Joe Pera Talks With You - Episodes 3.5 & 3.6 “Joe Pera Discusses School-Appropriate Entertainment With You” and "Joe Pera Takes You For A Flight"
Written by Dan Licata and Joe Pera
Directed by Marty Schousboe

by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

Dan Licata, who wrote this episode and plays Marquette's classic rock DJ, once broke both his legs jumping off a church roof with an umbrella. Joe remembers it as a large patio umbrella, but Dan notes it was just a regular one.

That's some insane shit. Dan and Joe, who have known each other since they were teenagers, run a regular show in New York. Here's a video of them from nine years ago, singing Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" and smashing plates. I don't know why it's funny but it is very funny and I will continue to show it to people until I am dead or YouTube announces they've accomplished what they set out to and have decided to close shop.

Joe Pera Talks With You is, as everybody notes in the first minute of discussing it, a sedate show. It's truly peaceful and I wouldn't argue otherwise. But the greater truth is that characters like Joe and Gene are peaceful while folks like Dan Licata and Conner O'Malley run around the edges like maniacs. You only achieve this kind of calm by occasionally exposing your characters to the mind of a guy who jumps off a church roof with an umbrella.

In "Joe Pera Discusses School-Appropriate Entertainment With You," Joe searches for a DVD to show his class in the fallout of the previous year's age-inappropriate disaster. Joe loves a film called The Adventures of Otto, a Milo and Otis-type movie about a turtle, but recognizes that today's tweens crave something more exciting. He concedes the movie selection to a top student, who picks Wish It Ain't So, a perfect take-off of late-90s/early-00s high school romantic comedies. The first line of the film is a cheery "Hey, you fucking bitches," Joe freaks out and, one year later, tries his hardest to split the difference between Wish It Ain't So's youth appeal and The Adventures of Otto's wholesomeness.

The closest he comes is a DVD from magician Evelyn Bonnet (Eliza Hurwitz), who turns out to be a vocal libertarian, railing against taxes as she pulls off illusions. The Adventures of Otto it is. Evelyn is progessive enough to care about getting more women into STEM, but she defines that as "Skateboarding, Television, Esports and Magic," in a bit that I've thought about nonstop for the past day-and-a-half. I don't know how a person writes a joke that perfect.

The biggest Licata intrusion comes in the form of Carmen Christopher's returning character Carlos. I've seen Christopher live a number of times and he is (and I know I keep saying this, but it's true) one of the most brilliant people working today. Licata and Christopher have similar "loud idiot absurdism" stage personas. Some of my favorite Carmen Christopher jokes are like an insult comic who's making fun of everybody who doesn't understand why he'd, say, insist his Uber drivers leave all the doors fully open during a ride. He's a loud shitty jackass in on stage and in Joe Pera Talks With You, and I'm always happy to see him. You can watch his Peacock performance, Street Special, to watch a man perform jokes to indifferent strangers around New York during the COVID lockdown and get a better idea of the level he's operating on.

The episode also features Mark Borchardt. I had forgotten the American Movie hero has a recurring role. His Midwestern positivity has a perfect outlet in Joe Pera Talks With You.

In our next episode, Joe Pera Takes You For A Flight, Joe sits with Sarah in her bunker and shows her drone footage of the outside world to prove it isn't so bad.

The footage is beautiful. I hope people actively watch this show, rather than have it on in the background. Sometimes you read smug, intentionally incendiary articles from people who insist the best way to watch TV or listen to podcasts is at 2x speed. If you did that with any show, but especially this one, you'd rob yourself of everything you could have received.

Ryan Dann's score is especially reminiscent of Music For Airports here. In a TV episode about calming an overly anxious person down, it's no surprise I got lost in the affirmations. I suppose I get from this show what many people seem to get from Ted Lasso. I think that show is funny but can get a little cloying. Ted Lasso asks "What's the nicest, most fair way to approach a situation?" Which is fine and something I strive to do in my personal life. But Joe Pera Talks With You is a naturally nice show. The desire to help and to live simply is real. Every character seems to have spent plenty of time considering the things they're presenting to you and to each other. In Ted Lasso, the title character recognizes his wife's unhappiness and goes through with a divorce without processing his own feelings. It's an unnaturally selfless act, giving up on something so vital and burying your own emotions. In Joe Pera Talks With You, characters experience defeat and they feel terrible but they don't rationalize away those feelings. The joy of a fall loop exists alongside long, slow recovery from a loved one's death. There's no separating them. You aren't allowed to forget the death by remembering the fall loop. Everything is there and it's hard and they're trying.