No. 4: Joe Pera Talks with You
A small, good show
If any episode of TV is this newsletter’s spiritual cousin, it’s the sixth installment of the first season of Joe Pera Talks with You, a comedy series that airs on Cartoon Network’s nightly Adult Swim programming block (and that you can stream on Adult Swim’s app or website). The episode is titled “Joe Pera Reads You the Church Announcements” and, true to its word, begins with the main character, a fictionalized version of a comedian by the same name, reciting items on his congregation’s bulletin from the pulpit. Then he cuts himself off. “I’m sorry, have you guys heard the Who?” Pera asks his fellow churchgoers. “They rock! They’re unbelievable! I heard them for the first time on Thursday and I haven’t slept since.”
The bulk of the episode is then spent recapping the time since that night he heard “Baba O’Riley” on the radio while washing dishes: frantically dialing every station in the area to request the song, spastically dancing in the living room with his basset hound, urging everyone from his pizza delivery guy to his incredulous car mechanic that they just had to hear this extremely famous rock staple that he had somehow not heard until now. It’s a montage of unbridled enthusiasm. “You know,” Pera says during a pause in his tale, “the first week listening to a new favorite song is kind of intoxicating.” Then he apologizes for his excited rambling, explaining that he also just had his first Starbucks coffee.
In some ways the episode is not necessarily representative of the show. It is, by some order of magnitude, the most animated we see the typically placid Pera, at least outside of a brief shout in another episode where he is sprayed by a skunk. But it is indicative of the spirit of the show, which is premised upon Pera sharing with the audience a subject of personal interest and, in the process, revealing himself and his worldview. The first episode, “Joe Pera Shows You Iron,” pivots absurdly from his appreciation of local minerals to Pera resignedly honoring a “for sale” sign that was planted on his front lawn without his knowledge. Each nugget of an episode — their usual runtime is around 11 minutes — meanders similarly, their unpredictability a successful contrast to the steadiness of their star, an excessively mild middle-school choir teacher who describes his personal style as “priest who snuck out of the seminary on a Saturday night trying to blend in at the local bar and grill.”
I’ve enjoyed Pera’s work for a few years, dating back to a standup set on one of the late night talk shows. His shtick is striking and consistent: stiff and slightly hunched posture, strict normcore attire, and a slow, deliberate demeanor that seems incongruous with his apparent youth. The word “grandfatherly” is applied to him often; on his website there is even a form where you can guess his age. He maintains a Kaufman-like commitment to the bit that runs through seemingly all his public appearances; fans sleuthing to find him out of character have had little luck, and while I’ve been curious to see as much myself, it’s probably for the better.
His character flourishes best in the world he has built around it for his show. On it, Pera populates the small Upper Peninsula suburb of Marquette, Mich., with characters like his amiable and much-older best pal Gene and his lovingly ribbing, meatball-cooking Nana. Pera ambles through this town delighting in enthusiasms like the beauty of his hand-me-down 2001 Buick Park Avenue (“a really nice car that doesn’t make people feel bad about how nice it is”) and his tradition of warming foil-wrapped apple slices over a backyard fire pit while singing a song called “Warm Apple Night.” He dreams of owning a commercial deli slicer so that he can slice his own cold cuts nice and thick, the way he likes. He fantasizes about working for Alberta’s renowned rat control program, a subject of such fascination that he pens an entire school musical about it. Plot accumulates slowly, through details that can at times feel incidental. Stephen Colbert recently called it “one of the funniest and most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time.”
It’s that beauty that sets the show apart. Joe Pera Talks with You revels in the mundane and banal aspects of everyday life, but manages to do so without ever feeling like it is punching down or condescending. It is too sincere and too considerate of its characters and their lives — of small-scale sublimity — to be truly mocking them, even as it draws laughs. The jokes are often small and gentle but can hit big and hard for the way that Pera’s temperament and humdrum universe have lulled and disarmed you. One of my biggest laughs, which might not translate to transcription, came when Pera babysits his neighbors’ young daughter on New Year’s Eve and stands in the yard with a firework ready to go, as the girl looks on from behind a glass door. “Three, two, one…” Pera counts down, staring at his watch. And then, in celebration: “It’s 9 p.m.!” The show’s first moment of true serenity, and one of its best, comes near the end of its third episode, when Pera takes his Halloween jack-o’-lantern on a long drive so it can receive the dignified send-off of being tossed in a flowing river. While music swells softly in the background, the camera follows the pumpkin as it bobs through the rapids, glides over a waterfall, and disappears.
You might be able to guess the appeal of this kind of show right now. It’s entertainment that can feel like aloe, not only distracting but also soothing and restoring. There’s even a whole episode, as well as a standalone animated special, where Pera talks the viewer back to sleep. It is nice to give your attention over to someone who, say, earnestly marvels at the prospect of being a lighthouse keeper: “What other profession,” Pera wonders, “comes with a tower and nearby water to look at and daydream?” One of the second season’s major plot points is Pera attempting to grow a bean arch and — spoiler alert — after he does so, he surprises his friends and family by gifting them bowls of freshly picked beans. Another entire episode basks in the minor miracles and looming temptations of grocery stores.
It’s not all an escape. Pera’s Marquette is no utopia. His neighbor Mike is an emotionally desperate father of three with occasional rage issues (played by frequent Pera collaborator Conner O’Malley, a comic genius at a completely different decibel). One of his coworkers is cartoonishly lewd. Gene’s wife Lulu can hardly tolerate Pera, and Gene’s relationship with his adult sons is strained. Pera’s love interest, played delightfully by the very funny Jo Firestone, is an endearingly paranoid doomsday prepper with a fortified basement. Season Two confronts personal tragedy in gutting fashion. But even such difficulties are handled with the gentle dignity and humanity that are the show’s through line. And it can be nice to be reminded that even in a challenging world one can try to carve out their own pleasant nook.
Allie has often said that she wishes she found the show as funny as I do. It doesn’t seem like a dig so much as an honest desire, which I can appreciate. You can’t argue funny. But what I love about Joe Pera Talks with You is more than its funniness. I like its warmth. I like its sincerity. I like that it’s a show about small joys and fascinations and letting yourself love and share them. At its core is the idea that what’s important about someone’s interests isn’t so much the things themselves but how much a person enjoys them and how generous they are with that enjoyment.
This might sound kind of silly, but sometimes, as much as it feels like a show, it also feels like somewhere to visit, and a decent one at that. It’s a nice place to spend some time. It’s kind of intoxicating.