Warning: Spoilers for Barry Season 1.
Through the years, HBO's best shows, commonly regarded as some of the best ever made, have centered around crime, like The Sopranos and The Wire. Those shows set the course for other shows to revolve their main characters around criminals. Then Barry came along.
Barry brought something fresh to the crime genre. It centered around a criminal, but what separated Barry from the shows that came before it was that the titular character didn't want to be in that line of work anymore. It made for a funny premise to see an expert hitman doing everything he could to escape the criminal underworld and pursue his true purpose - acting.
The problem was, every time Barry Berkman made such an attempt, it always seemed to be one step forward and two steps back for him. Season 1 revolves around how Barry tries his absolute hardest to start his new chapter of acting, but his life of crime is always in the rearview mirror.
For most of Season 1, fans root for Barry because he wants to turn over a new leaf and make an effort to live a normal life crime-free. As the show progresses, Barry tries to open up more as he develops a social life, so he gets a Facebook to reconnect with old friends.
Through this, the show introduces two characters: Chris Lucado and Taylor Garrett. Chris and Barry were friends from their time in the Marines together, while Taylor is Chris' buddy, who gets introduced to Barry through Chris.
Chris is a perfectly normal guy, as he's married with a kid, while Taylor is completely unhinged and a loose cannon. He very clearly has PTSD from his time in the Marines, which makes him a danger to others.
At first, it seemed as though these two would simply be side characters as Barry tries to balance developing his new life while leaving his old life behind, but once Taylor catches wind of what Barry does behind the scenes, everything changes.
How they elevated Barry as a show
Because he could expose Barry's criminal ties, Taylor unknowingly makes himself a loose end. Barry's handler, Fuches, tells Barry he must eliminate Taylor before he becomes a problem. However, Barry doesn't want to kill anyone that he doesn't think he has to.
Despite all of Taylor's issues, Barry rightfully believes Taylor wouldn't turn him in, especially when the two took down a stash house together.
The audience completely understands why Barry feels this way because the only people he's killed are people he's been assigned to kill. Killing someone he knows personally is not something Barry wants to do, especially if he believes they're not a threat to him. He may not necessarily like Taylor, but he figured there was an understanding between them.
But unfortunately, Barry's refusal to follow Fuches' orders unintentionally leads to Taylor bringing Chris in for a different mission. Barry had earlier told Taylor he had planned to do said mission alone, but Taylor took matters into his own hands. Chris, a normal civilian who's not capable of killing anyone, is unaware that he's tagging along for a job to kill members of the Bolivian cartel.
That's when disaster strikes.
As awful as it sounds, Fuches was right. Even if Taylor was never going to turn Barry in, he was too unpredictable to trust, which inadvertently led to Chris getting introduced to Barry's secret life. Barry's choice then leads to arguably one of the best scenes in the entire show.
After the mission is botched, Chris is forced to kill a cartel member by Barry when he tells him that if the cartel catches them, they're dead. Because Chris can't deal with the guilt of killing another person, he pours his entire heart out to Barry, where he slips in that he plans to turn himself into the police.
That leaves Barry with no choice.
Barry not killing Taylor despite knowing it was his best option while killing Chris because he knew he had no other option captures how complex Barry is as a character. At this moment, the show reveals that even though Barry doesn't want to be a hitman, he's a cold-blooded killer through and through.
Barry's dynamics with Taylor and Chris demonstrate this. Letting Taylor live because he wasn't a threat showed Barry's compassionate side. However, killing Chris when he accidentally made himself a threat showed Barry's selfishness. Ultimately, nothing was getting in the way of Barry living a normal life. Taylor didn't stand in the way of that, but Chris did.
Taylor symbolized the life Barry wanted to leave behind, while Chris symbolized the life Barry wanted to start. Because Barry was managing both, they both got caught in the crosshairs, which was on Barry.
It is Barry's fault that he didn't kill Taylor when he had the chance, but it's not his fault that Chris came along for something he shouldn't have. Sadly, all this stems from Barry reaching out to Chris while he still had ties to organized crime.
This serves as the first hint that even though Barry wants a normal life, he doesn't deserve it because he'll get rid of any witnesses who get in the way. Chris's death is perhaps the most tragic in the show, and it sets Barry on a dark path that will not get better no matter how hard he tries.
Barry can be streamed on Hulu, but only with the Max package.