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"Ecce homo qui est faba".
The stereotype of the english man tout-court seems never to fade throughout history: perfect, rigorous, lofty, presumptuous, haughty, serious, bowler hat on his head, tailcoat, and dark umbrella in hand. Although the evolution of culture and the crossing of national customs towards a more globalized context have rendered this reality less static, the common tendency is, however, to attribute the aforementioned characteristics to the English. After all, stereotyping a reality alien to one's current possession is a moral heritage of everyone: beer, sausages, and Bavarian clothing for the Germans, bullfights, bullfighters, and señoritas for Spain, pagodas, gongs, and walls for the Far East. And how is Italy represented by most? Better not to go there.
Mr. Bean is the antithesis of the inflexible Londoner. What is listed among the best comic series of recent decades exquisitely overturns the English stereotype, conceiving a mediocre little man, childish, stubborn in his lifestyle, terribly idle and silly, even selfish and egocentric, nonetheless so fun and amusing. It's useless to try to hold back laughs and half-moon smiles at his escapades and misadventures: Bean will make even the most serious and incorruptible viewer burst out laughing.
Inserted nearly into any context, in the shabby apartment where he lodges, during village festivals, at school, and in church, Bean always manages to adapt in his own way, provoking feelings of embarrassment, perplexity, and shame, even irritation to those who, by misfortune, have to accompany him. Permanently in trouble, he manages to get out of it not always unscathed, except with tricks and stratagems that make ten-year-olds envious. Our Mister is, in fact, the modern Peter Pan: a modest citizen who devotes himself, even unintentionally, to escaping the monotony and contemporary boredom, who refuses to access the dull adult world, made of suffering, depressions, apathy, and tedious hyper-rationality. It takes very little, and a grey day can turn into something fun and carefree, passions that Bean embodies perfectly.
In "Mr. Bean in Room 426", the clumsy little Englishman finds himself on vacation: having arrived at the hotel with the legendary green olive Mini Morris, he begins to make known, especially to the neighboring room, his innate irrationality. Entering the room, he transforms and redesigns it as if it were his property: he hangs paintings, drills the walls to access the bathroom of the adjacent room (his is without private facilities), changes the curtains, turns the light on and off, leaps madly on the bed. Subsequently, he engages in a kind of unreciprocated "challenge" with the mentioned neighbor, even consuming spoiled oysters. The rest is pure comedy: Bean, in the throes of the illness he just caught, strips naked only to be locked out, in the middle of the night, completely as nature intended, outside his room.
The peculiarity of Mr. Bean highlighted in the episode is the bizarre infantilism that distinguishes him: as in the days of school or childhood soccer games, the little man is spurred to challenge anyone who stands beside him, without directly revealing these trivial ambitions. Bean duels and attacks the rational and rigorous impulses typical of adult age, imposed by nature, in the human spirit at the end of adolescence: the moral winner is, nevertheless, Mister himself. He will never mature, child he is, child he will be; there will never be any material or insubstantial reality capable of transforming him completely into the humanoid robot that spends his existence between the office, the snack bar for lunch breaks, and the evening slippers.
And what if we, educated to the stressful post-adolescent rigor, enlivened our lives like Mr. Bean?
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