Looking Forward

Tonight, HBO will offer the follow-up to the much-debated "The Long Night," the Game Of Thrones episode showing the Battle of Winterfell.  Readers already know my take was not too positive.  The numbers have been great, but Game Of Thrones may be ending with its weakest season yet.  In fact, I'm not sure if it's the HBO show I look forward to most these days.

For one thing, I think Veep is on fire.  This is also its last season, and maybe its funniest.  Perhaps they've been inspired by the Trump presidency, but whatever it is, the show is more outrageous than ever.

But the winner on the HBO schedule these days is probably Barry.  I like Barry, but haven't always loved it.  The Bill Hader show has a fun but thin premise--an assassin wants to clean up his life and decides to become an actor (though his talents clearly lie in the former job). It was unclear after the arc of the first season, though, if Barry had anything more to explore.

But this second season is showing there are new places to go.  In particular, last Sunday's episode was one of the best things on TV in quite a while.  It was an off-series episode called "ronny/lily."

We didn't see his hanging out with actors, or other killers, as he usually does. Instead, the entire show was about a mission he undertakes with Fuches, his mentor turned nemesis.  Barry has to kill someone he doesn't know (Ronny) to get out of trouble.  But Barry, who's trying to be a better person, breaks into the guy's house and tells him he just needs to leave town and pretend he's dead.

A major fight ensues, as the guy is a martial arts expert.  After that is an even weirder fight as Barry has to take on Ronny's feral daughter, Lily, who's not of this earth.  The show goes from one bizarre situation to another, leaving bodies behind and (presumably) changing Barry as a person.

The episode is funny but also fairly spooky.  The only other show I can think of that would compare would be Atlanta, which often has a surreal feel to it.  The episode was written by Hader, along with Alec Berg, and directed by Hader.

I doubt tonight's episode will be anything similar.  You can't do a "ronny/lily" each time out.  But until last week, I didn't know the show could do it even once.