NoHo Hank, Violence, & Queer Identity
Barry on HBO’s most meme-able, lovable character’s transformation into a tragic hero is complete in season three. But is the violence and secrecy he faces strictly a reality of scripted mob life or still a kind of coming of age for queer identity in our daily lives?
HBO’s Barry is, somewhat obviously, ultimately about its protagonist, Barry Berkman. Even so from the very first episode it’s clear how important relationships will be to Barry- whether he likes it or not. I think it’s safe to say that Barry is an ensemble piece, part of what sets it above other action-comedy. Barry is not a sun the other characters orbit. He is a wave breaking onto everyone.
If the show were about a violent man running from his own violence, squarely focusing the frame onto Barry as beautifully portrayed by Bill Hader, it would be like any other show. But it isn’t like any other show. It is in front of and behind every portrayal of “ex military man kills sympathetically” there is. First, in that Bill Hader and his co-creator Alec Berg have dared to let Barry pass a point of no return. Realistically, a man that exists only through the context of violence crosses lines. Over the course of the first three seasons Barry finds that there is no way to be Barry as he has come to know himself without the kill and that every option that he sees as redemption in no way undoes the violence done at his hands. Second, the show stands out in how intensely the people in Barry’s life provide not just cannon fodder or a humanizing element for him– not just connections awaiting the fridge or companions poised to betray whenever the show needs shock value or to justify Barry’s pain- but REAL foils to his own character, to his own cyclical connection to violence.
Take Cousineau, washed up actor turned mildly abusive acting instructor, a microcosm of what masculinity does at its pettiest, with its lowest stakes. That pseudo-intellectual, artist via ego masculinity still ruins or absorbs the lives of women and lashes out at men who manage without it. Sally, both victim and perpetrator of systemic violence, is a wailing neglected child of white feminism who is all too happy to thrive in violence when it benefits her. Afterall, her almost hit show hinged on the lie that she walked away from abuse a hero without shame or reflection, the delicious trauma heroic performance that neurotypicals eat up. Sally of course faces challenges that men do not (touched on incredibly during her season two monologue from “The Audition,” which retrospectively was a moral crossroads for Sally) but she is ultimately the same creature as Cousineau. Barry from the start has been an errand runner for her or at best a box ticked. Her assistant and would-be friend Natalie is constantly degraded and dehumanized even before Sally lashes out in anger at Natalie’s success. The way she treats everyone in her life is justified in her mind but her art, her special gift, her true destiny. Both Cousineau and Sally spend considerable time in acting classes deliberately triggering and disorienting Barry for the sake of a better performance. His ex-military, salt of the earth presence in their church is an opportunity for the pair to show off how smart and talented they are.
Doing a deep dive into daddy issues-come-bookie Fuches could be its own project so I won’t suffice it to say that I can’t help but imagine Barry making it back home from the military and finding anyone else waiting for him…
I want instead to talk about fan favorite NoHo Hank, Chechan gangster and overwhelmingly affable guy. It would be easy to write Hank off as pure comic relief, particularly in the first season. Anthony Carrigan’s delivery of any line, regardless of circumstance, would get a laugh out of anyone. If he’s just comic relief, he’s damn good comic relief. But the real magic is in WHY those laughs are so consistent. The laughs are usually because it is wild to witness someone as sincere as Hank. Sincerity is glaring next to the convoluted performance of strength, power, and masculinity in the people all around him. As much as our laughs are of enjoyment, they are of surprise, and that’s built right into the writing from season two onward.
Barry Berkman is a man who was nothing until he was reborn in violence. The first kill of his military days profoundly changed him. Killing was the only thing he had ever been good at and the only thing he had been championed for. For Barry, the kill walks hand in hand with validation. And being in the military, violence was discipline, problem solving, and care. It’s hard not to wonder who Barry might have become if he had gotten validation any other way. If instead of the military he had found acting first, would he be a better man? Or maybe just another Cousineau or Sally, fucked up sadists no more capable of love but with way less of a body count. Sadly, you gotta hand it to the theatre kids on that one. What if the military had shown him the reality of violence and instead of being ushered into the hands of Fuches he had found someone interested in letting him be a man? Or, heaven forbid, a trauma informed therapist capable of deprogramming him.
And the ultimate foil of this has always been NoHo Hank. We don’t know much about Hank’s backstory but from what we can glean by his relationship and role within mob life (and fan made deep dives into tattoos), this mob was likely a path chosen for him. A path chosen for him in a more severe way than Barry’s path was chosen for Barry. Ill-informed agreement to join the military when you’re broke and arguably still a kid ain’t much agency, but it’s still a choice. Regardless, Hank is a man so inherently warm he’ll forget the scale of violence to make small talk. He really wants to know about your day. A man whose rise to power paralleled his repeated acts of mercy and empathy where Barry was concerned. A man who, in the midst of gang wars and boundaries crossed, found himself in love. Fifty-fifty with Cristobal, as funny as it was as Hank’s mantra, was never about chasing power. It was about chasing connection.
