How To with John Wilson

The Mandela people reminded me of the characters in slacker and waking life

the part where he uses a "memory trick" to recall his shopping list was brilliant

I don't know that I'd necessarily comfortably slot Wilson into "comedy," feels to me more borne out of a Les Blank path if anything. Think there's a lot of genuine humanity and lack of judgement in what he's doing, certainly more so than Fielder. I think the Joe Pera maybe holds on grounds of kindness

Not that it's not funny, it's incredibly funny, but I'd doubt that's his primary intent

xp yeah the more freewheeling Linklater seems like a good touchstone too

Damn this is good

This has brought my household great joy in a time that's low on joy

i don't think anyone is ripping anyone off. and i agree "how to" is much more fielder than pera. i just see similarities in the halting speech patterns representing intense social awkwardness and the narration explaining things to the viewer.

i feel like fielder, wilson and pera all seem linked to me bc they all have a comedic persona thats based on some level of naivete, where the comedy comes not necessarily from making fun of things per se but from just sort of looking at the world with fresh eyes

nathan for you is obv darker than the other two, but as has been often pointed out a lot of the time the comedy comes from people being nicer than we expect them to be, being too nice or overly accommodating of nathans horrible actions. theyre not necessarily an antidote to cynicism or whatever, but i feel like theres definitely a relationship to irony and cynicism in these shows that feels very different from a lot of other comedy in recent years

Something about last night's ep felt like it was more influenced by Nathan Fielder than the past few eps

Anyway loved it, loved the income tax neon sign, loved him showing up to the Long Island referee meeting in the wrong sport referee uniform, loved the shot of the little kid eating his own snot as John was talking about organic food

I was dying laughing at pretty much every second of the ref meeting sequence, incredible stuff.

I had very vivid feelings bringing back a lot of childhood memories of being in rooms like that and groups of adults like that, having to tag along with my dad to some boring meeting or potluck or something, having the general idea of "adults" demystified for me, learning that for the most part they were usually not interesting or cool or even very nice, pretty much the same as the kids I already knew in my elementary school class, just much larger. Amazing stuff. They even stole his whistle.

covering your furniture hasa new meaning or is that new.
Finally getting to see last week's one or the week before's

okay the thing he does where he records someone wincing and looking distraught and then does a voiceover claiming they're upset because the check was split unfairly is really funny to me

one of my favorite parts was the "2 guys...3 guys....4 guys...two three four" bit, mostly because that's a joke you'd never see on any other show

I died at “a reffle”

one of my favorite parts was the "2 guys...3 guys....4 guys...two three four" bit, mostly because that's a joke you'd never see on any other show

i was really hoping it was going to somehow lead up to "three cousins, a deli slicer, and a buncha bagels" in coney island

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBt5PAeWsAAMYbl.jpg

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/hbos-how-to-with-john-wilson-captures-the-weird-wondrous-new-york-city-thats-never-on-tv

a reffle

one of the reasons this couldn't work in the UK (most places in the west?) is that you have to get a waiver signed to broadcast someone's image on TV or at least you mostly do. I do find myself wondering about the logistics/legality and even the morality of some of the shots playing alongside the narration. I know I'd feel pretty humiliated and annoyed if I was, for example, the clearly exasperated guy in the baseball cap giving his friends the side-eye at the restaurant table while John's talking about resentments w/r/t splitting the bill.

I think all those people signed releases! Check that interview link upthread.

really? I find that almost impossible to believe. I'll check the interview out, thanks.

The How to Split the Bill episode makes me think about ILX a lot (and not just the tipping/splitting threads)

If I’m shooting people on the street doing something funny, either I or a field producer will go up to that person and tell them they were in a shot for a documentary show about New York, then we get a release. Pretty much everyone says OK, which was surprising to me—people respond surprisingly well to the news they’ve been filmed as long as you level with them and tell them exactly what the show is, like “Oh, I’m making an episode about small talk and you guys were having small talk on the street.” It’s innocuous when you tell them what it is, because people’s imaginations can run wild when you tell them they’ve been filmed. You have to put them at ease and let them know exactly what context you’re planning on putting it in. I’m confident that it’s to serve a larger, weird joke, usually on myself.

