Hitman, fool and actor: 'Barry' is the television diamond in the rough that few are watching

Here's a guy who just wants to know what it's like to be a normal guy.

His name is Barry Berkman and if you haven't heard of him it's because he's not watching the show he should be watching.

Barry is the protagonist of

(HBO), nothing noisy and a small masterpiece still in progress signed by former

writer Alec Berg, along with his own protagonist, the former

Bill Hader, who kills demons at the speed with which his character kills all kinds of (nothing) tough guys.

A very black comedy, intellectual and brutal at the same time, meta-referential, absurd, and pioneer, in its macabre and hilarious way, in the redefinition of a genre, that of the action comedy, which reinvents the concept of its protagonists, fallible here until Infinity.

But we'd better start at the beginning.

Because obviously

is not

, although he has behind him the guy who has written for Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld himself (the guy who is also behind other little gems like

).

It's not

, although in the center there is a relationship between mentor and apprentice, in his case, mutant, because although the apprentice is always the same, Barry, the mentor passes from the cowardly brute who takes advantage of the fact that when you aim and shoot you always hit a charmingly cocky acting teacher (the action kicks off when that serial killer takes an interest in drama) who thinks he's a good actor and the only thing he's really good at is teaching others how to act.

It's not

, even though

wears a T-shirt identical to that of the compulsion murderer.

And yet, something of all of them has, but from the margins.

Because what

intends and achieves, brilliantly, is to reconstruct a genre, as Lawrence Block does, and as Ed McBain did, a kind of macabrely funny police officer that allows him to choose the wrong side, that of the murderer.

Because that's what Barry (Hader) does, to kill.

And he's good at it, but he's fed up, bored, depressed, what kind of life is a life that consists of carrying around a gun and waiting until you can finish whoever you have to finish and go home without anyone? find out what you've done?

Isn't that a frustrating life?

has

, from that apparent oversight, the aspect of an x-ray of this present in which nothing is ever enough.

Bill Hader picks up an Emmy for 'Barry' at the 70th Emmy Awards in 2018. Kevin Winter (Getty Images)

Barry was in Afghanistan, fighting in the war.

Until then, she hadn't felt much.

Who knows what his childhood must have been like.

Maybe it was a weird kid who never felt comfortable being a weird kid, or didn't feel anything at all.

A blank page.

All Barry wants is for that page to stop being blank.

Someone help him paint it.

Barry wants to belong.

That they love him, and respect him.

Let them value you.

That is why when he discovers that his colleagues, the soldiers of his regiment, consider him someone, and someone important because he is good at aiming and shooting, he decides that this is what he is going to dedicate himself to.

This is how he falls into the arms of Monroe Fuches, the

killer he runs into on his return, a kind of manipulative father.

Fuches (Stephen Root) directs his life with each goal.

Fuches is reckless, clumsy, and lazy to the point of letting himself be hired to take down an entire mob (and having to deliver on his promises).

Fuches loses teeth at crime scenes because someone knocks them out.

He doesn't control what happens, but he pretends to.

His is one of the masculinities that the series redraws, that tramples on, and deforms, that he shows in a way that, through satire, has more in common with any ordinary human being than the one that until now was embodied in fiction by a character of his openwork

Fuches, like the other outrageously bumbling men in the series, is, in every way, fallible.

And it is in the error, in the continued absurdity, in which Barry grows.

Gene Cosineau (a supreme Henry Winkler), his other mentor, represents the world to which Barry aspires (with nothing and no one letting him barely move from where he comes from, the one in which he is one thing, and one that bores him. to say enough: murderer) and in which it can be anything you can imagine.

Cosineau evolves from ruthless narcissist (watch out for the way detective Janice is probably among the best pick-ups ever on television), to remorseful and finally just man in (modest) power. .

Bill Hader, Henry Winkler and the creator of 'Barry', Alec Berg, during a presentation of the series in California.FilmMagic (FilmMagic)

The mobsters in

are also deliciously fallible.

They are so disjointed that anything is possible.

For example, that they be led by a character like NoHo Hank (sublime Anthony Carrigan), from minute one, a classic of universal absurd fiction, and the main engine of the series.

A very tender guy in a horrible place (a Chechen mafia), who tends to fall in love with almost any minimally powerful man he comes across and who ends up starring in the great love story of the series.

A story between men, of course, between him and Cristóbal, the attractive, resolute and friendly leader of a rival mafia who ends up being a friend.

Around them, he roams, like a villain who should be ignored, an imposed masculinity that they do not recognize.

For here is what Barry breaks down, or shows, the way Tom Wolfe did in

: the idea that a man is a self-imposed, but not real, bunch of things, things he can let go of. , things you can redraw.

Hence, the theme of acting is at the center (although it is also a way of destroying the business from within, and in the last season, with the series that are canceled in seconds after their premiere, it borders on beating laughter), because in the end we are talking about roles, roles that are attributed and can and must change so that Barry and the rest get out of their mental prison.

And what about women?

It happens in Barry that it is women who have power in the real world, while they only pretend to have it in the sewers, and it could be said that Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg), the violently insecure and arrogant actress who falls in love with Barry in the workshop of interpretation that triggers the plot, exemplifies how power continues to be a means to try to belong, to be part of something, but being able to decide.

Which, in a world as unstable as the present, is still a mirage.

And here we can read.

The 24 episodes of the first three seasons are waiting for you.

Get ready to laugh at lazy agents and cursed hitmen like you've never seen them before: being themselves.

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