their best to live as normal a life as possible for their son John; however, it is apparent that there are things missing in their lives.
Each character in this episode is unsatisfied with their life. We are mainly shown Sally’s perspective in this episode. Sally wakes up and puts on a low-quality, overused wig to change her appearance in case anyone recognizes her. Then Sally goes to work, where the cook fantasizes about her all day. Her coworker vents to her all day, and Sally does a bad job of pretending to care; instead of listening, she usually tunes her coworker out and gives generic responses. In addition to being depressed from her job and new lifestyle, Sally struggles with her roles as a wife and mother, which causes her to have a drinking problem. It appears that Sally has postpartum depression that was never treated, and she feels completely detached from her son John. Both Barry and John notice Sally’s drinking problem, especially because she comes home from work drunk and barely talks during dinner.
Sally is not the only one feeling unsatisfied with their lives; John is noticing how different he is from other kids. John overhears Barry begging Sally to stop drinking, and it seems like he is used to hearing his parents talk about serious topics. It’s made obvious that John is a lonely kid; his parents are both out of touch with his emotions, and he is not allowed to play with other kids except his neighbor. His friend suggests that he play baseball with the other kids as well, so he gives John a baseball glove to practice. When Barry finds John’s baseball glove, his solution to making him uninterested in baseball is to show him videos of young boys dying from baseball accidents. This changes John’s mind but is, of course, only a temporary fix.
While Sally and John have a more realistic point of view of their lives, Barry seems to be in denial. Barry deals with their situation by hyper-fixating on things that aren’t relevant to their lives at the moment, like Abraham Lincoln and world leaders. He starts becoming more interested in Abraham Lincon while homeschooling John, and it all goes downhill from there. Despite his positive attitude and calm demeanor, it is obvious that his mental health is being affected by living in fear. An example of this is when Barry hears a loud banging at his front door and he worries someone has found them, and he rushes outside with his gun only to find the noise was kids fooling around. It is very clear that no one is happy with the way they are living their lives.
Rating: 4/10