Stuff to watch: Joe Pera Talks with You & Chuck Tingle's Complete Guide
Joe Pera Talks with You (Joe Pera standing in front of a body of water & waving at the viewer)
Oh, wow, I did not know how much I needed both of these shows in my life.
Just like its title character, Joe Pera Talks with You is quiet and gentle and odd and funny and surprising.
It’s warm and weirdly wholesome without being treacly.
IT’S NICE????
Each episode is only about 10-11 minutes long, and follows Joe as he talks about something that he’s interested in: from iron to breakfast to dancing to jack-o-lanterns to The Who.
At first, all we really know about him is that he’s a middle school choir teacher in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but as the episodes progress, we see more and more of his town and his peers and his life.
At first, we were BOTH worried that it was going to make Joe the joke—we tend to both be immediately protective of odd duck characters—but it DOESN’T, and it isn’t cringey. The people around him are aware of him as a bit of an outlier, but so far—we’ve got a couple of episodes left in the first season—every time he’s been in a situation where it seems possible that people could turn on him, they DON’T.
Something about that is so comforting and affirming that it makes me almost sad because it leads to the realization/reminder: my EXPECTATION is always that the gentle soul is going to get crushed by the world.
I heard about it first on a recent episode of Extra Hot Great—they specifically talked about S1E06, Joe Pera Reads the Church Announcements. While they felt that it would be a good jumping-in point—and truly, that episode is AMAZING)—Josh and I BOTH felt that it’s way more of an EXPERIENCE to watch them all from the beginning. Because of the way your understanding of Joe and the town builds and builds and builds, the later episodes in the series start to pack way more of an emotional punch (A GOOD PUNCH! NOT A BAD PUNCH!) if you have the earlier ones as a foundation.
I think I would have appreciated that episode on its own, but with the rest behind it, it becomes something SPECIAL.
Anyway, some of the episodes are available for free via the [adult swim] app, but after watching the first two, I just said the hell with it and bought the entire season via Amazon because I knew it was something we’d want to both watch in its entirety AND revisit. It looks like it’s also available via HBO Max.
Secondly and MUCH more succintly: Chuck Tingle’s Complete Guide!
While it’s a bit louder/higher energy than Joe Pera, it’s steeped in the same overall NICENESS?
Which is to be expected from Chuck Tingle, the beloved inventor of The Tingler and self-proclaimed World’s Best Author. From what I have gathered, the Complete Guide is a planned six-part YouTube series—so far, he’s covered GHOSTS and SPELLING—and the episodes that have dropped so far have been just as delightful as you’d expect from his Twitter feed.