beansofgrass

I'm not easy to please when it comes to tv, and this show is the best thing I've experienced in a long time. This show is so special. It's hyper attuned to the quietly vulnerable/fallible aspects of people's personalities and social situations, but rather than pushing us to laugh at them, the show is a love letter those those moments. It causes me to laugh in a way that dilates my pupils and then makes me weep a little, rather than splitting my sides and making me feel superior in what I perceive as my normalcy relative to the characters and their antics (which feels like most comedy on tv today). It makes me want to walk outside and watch people and listen to them closely. Joe Pera plays a character who would be considered socially awkward and likely neurodivergent by most accounts. These sorts of main characters are usually either portrayed as lovable but ultimately a laughing stock for viewers' entertainment, or they are pathologized such that their ultimate triumph is overcoming their "differences" enough to achieve the kinds of goals and expectations that the rest of neurotypical capitalist society deems valuable. JPTWY falls to none of that. The show's fuel is Joe's intense perceptiveness, kindness, attentiveness to his middle class carework career, the breadth of his knowledge, and the beauty and comedy inherent in the subjects in which he takes interest. The people in his life are just as fallible and lovely as he is, and in very different ways, and the humor in that discord is ever so gently pulled above the surface and into view during their interactions. Also, for all its reverence of the mundane, it is incredibly unpredictable. It's so quiet in tone, yet keeps me on my toes at all times. I love that combination. Some might call its pivots absurdist, but it doesn't quite make it there for me — I think it stays just grounded enough. It seems aware of its own risk of floating away (meta-reflected in Joe's narrative tendencies), and even pokes fun at that sometimes. Anyway, it's late and this is ****'s honestly intimidating to write a review for a show that has given me so much comfort and energy since I discovered it. I want to give all the creators a hug and thank them!