Though Gene Cousineau’s fate at the end ofBarrywas spending the rest of his life in prison after killing Barry Berkman in cold blood, Henry Winkler revealed what Gene planned to do before killing Barry.
Because the walls were closing in around him with his legal troubles - which had all stemmed from completely false narratives - Gene brought out the gun actor Rip Torn gave him with the intent of committing suicide with it, according to Winkler. However, because Gene realized Barry had entered his house, he ultimately went the other way intheBarryseries finale.
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Winkler revealed toVulturewhat Cousineau was thinking moments before he realized Barry Berkman had returned. “I think he was wrestling with the feelings until he heard what was outside that door. Because if he was going to end his life, he was going to end it right when he picked up the gun. He wasn’t going to be like,Oh, well, I think I’ll just get up and go to another room and shoot my brains out.” Winkler added that Gene would have gone that route because he could never explain his side of the story. “There is a bit of insanity when he walks into that hotel room in the seventh episode. Everybody is confronting him and blaming him. The switch flips when he realizes,I’m being blamed for all this, and there is no way I can explain it. He goes to his son, who says, ‘Well, you never really tell the truth, so we don’t know.’ I mean, he flips his wig.”
Cousineau was being wrongfully blamed for conspiring to get his girlfriend, Janice Moss, killed by Barry. Because Gene accepted money from Barry to pay for his son’s house, and because he shot his son thinking Barry had come to kill him, he had inadvertently built enough evidence against him to prove that he was not above getting involved in a life of crime. Even though Gene and the viewers know that the case against him is 100 percent false, his defense is mere “he said, she said,” which will not be enough in a court of law.
That’s what makes himkilling Barry in the end poetic. None of this would have happened had he never gotten involved with Barry because doing so only worsened his life. Barry killed the love of his life, which started a chain reaction that would have led to Gene getting falsely imprisoned for his alleged involvement. Barry caused so much misery in Gene’s life - to be fair, that was not his intention - that a comeuppance was in order. Since Gene’s life was ruined with no hope for redemption, the last thing he could do was get rid of the man who caused everything to fall apart.
Cousineau did not deserve to have his life destroyed, but his hubris is what ultimately ruined him. He may have learned from his mistakes, butGene Cousineau couldn’t help but lust for recognition. He wanted to make a story out of his time with Barry out of a pure desire to seek attention. Then, after letting Warner Bros. know that he did not want a movie made about his story years later, the cops got him by seducing him with big-name actors like Mark Wahlberg and Daniel Day-Lewis to play out the story. While not a malicious person until the end, Gene’s weakness for adoration destroyed him.
