“Guns!” Barry says as he enters the supermarket. There is a brief ellipsis where he is supposed to show identification and discuss the models he can buy. A moment later he is already through the aisles of the store armed to the teeth with all kinds of weapons on his back while he walks next to the shelves with toys. Mothers and children are looking at stuffed animals. But no one flinches. Not even the security members at the entrance as Barry walks out the door with a grim face and an arsenal to kill an entire neighborhood.
The scene belongs to Barry, an HBO series that is not as watched as The last of us, The house of the dragon or Succession. Its episodes last half an hour. But, even in such short installments, it often gives critics and audiences more to chew on than any other series on the air, due to Bill Hader's ability to craft poignant scenes as actor, writer, and director.
In this scene in question, which barely lasts 30 seconds, it perfectly represents the cancer with which American society lives: the little regulation around the sale of firearms and the horror that they can be bought in the same establishments where children's products are sold It is a peaceful scene (no violence is shown), subtle, in the midst of a moment of crisis for the protagonist, but it is forceful and symbolic in his criticism.
Just look at the numbers: So far this year, there have already been more than 200 mass shootings in the country, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This means that there have been more than 200 situations in which four or more people were injured or killed by firearms. And how is it justified? With the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which recognizes a person's right to bear arms, a principle defended by the Republican Party and conservative lobbies such as the National Rifle Association.
Barry's scene, which was definitively fired with the episode in question, is not the only criticism of the system. Grey's Anatomy also denounced the normality with which citizens had become accustomed to living with shootings based on the case of a patient who lived with bullets in his body. Owen Hunt, a retired military man and surgeon on the payroll of Gray Sloan Memorial Hospital, was outraged by the passivity of society.
For those unfamiliar with the Barry series, it has little of an activist series. In its four seasons it has been revealed as a black comedy with touches of action about Barry Berkman, an ex-soldier with post-traumatic stress who works as a mercenary. When he tries to change his profession, studying acting at a drama school, his life becomes complicated. And on Monday, when he said goodbye to the hearing, he did it with a scathing criticism of television, in addition to his denunciation of the operation of the Second Amendment.