Hader and Berg could’ve kept NoHo Hank as queer-coded comic relief. In fact within the Barry fan base there had been a divide after season one: Was NoHo Hank genuinely a queer character or were we, once again, being queer baited or else working ourselves up for a flamboyant character who would either never be acknowledged romanticly at all or be turned straight or maybe confirmed gay but as a joke, as a sex pest, as a weakling?
But we were right. Was this always the plan or did it come organically from Carrigan’s performance? At this point, I don’t think it matters.
Episode 5, “crazytimeshitshow” of our recently wrapped season three saw NoHo Hank literally hide in a closet. Cristobal’s wife not just a threat in a traditional gang war sense or simply a hurdle in their romance but a representation of the inherent danger of compulsory homosexuality, of living your life openly in any way when you’re LGBTQ. In fact, the star-crossed lovers aspect of Hank and Cristobal’s relationship because about much more than gang affiliations by virtue of their being in a queer relationship. It doesn’t take a literal gang or mob connection for those of us under the LGBTQ umbrella to find our identity and our relationships in the crosshairs of an “us and them” mentality.
Coincidentally, the finale, “starting now,” aired on the sixth anniversary of the Pulse night club massacre, a mass shooting that targeted a gay club and took 49 lives and forever changed many, many more. In the week leading up to the finale, multiple fascist groups and evangelicals stormed Pride events to imply that anyone gay is an inherent pedophile, to call for our deaths by legal mandate or by the mob for sport. They waited outside of family friendly Pride events to jeer not just at Drag performers but at children either believed to be queer, allies, or the children of LGBTQ parents. Days before the fascist group Patriot Front packed a U-Haul with over 30 armed men with the intention to, at minimum, riot at Pride. My identity and violence were entwined even tighter than usual when I sat down and opened HBO Max.
And in our finale, NoHo Hank is bound to a radiator in a black room with only one spare light. Other Chechnans call out to him. They are out of their restraints, they are finding a way to be free, they could come for Hank.
NoHo Hank’s sign of hope through the wall is ripped from him as he hears a beast- maybe a tiger, a lion, maybe only mortal men echoing in Hank’s mind like something greater and less knowable.
The first time we see NoHo Hank kill, what he kills is not visible. It growls, it roars, it destroys. There is an unmistakable sound of flesh being torn apart. Blood and bile leak through a crack in the bottom of the wall. A man laughs and the creature is tearing down the wall. NoHo Hank becomes the human embodiment of survival mode. With focus and determination, grit and sweat, Hank breaks free of his restraints. When a man comes to subdue him, he fights him too, brandishing his gun. Screaming and with the tears of fear still in his cries, Hank fires into the walk.
The Beast whimpers. There is no lighting change or long hallway. There is no resonant scoring or hope spot. There is no John Wick mode. There is only Hank and the only thing he has ever been offered: Violence.
It doesn’t matter what beast stalked the room across from NoHo Hank. What matters is that it was always there. “Love is love” allies and rainbow capitalism have reduced LGBTQ folks and the challenges they face into pleasantries, online activism, and a view of Pride as party, parade, all inclusive carnival, instead of the thing it was:
Retaliation. Violence come full circle. A people finding that authoritarianism, patriarchy, fascism, whatever the hatred of the day was, would never stop hunting them.
NoHo Hank found himself holding the brick. NoHo Hank found himself to be the brick.
His newfound fury is not without fear, making it all the more potent. As Hank moves through the house, Carrigan brilliantly portrays what it is to be a body overrun with adrenaline and no peace immediately at reach. He stumbles upon Cristobal restrained, being Clockwork Orange’d in home office conversion therapy, horrific shocks being sent through his body by his wife as a man dances for him, peace only coming when she stocks the torture and wraps her arms around him. It is such a stunningly vicious and spiritually true depiction of what conversion therapy is: torture. Conformity and obedience over humanity. An exercise of punishment, a show of power.
We see Hank’s next kills. Both the male dancer and his lover’s wife.
Our final moment of Hank on screen sees him embrace Cristobal. We watch as his relief at saving Cristobal and himself fades. This story is far from over.
How will Hank reckon with the beast come calling? How will Hank reckon with surviving it? Is the return of fear and stress almost as soon as he takes a breath simply about Cristobal’s dishonesty or something more?
Whatever it is, it’s heavy. It’s full. It’s meaningful. It’s the violent representation and muddied catharsis that queer folks from violent backgrounds deserve. NoHo Hank is dead. Long live NoHo Hank.
