Here's a quick oddity from Adult Swim that I'd never have heard of were it not for a quick glance at a bunch of "mid-year best of television" lists. Joe Pera is, I learned, a comedian whose entire shtick seems to be a slow-paced and earnest grandpa-esque line delivery, just a totally polite and soft-spoken guy. This show is exactly what it purports to be - Joe Pera spending ten minutes at a time just talking "with" you. The "with" is important here - it's not a "to!" The one-sided conversations feel very much like they're coming from a much weirder Mr. Rogers. In the first episode, Joe Pera just talks about rocks and minerals, mostly while wandering around in the scenic lakeside woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In the second one - perhaps the purest distillation of the show - he's just walking around at his community diner talking to people about their breakfast.
The production value is better than it probably sounds; this is not a high school multimedia class project-looking thing, but a polished and professional television show where a guy will just talk about the virtues of getting a good night's sleep or watching a fireworks display. It's still Adult Swim, so it still gets very weird half the time, never veering harder off the rails in a more delightful manner than it does in the episode called "Joe Pera Reads You the Church Announcements."
Look, this is by no means must-see TV, but it's a pretty enjoyable way to kill an hour and a half across multiple nights. And sometimes, that's all you need!
No comments:
Post a Comment