Joe Pera Empathizes with You

Joe Pera Empathizes with You

The recently canceled Adult Swim show, Joe Pera Talks With You, is not only one of the most brilliant television shows I’ve ever experienced, it’s also the most sincere. Although superficially dull, scratch the surface and Joe Pera shines. Joe is the person he portrays on screen: earnest, kind, down to earth and insightful. He advocates spending time with old people, children, and alone, thinking. His sincerity is subversive.

Immediately, Joe sets the tone with a history presentation about iron to no one in particular. He addresses the camera, as he will from now on, as if he is speaking to the middle school choir students he teaches in Marquette, Michigan. He reflects on the importance of this simple mineral over old photographs and stock videos. Nothing about this show is pretentious. From the way he talks, walks and dresses, Joe presents himself as a “priest who snuck out of the seminary on a Saturday night, trying to blend in at the local bar and grill.” We are in a modest home, in a modest town, with a modest man.

Like the best teachers, Joe educates us on more than just academics. Instead of handing down “12 Rules” and leering at you for not cleaning your room, Joe leads by example. “I’m looking at the appliances, don’t they look really well maintained?” comment Joe’s new neighbors, The Melskys. “Thank you, I wipe them down every time I use them.” Joe will go further. He’ll lead you through his supermarket routine: Yes, Yes, Yes. He even walks you through the steps of how to build a bean arch: “You’ll never have to buy a bean again. Save a million dollars!” Nice. Joe doesn’t want to be your Father, he wants to be your friend.

He will also teach us how to love. Joe meets Sarah [Jo Firestone] in a stupendously un-hip meet-cute. Sarah Conner is (unsurprisingly?) a left-leaning doomsday prepper who initiates their flirtation by speculating about how the children at school, where she also teaches, could easily overpower the teachers in a pint-sized January 6. Though plagued with anxieties, Sarah proves resourceful and pragmatic, a terrific compliment to Joe’s even tempered, yet impractical, personality. As Joe explains to his dearly loved grandmother, she’s “like an old woman was made into a young woman in the best possible way.” In one sequence, Joe and Sarah’s relationship runs, in parallel, as versions of themselves from the present and just after the Civil War. Sarah, a lighthouse keeper in the mid 1860’s, reluctantly invites Joe, just returned from the battlefields of Virginia, to keep her company. Over a century and a half apart, both versions of themselves find each other. The show is always aware of the presence of history, even if the past remains elusive.

Joe’s world is riddled with technological anachronisms. It actually reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite: smart phones in bed, next to wood clad TV’s; acrobatic drone footage reviewed in a room with shag carpet and a grandfather clock; a “slow tech” existence. Upon being invited to enter her most personal space, her emergency bunker, Joe remarks to Sarah, “It’s like you believe in the future, but are also afraid of it.” Aren’t we all?

The series is peppered with eccentric people, both charming and tragic. You can judge a character by the way they receive Joe. Joe’s best friend Gene, over thirty years his senior, has trouble relating to his urbane sons who are trying to “make it big”… in Milwaukee. The actor [Gene Kelly] delivers his lines like a middle schooler in the local production of Rats!. The acting is intentionally uneven. The pair play together, much to Gene’s wife’s annoyance, by suing each other to learn about the legal system and determine if there is racial bias in the courts. Joe’s neighbors, the Melskys, are more realistic. Sue Melsky [Jo Scott] (that's a lot of Jo(e)s!) and her husband Mike [Connor O’Malley] have a troubled relationship. Mike is childlike, but not in the endearing way Joe is. Mike is prone to outbursts and lacks the emotional capacity to maintain a healthy marriage. As he so eloquently puts it, “WE HAVEN’T BONED SINCE BREXIT!” The Melsky’s dysfunction would not be out of place in the real world.

Marriage is the most explored institution in the show, and there are only a few in this program. The most prominent is the middle school, ruled by an even handed principle. The church only appears once; the government not at all, except in reference to its potential collapse: “every now and then, the town will go up in flames.” At a bachelor party for a friend, the future groom is egged into taking a shot of whiskey every time he mentions his fiance’s name. Joe astutely points out the Pavlovian connection being created between his wife’s name and nausea. “There’s just a lot more gray area these days.”

Family is explored, but ambiguous. We get a family history in successive photographs of Halloweens past. A chubby young Joe poses with his grandmothers and grandfathers. The following photo, one old man is missing. The next, a woman is gone. Finally, Nana and Joe (a costumed hippy) remain. Cut to the present as everyone is dressed as The Matrix… a decade and a half too late. Joe’s parents are never even alluded to.

