Barry season 3 episode 2 has the greatest joke in television history

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Barry season 3 episode 2: limonada.

Barry is a gift. And like a Russian Doll, it’s gifts nested within gifts. On May 1, 2021 Barry’s writers put a bow around the most perfect joke I’ve ever seen. Nothing I write here, or potentially ever, will be as funny. This is just my way of showing appreciation for craftsmanship. A post dedicated to five words within a 30 minute episode.

As Gene Cousineau escapes from Barry, he runs through a residential neighborhood. Scaling fences, he ends up in the backyard of a couple having dinner. One of the women at the table is breaking up with the other. Already a perfect setup. What could be a more awkward situation for a hostage on the run to interrupt?

The motion activated backyard floodlights go on. Mr. Cousineau faces the window. The women don’t notice. As Mr. Cousineau sprints across their backyard, he still isn’t discovered despite the dog who starts to bark when he hits the fence on the opposite side of the yard. Now the couple will notice the intruder outside of their dining room window. The breakup, however, continues as we look past the couple to the dog racing towards Mr. Cousineau. After a beat, more dogs follow. Seemingly every dog in the neighborhood is charging at Mr. Cousineau.

Inside, however, the women don’t even blink. The parade of dogs doesn’t even register. How can these people ignore the canine stampeded happening just outside the window they’re eating next to? My dog barks one time and I’m instantly on my feet to hush him. Instead, the woman being dumped just wants to know why, after five years, her partner is leaving her.

With a perfect deadpan, yet exacerbated, delivery, she’s told “You have too many dogs.”

I died. So simple, so elegant.

All of a sudden, an entire world comes into focus with a single truth. We know everything we need to about these women, what just happened, why they don’t care, and that Mr. Cousineau will not be rescued here. She does have too many dogs. There is nothing exceptional about tonight. The floodlights always go on. The dogs always run a mock. They’re a constant burden and it’s just Mr. Cousineau’s bad luck to have stumbled through that yard.

Given the strength of everyone in Barry’s cast, the pair sitting at their table seem like women taken off the street. The lines delivered between them are flat, emotionless, despite being in the midst of a breakup. A perfect choice. The joke sticks because of the line. Any character development added on top of it, anything at all that would distract from its delivery would ruin it. The audience just needs the facts: she has too many dogs.

Everything that felt unrealistic was instantly justified. The humor in this world isn’t funny to anyone in it. It is their life. It is the worst possible place to try and escape a murderer. It’s an awful home to live in if you don’t want so many dogs. There is no line between humor and darkness, reality and fantasy. The world is filled with people who have too many dogs and the characters in Barry will always end up in their yard.

To Bill Hader, Alec Berg, and Emma Barrie — thank you, I’ll never forget this joke.