Feeling a lot of feelings after that finale but mostly just thinking about that slide whistle and how I really hope he gets another season

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCNsx_NyNOU

finale was one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen, what a masterful season

otm - i love how just as it was getting crushingly heavy at the end, he pulled it all back with the perfectly stupid "SHRIMP NIBBLERS ARE BACK" shot

omfg the finale

this is easily my favorite show of the year along with aew dynamite

protect john wilson's landlord at all costs

that Anatomy Of A Scene video is brilliant

Just finished the final ep. Love this show so much.

Really curious as to how long he was filming and then how long it took to comb through it all and stitch everything together. Know we got a glimpse of his daily cataloguing, but I assume there was some more sophisticated indexing going on there? Seems like a lot of patience, creativity, and work behind it any which way.

this is pretty good but nowhere near Joe Pera imo

Haven’t seen anything from Joe Pera to my knowledge but will rectify shortly

Wilson hits me intellectually and Pera hits me emotionally.
Though to be fair, that last ep DID hit me emotionally. Really nailed what the early days of COVID in the city were like.

Enjoyed the Mama thread in the last one.

“She’s the only person in my life that I never... vape around.”

this show is funny, but - and this is gonna sound pretentious and hyperbolic but I mean it - it's in a way that transcends comedy. or I guess more accurately, it's something peripheral to comedy. this dude is a street photographer first and foremost. contemporary street photographers, particularly the ones in Brooklyn but also all the ones through NYC or anywhere where this sort of documentation is successful on the instagrams and such, are always on the lookout for little visual jokes, things that are just naturally intrinsically funny in this universal zen way where captions can only weigh them down. so captions are foregone here in lieu of the narration which is the more traditional application of "comedy" in this show, and it's exactly what you'd expect of these Brooklyn-style instagram-perfect comedy-moment hunters. the narration adds this conscious layer of

eh forget it, I don't know where I'm going this with this. I just really like this show and it's exactly what I was hoping it'd be (post-comedy)

my brother-in-law and I were texting about it and he mentioned that my seven-year-old nephew had seen it and had commented "I don't understand it, but I like it too."

It’s a lot of things, yeah, and comedy is only one of the pillars.

This sounds dumb, but personally a lot of it reminded me of a time I took mushrooms and just walked around my city one Saturday afternoon. Hyper attuned to everything and things you’d typically filter out walking down the street became significant, absurd, and alien.

if you've ever spent several years roaming your city trying to be a street photographer doing pretty much exactly this same thing, wasting hour upon hour trying to find the best of the best so as to not waste anyone's time with your product, including all the requisite laborsome editing and all the mindfuckery that meta-processing entails, you too would feel like you were having yet another one of these mushroom-style trips, another rake of the filter

Hahah. Well... happy to be a tourist in that department and appreciative of those who put in the work and do it well so I can feel those things on my couch.

word! that's how I'm feeling this show too. it's v v good

Yeah my wife digs this show a lot but I think she’s only laughed once per episode

your wife sounds pretty hot

that Nathan Fielder anatomy video seems exactly like the kind of thing this show is a welcome antidote to. Levels of Irony accepted (sadly, not gladly) but, really, why would you make that film? I realise it's to make more people watch HTwJW but it seems to work against it in a very bad way.

just kidding dude, that's a joke like how Nathan did that whole nubile young men staying at his house bouncing on his trampoline creating content for his business joke thing in that cajunsunday posted. Nathan doesn't want to violate our tweens and I'm not interested in your wife

^ xpost btw

why not

Thought the Nathan anatomy video was pretty good and kinda the only way I could see that dude making a “promotional video”.

sir, if you'd like to take this conversation about your wife offline, just send me a webmail, we'll get it going I promise you