Abigail Nussbaum

I've tried to avoid feeding her, but now I'm really tempted to buy some cat food just to have around.

The neighbor's cat stopped by this afternoon, first time I've seen her since she gave birth on my kitchen floor last month. No sign of the kittens, but from the looks of mama, they're eating well. She was practically skin and bones, poor thing.

Adding this just in case I haven't met my outrage quota. No disrespect to Anthony Carrigan, who does a great job with the character, but you all know it's true.https://twitter.com/NussbaumAbigail/status/1138922913342664705 …

Also, Barry's origin story as a psycho killer is that while serving in Afghanistan, he murdered a civilian and got away with it because someone pulled strings for him. I mean: YIKES.

Again, I've watched this show before. Maybe not as well made or as strongly written, but that doesn't mean I don't know where it's all going. Future seasons will be fun, but I just don't see how they can be revelatory, which is what people are claiming.

And the thing is, as much as Barry claims to want to change, that's clearly not what the show wants to do with him. It enjoys him as a bad guy - and "shocking" us with the revelation that he's a bad guy - far too much for that.

And more importantly, what am I supposed to be watching for? What should I be wanting for this character who is not only a bad person, but also not that bright? Is the whole point of the show really just to show me that Barry is bad? Because I got that pretty much from the start.

To be clear, this is a perfectly realistic character type. But it's also one we've seen so many times before that I just don't understand why this show is getting the level of praise it's getting. What's the added value here?

Like, why does Barry take a gun to meet his friend Chris after their deal with the Bolivians goes horribly sideways? Because he knows he might have to kill him. He's not a naif. He's a stone cold killer in denial about how calculated and self-serving his behavior is.

But instead, he keeps making these kneejerk decisions that not only have disastrous consequences, but repeatedly put the lie to his claim to be just a put-upon innocent when we see how he deals with those consequences.

(By the way, I'm calling it right now: Barry goes to prison and joins a theater group is totally how the show is going to end.)

The fact is, if Barry really wanted to become a better person, he would leave town so as to stop the blowback from how badly he's poisoned LA from constantly affecting his friends' lives. Or just turn himself in! They have theater groups in prison, you know.

Barry, meanwhile, lacks these traits entirely. He takes no responsibility for either his past or his present, and as a result even his best efforts to turn over a new leaf have horrific results that end up hurting the people he cares about the most.

But what Fleabag - the show, and eventually also the character - understands is that the only way to move forward is with self-awareness and a sense of responsibility - not only for what she's done in the past, but for how that past continues to reverberate in the present.

Like Barry, Fleabag is about a person who has done terrible things, who wants to move on but doesn't know how, or whether she even deserves to have a life after what she's done.

While watching, I found myself comparing Barry to Fleabag, another show I slept on when it premiered, and caught up with recently after you lot wouldn't shut up about how great the second season was. (It is great, actually. I'm not a Fleabag heretic.)

Don't get me wrong: Barry is an extremely well made, entertaining crime dramedy slash Hollywood satire. But in terms of what it's doing, it's exactly the sort of thing we decided was played out 3-4 years ago. So why is everyone treating it like something exciting and new?

But you guys simply wouldn't shut up about how great Barry was. And well, I've been convalescing, and I had some free time. So I watched the two seasons that have aired. And boy, was I totally on the money.

Last year, when you were all going nuts over Barry, I said to myself: self, we watched eight seasons of Dexter, and a whole bunch of antihero shows. I think we're paid up on the "let's spend several seasons learning this white guy who does awful things is a bad person" front.