Barry almost bites off more than he can chew in the Season 2 episode “ronny/lily,” in which Barry visits Detective Loach’s (John Pirrucello) ex-wife’s new boyfriend Ronny (Daniel Bernhardt) at his home. Loach, who takes over the investigation into Barry in the series’ second season, tells Barry at the end of the previous episode that he’ll let Barry’s crimes slide if Barry murders Ronny. Barry, still actively trying to get out of the hitman business, tries to implore Ronny to instead skip town — only to find that Ronny and his daughter, Lily (Jessie Giacomazzi) are master taekwondo practitioners.
Barry and Fuches’ protracted battle with both Ronny and Lily lasts the entire episode and ends at a convenience store when Loach and other police officers kill Ronny. Both Ronny and Lily prove bizarrely aggressive combatants, leading many “Barry” fans in the show’s Reddit community to praise the episode’s gore and Bill Hader’s knack for absurd, violent comedy. “This was just a 30 minute Kill Bill scene for an episode. F***ing epic,” wrote Reddit user u/highlanderiic.
Hader co-wrote the episode with Alec Berg and served as its sole director, leading other users to compliment his use of long takes for such intense action sequences and dedication to an episode-long fight sequence. “That was insane, it was like a horror movie, or the siege from True Detective season 1 in the projects,” user u/I_DAB_DISTILLATE wrote. “I’m literally nauseous.”