How To with John Wilson

noted! onto the pile

btw as great as nathan4u is, it would be willfully naive to say it doesn't punch down on immigrant small biz owners with accents

― kurt schwitterz, Thursday, December 9, 2021 1:28 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah its kinda hard to defend some of those parts but I guess there are a number of ways to read it. I mean everyone on that show is a mark to some degree but at a certain point you wonder if he was targeting immigrants because it was easier for him to get them to go along with whatever he was doing. otoh it's LA, like half the small businesses there are immigrant owned so who knows

it's because white people think immigrants with accents are funny to laugh at.

Nathan is an immigrant with a funny accent, too, so that makes it OK.

lol true

Re: "clueless" - I wouldn't call John clueless, but I did cringe a lot when he bought that car off Craigslist (like, come on dude, sourcing everything from Craigslist was one of the best running jokes on "Nathan for You"!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0PZ6xtnj5o

He’s flush with that landlord (and HBO) dough now, he figured he could afford a lemon for a good story.

I would say that I think JW and nathan4u both get by with the low blows because they actually try to relate it to a universal struggle. Like the dude in the last episode trying to drag his belongings down the sidewalk in a big Tupperware container was not funny because of his circumstances but his reaction to the situation was so relatable

want to go on record as saying that i don't find John Wilson's stuff exploitative or faux naive in any way and that it is often an excellent distillation of a year's worth of "did i just see that" while out and about in the city down to a half hour.

also nabisco just did an excellent piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/magazine/how-to-john-wilson.html

S2E3 felt like a ratcheting back down to the subtler season 1 style, and I loved it.

Yeah, I actually liked that one being more scaled back.

How to throw out your batteries is the best thing I’ve seen in a while

Good documentary on how systems fail people

*post of dead rat*

How to remember your dreams is the perfect question for this series. I like “weird” John more than “documentarian” John.

Also omg the court-room shows! His random autobiographical drops always kill me

cant stop thinking about them putting all the frowny faces on nuclear waste because they don't know what language people will speak in the future

it won't do any good though. if we encounter something like that from 3000 BC we are opening it on the spot

Feels like the avatar ppl was punching down

Seemed like that at the start but it really came around when the guy was talking about his depression and needing someone. Typical of John Wilson’s style to seem potentially like punching down to start (I think that was my first impression of his documentation of his landlord), only to turn out as a sincerely sweet display of humanity.

Also I went to John Wilson’s subreddit and some of the avatar guys were commenting with enthusiasm, doing informal AMA’s on posts and seemed to be wrapped with their presentation. Actually really sweet, would recommend searching

That episode was the best this season so far I thought. He packed so much in and it held together somehow.

The avatar ppl were the joke the whole time cmon

yeah i had to mute that section, 2sad4me

Nah mate

https://bushwickdaily.com/arts-culture/hbo-comes-to-ridgewood-via-how-to-with-john-wilson/

lol that is some prime hipster complaining right there - bitch about how someone doesn't show the REAL neighborhood while not actually mentioning any (I checked!) businesses or local spots that should get recognition instead.

so fucking dumb

it's not a documentary about ridgewood retail stores!

i live in ridgewood and am perfectly happy for jw to elide the creeping yupster stuff and the glowering eastern european antisemites, the wilsonian ridgewood is delightful and as accurate a representation as anything else

The key quote here is ““Seinfeld” feels like Wilson’s central comic influence “

i watch a lot of reading rainbow these days and that show's "discursive mini essays nominally related to a central theme but really not really" approach feels of a piece w how to

his way
of talking
is
driving me insane

i suddenly stopped being able to enjoy this show because all i can
hear
is
the way he
breaks up sentences
(video of dog sniffing own butt)

The only way to keep the pacing of the corresponding visuals digestible.

yeah the show is very tightly edited and most of the humor is between what he's saying and what you're seeing. if you just transcribed his entire monologue from any given episode it would probably make no sense at all, or maybe like something an AI wrote

He sounds like an idiot

perhaps he means to sound like an idiot and the show is meant to signify nothing

Haha

I do admit that his voice is kind of a put-off, my very first impression of the show is "I don't know if I want to hear this guy talk for 30 minutes". I have a similar reaction to Nathan Fielder's voice but it fits his persona/character so well that I don't mind it

It's part of the charm, but I can understand finding it grating.

otm. I would also strongly advise against bingeing this show (not suggesting you're doing that LL, your post just reminded me why I think it's a bad idea)

I have to say I've only seen a few eps of Nathan For You, and I am aware of the direct connection, but I honestly see zero similarities and find it bizarre to compare them, especially because this is about 100 times better?

both have completely different purposes, n4u is about pretending to be autistic to show the horrors of capitalism/marketing/fame/whatever, h2wjw is about pretending to be autistic for a diff reason idk I haven't really seen much of it

you pissin' a shit with that post?

There a Nathan esque touch to the way the narrative builds around the randomness, I think.

the referee convention episode had a very NFY feel to it

I think both shows have the same technique of building the "plot" of an episode mostly after the fact. it's more obvious on this show but Nathan does it too - apparently a lot of those episodes were built around hundreds of hours of footage, and the bizarre, nonsensical narratives are often just a way to get all the best parts in

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

renewed for a 3rd season

What blue collar neighborhood will he profit off of next

decided i am not into this show. i thought it was amusing in the first season when it was more random but i am not interested in deep thoughts from this person tbh

begging to differ, excited to hear we got s3

very informative and funny podcast ep feat. John: http://www.screenslate.com/articles/episode-2-pest-control-john-wilson