Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/HBO
Among the other devastating plotlines in last Sunday’s Barry, the prospects of Sally Reed’s (Sarah Goldberg) flailing acting career were thrown into sharp relief.
After a disappointing trip to her parents’ home in Missouri, following her ex-boyfriend Barry Berkman’s (Bill Hader) imprisonment, Sally returns to Los Angeles and begins teaching acting classes. At first, this career pivot feels like an adequate, maybe even satisfying compromise, after she effectively imploded her own career. Last season, Sally watched as her show Joplin got the ax. She’s also been figuratively “canceled,” after her former assistant Natalie (D’Arcy Carden) recorded Sally’s C-word-laden elevator meltdown.
When Sally takes an inexperienced actress named Kristen (Ellyn Kreutz) under her wing, it feels like she might have found the artistic outlet she’s been searching for the past three seasons. But this is Barry, after all. And happy endings are few and far between.