



It’s important to remember that none of this happens without Noho Hank. Nothing in the first season of Barry, not our deeply troubled assassin catching the acting bug, not the relationship between Barry and Sally, not the doomed relationship between Gene and Janice, none of it happens without Noho Hank and his godforsaken lipstick camera.

Go back to the premiere and see for yourself. Hank (Anthony Carrigan) made the recording of Goran’s wife with Ryan (the personal trainer who was in the acting class Barry joined), Hank brought Barry in to kill Ryan, and Hank — my dear, sweet, dimwitted Chechen man — brought the lipstick camera to the shootout with Barry when everything went left. That’s how Barry got tangled up with the Chechen mob, the acting class, and the cops. Because of Noho Hank. Without him, Barry is just a show about a depressed hitman who lives in Cleveland and just gets more depressed as time goes on. And, I mean, that could be a show, too, I guess. A very different show. One that is probably not as good as the show Barry has become. My point here is that, if you enjoy Barry, you have Noho Hank to thank for it.

(I suppose, if we’re being very technical about all of this, you could backtrack it even further and say you have Ryan the Trainer to thank for the show because his affair led to Hank making the recording. But if you do that, where do you stop? Do we have to credit Ryan’s fictional parents for conceiving him? Do we credit Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers for creating the America the show takes place in? A line has to be drawn somewhere to prevent us all from going insane. Plus, I really wanted to write about Noho Hank. So here we are.)

So that’s one point in Noho Hank’s favor. Here’s another:



This is also from the premiere. It’s the first time we meet him and the moment I fell in love with the character. Hank is a study in not judging a book by its cover. Here you have this bald, tattooed, high-ranking organized crime figure, one who has presumably ordered and carried out many murders and other serious felonies, and he’s just an absolute sweetheart of a man. Yes yes, you will discuss the assassinations, but not until he’s offered you a submarine sandwich and a juice box. Manners first, then murders.

His rise to power throughout the first season was one of my favorite character arcs for any character on television last year. Barry can get dark at times. Really, really dark. It’s something I like about the show, actually, the way it leans into the effects of war on the human brain and the comment it makes on feeling stuck in a job you hate just because you’re pretty good at it. The scene from season one in which Barry realizes he has to kill a close friend who got in over his head… that was brutal. It’s stuck with me since then in a way that is both upsetting and impressive. It’s also why it’s good to cut the tension sometimes with a mobster who sends texts like these.

Of course Hank texts Bitmoji. Even if we never had proof of it, even if the show never gave of visual evidence or mentioned it in passing, you’d know. If someone came up to you today like, “Hey, do you think Noho Hank from Barry uses Bitmoji in crime texts?,” first of all, it would be weird, but second, you’d definitely say yes. It’s perfect.