No one in Joe Pera Talks With You is beyond redemption. Some people are polite, some obnoxious. Others are observant, some oblivious. There may be mistakes, but there is not shame. “Fred was in prison for fourteen years before the grocery store gave him a second act.” This point is hammered home when Joe breaks the rules. He recounts his last at bat in middle school: he was swinging for the fences, despite not having a hit all season. He steals first base, only to be tagged stealing second base, then third; home-run. He was tagged out 17 times. To this day, Joe runs bases on empty diamonds to relieve stress, “if you are an anarchist you don’t even need to touch the base.” After hearing The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” for the first time, Joe interrupts Christmas mass to share his enthusiasm for a fifty year old song. He’s the last to know. He starts singing and leads the congregation in repeating together, in the house of God, the lyrics. “I don’t need to be forgiven.”

Hobbies are more important than paid work. Although he clearly loves his job as a teacher, fulfillment beyond a salary is paramount for Joe. He enjoys hiking, gardening, and just sitting and thinking. For him, thinking is never a waste of time. “I know I’m no Mr. Einstein, but I do try and think about interesting stuff, like ‘how come some birds live at the airport?’” In his free time, Joe speaks with Italian astronaut Major Paolo Nespoli over Ham radio and discusses watching Game of Thrones in orbit. Joe tags along with an amateur photographer as he photographs his 400th some consecutive sunrise. Skiing, canning, cooking, the list goes on. Characters are defined by how they fill their free time.

Although not apparently political, the show has a world view. Sarah risks alienating new friends, a rare commodity for her, to defend her teacher’s union. Reflecting on the waste of contemporary food systems, Joe remarks, “since this is the way things are set up, I feel no choice but to participate.” Is there ethical consumption under capitalism? For Sarah, the end of the world is always buzzing in the background. Joe also observes that “all ventriloquists are overtly Republican” and magicians are cartoonishly libertarian. Even puppets have deep sociological implications. Joe remarks while admiring the Milwaukee Art Museum’s iconic “Wings,” that it is also the most segregated city in the country. After Gene inadvertently invents an algorithm that predicts the stock market, he asks Joe, “Do you think the stock market could be used for good?” No. After telling the history of one of Marquette’s most devastating fires, Joe remembers that a capitalist saved the town’s records and allowed the town to quickly rebuild. “This is the only good thing a banker has done.” Full stop.

More than a few times, I’ve found myself pausing the screen to reflect: can he really be this sincere? My mind has been trained to be suspicious of something so earnest. Is Mr. Roger’s a fraud? Is Bob Ross really that nice? Does Bernie Sanders lie? Your answers to these questions may inform your approach to Joe Pera. For me, I believe every word. Yet, I’m still insecure. Surely, this is some kind of hyper-ironic wink and nod to an Adult Swim audience much younger than myself. But, no, I genuinely believe Joe. He is acting, but he’s telling you the truth. Joe assures us “its true,” and I believe him.

David Foster Wallace is credited with coining a movement called, “The New Sincerity.” A reaction to the then dominant mode of approaching Post-Modernism with irony and cynicism, The New Sincerity seeks to address our contemporary condition by turning this approach on its head: wisdom found in the earnest fool. “These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Too sincere.” Instead of dancing around issues of militarism, Joe outright asks his twelve year old students, “Do you think our society is governed by violence?” Joe to a tee. “Backward quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point.” Joe embraces passion over taste.

“In America, we think of rebellion as this very sexy thing…[but] the forms of rebellion that will end up changing anything meaningfully will be very quiet and very individual and probably not at all interesting to look at from the outside” (David Foster Wallace, 2003)

The New Sincerity, although nebulous and not well defined, has been attributed to the films of Wes Anderson and the books of Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer. Included are musicians such as Arcade Fire, Cat Power, Sufjan Stevens and Neutral Milk Hotel. The idea is expressed through too much honesty: artists striving for something beyond cynicism and pessimism. Irony is able critique and deconstruct, but it can only go so far. We need something positive, productive, constructive; even if that means venturing into the banal or naive.

I find Joe aspirationally boring. For Millennials and younger folks faced with political, economic and environmental upheaval, Joe’s dull existence is idyllic. Although, he would object, “I’ve never been bored, not once in my life.” Joe has even devoted episodes solely to putting you to sleep. As the real life Joe Pera observed with NPR, “Sleep is a reaction to, and a response to something, and it’s a good thing. It’s, like, a kind of compliment that somebody feels relaxed enough with what you’re doing that they could fall asleep during it.” How many entertainers admit that? And, its true, I’ve fallen asleep to Joe numerous times.

There’s also something about the show that makes me feel I should consume it in private, alone; like a prayer. Eleven minute episodes on Adult Swim remove the distraction of ads. Perhaps, Joe’s lack of commercial availability is why the new management under Discovery U.S. Networks Group canceled his show. When you’re gone, that's news. Or, as Joe asks his audience, “can something that avoids violence or swearing ever be considered great art?” For the money men, I guess the answer is no.

For the hard times ahead, as we all are swept into the vortex of history, we need more art, artists and humans like Joe Pera; to comfort each other when the panic sets in, to raise our spirits from melancholy and to ground ourselves in existence. We need more Sincerity.

Hello. My name is C. B. Ersoz and I love Joe Pera. If it appears I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve, its because I am.