Every couple of months, I will look up to see how long it has been since the last episode of Barry opened on HBO, and I’m surprised every single time. As of today, it’s been 770 days since Barry last graced our television screens. That’s 25 months and one week. Has any other show been delayed by the pandemic as long as Barry?
No, not Succession, which has only been off the air for 631 days and is currently shooting its third season. Not The Witcher, either, which hasn’t streamed a new season in 556 days, but is also scheduled to air its next season later this year. Better Call Saul has only been 434 days, and it’s currently shooting and scheduled to return in the first quarter of 2021. Westworld? That’s a trick question! It aired its third season in 2020, but some people don’t remember it (it was the season with Aaron Paul in it).
For comparison’s sake, there have been four full seasons of The Masked Singer since Barry last aired, and host Nick Cannon will have had four kids during that time. A Dexter revival was developed and shot and will air before Barry returns to HBO. Quibi launched and then failed during the interim between seasons.
I mention all of this because Anthony Carrigan, best known for playing No Ho Hank on Barry, appeared on Marc Maron’s podcast this week. He’s a fascinating guy and went long with Maron about his alopecia (the autoimmune disease which caused his hair to fall out) and talked about meeting his wife, a Serbian chess master who learned to play chess while bunkered down for months during the Croatian War.
Mostly, however, I listened because I wanted to hear if there were any updates on Barry. Bill Hader had previously mentioned that he wrote both season three and four during the lockdown, and that production on season three had advanced to the table-read stage of development before production was shuttered by COVID-19. Carrigan confirmed as much, but he also said that they’re getting ready to start shooting season three, yet he gave no specifics.
I’m not exactly sure what that means, either, since it seems like Barry has been on the verge of shooting for months, if not longer. Is this like the Rick Grimes movie, which has been just about to start production for years? There’s still no official date on when production will resume on Barry, after all. What is the hold up? The rest of Los Angeles resumed production months ago, and even the shows that were skittish about restarting too soon are releasing new episodes now. Why Barry has waited so long, especially since the scripts have already been written, is an absolute mystery. Even if it starts production this summer and airs early next year, it will mean nearly three years between seasons.
Then again, it’s been 1,145 days since the last new episode of FX’s Atlanta, but the Donald Glover show took a planned hiatus before its forced hiatus, and even Atlanta is currently shooting both its third and fourth seasons now. Both shows, of course, are obviously worth waiting for, although the three-year hiatus between seasons may diminish the impact of Barry’s season two cliffhanger, mostly in that much of the audience will have forgotten it.
Then again, there’s never a better time than now for a Barry rewatch. It currently streams on HBO Max.
