sally reed's wig shows she hasn't fully lost herself on BARRY
warning! this article contains spoilers for BARRY s4 (duh)!
sally reed always wanted to become famous. as an aspiring actress back in the first season of hbo’s BARRY, she was narcissistic and painfully lacking self-awareness; in the show’s fourth and final season (now airing sundays, tho if you’re from europe — like i am — it premieres here early monday morning), she’s become a shell of a person. after a brush w fame back in season three as the multi-hyphenate of a critically-acclaimed but prematurely-cancelled show, she became known as ‘the entitled cunt girl’ after a video in which she screams at her old assistant goes viral. in season four, she gave hollywood one last chance before vanishing w barry berkman at the end of the fourth episode.
when we meet them again, eight years have passed; they’re “clark” and “emily” now and they’re raising their son in the middle of nowhere. “clark” seems fine w his life; he teaches his son about abraham lincoln and overprotects him from a world of violence. “emily”, on the other hand, is miserable; she works as a waitress in a diner and get intoxicated on the job. it’s a terrible life for anybody, but especially a person who once dreamed of conquering hollywood.
in several interviews post the episode, both creator slash star bill hader and sarah goldberg mentioned that barry and sally have moved and changed their identities several times throughout the years as a way to not be discovered. it wouldn’t be hard to imagine sally changing her appearance w each new move. she is, after all, still an Actress, and she will put on a show for everybody around.
at the end of the season’s fourth episode, we see a flashforward where sally has her hair under a towel; in the next episode, she puts on a brown wig before heading into work. some viewers have wondered why she didn’t dye her hair, but the answer seems to be (in my opinion at least) that her wig is the last piece she needs before she gets into character.
sally has been acting for ages, both in front of the camera and in her new reality, but these two truths aren’t the same: while as an actress, she would just get in and out of the character, she’s become so consumed w the horribleness of her new life, she can’t seem to muster any emotion or love towards her son. by putting on a wig instead of dyeing her hair, she becomes emily, the diner waitress, the mother of john, and the wife of clark.
but the wig also signifies smth else: there’s still a sally underneath the trauma she’s been through that she can’t seem to shake off. several times throughout the episode, she watches her former friend-turned-assistant’s shows and interviews w a sadness and resigned anger. w hollywood celebrating natalie’s show’s ending, sally mourns what could have been had JOPLIN, her own series, not been cancelled unceremoniously. it’s clear that sally’s not over the way her life turned, still wishing for the success she can never touch.
in the few moments when sally doesn’t wear her wig, her blonde hair is pinned up or kept under a towel (perhaps so her son won’t know she plays a role, but she fails at that, too; her son asks a possible friend if his mom wears a wig, too). there’s still a part of her that wants what old sally did even if she knows she can never get it and it’s signified not just by keeping track on natalie’s evolution, but by refusing to dye her hair which would be much easier than wearing a wig.
sally reed, once a bright star, is now a hollow woman stuck in an(other) abusive relationship and a life she never wanted (or deserved). but, even w everything bad going on in her life, if she has to act, she will put on a show. all she needs is the key to start which is signified by her brown wig; once she puts that on, she is no longer sally reed, but emily and the show can start.
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