"In America," says Josh T. Ryan at the start of every episode of Lock 'n Load, a new reality series on Showtime, "a new gun is manufactured every 10 seconds. And all sorts of people are buying them." As that works out to 3,153,600 new guns a year -- about three-quarters the number born in America over the same period -- one would think that, yes, there will have to be some variety.
That number does not seem to be too high or too low to Ryan, who works at the "family-owned" Shootist gun shop outside of Denver -- it is not his family that owns it -- where he keeps up a steady stream of chatter as he hooks up customers with the guns of their dreams. Hidden cameras record their conversations -- it is sort of Taxicab Confessions in a gun store, without the profound glimpses into the human condition that Taxicab can afford, or the sex.
The series made its debut Wednesday, in an episode that will be repeated Sunday at midnight. New episodes are shown at 10 p.m. Wednesdays.
Ryan prompts the patrons to talk, but the stories don't really develop into much; and although the arms-buying demographic is indeed wider than one who has not spent much time in a gun store might imagine, their reasons for buying tend to be variations on the same few themes: I was robbed; I don't want to be robbed; guns are fun to collect and shoot. (In the entire six-episode run there is, interestingly, almost no talk of hunting.) Every once in a while, there is a snippet of talk about something other than guns, but that's really not explored. And when the store is robbed, the ramifications of weapons disappearing into the criminal underworld are never discussed.
When you go outside the series itself -- which runs from kind of dull to mildly diverting -- to the news releases that herald it, you learn that Ryan, one of the show's co-creators, is also an actor. And ultimately, the show is less about the customers who come and go than it is about him.
He is not particularly a gun person, anyway; he is a gun salesman, with the big-laugh bonhomie of one born to retail, as well as the ability to identify with a product and with his various customers.
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