Joe Pera Talks With You - Episodes 3.1 & 3.2 “Joe Pera Sits With You” and "Joe Pera Shows You How To Build A Fire"
Written by Joe Pera, Nathan Min, Conner O'Malley and Marty Schousboe
Directed by Marty Schousboe

by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

I didn't think to mention any TV shows in my Best of 2018 list, but made notes in 2019 and 2020 that the second season of Joe Pera Talks With You was my favorite piece of art (movie, TV or otherwise) released in either year. We got four episodes at the end of 2019 and nine in 2020, and at some point the show became as much a spiritual guide for me as it was a source of laughter.

The first half of the season tracked comedian Joe Pera (playing an alternate reality version of himself who lives in Marquette, Michigan and teaches middle school choir) as he found the pleasures in grocery shopping and waiting for his beloved nana to finish an appointment at the hair salon. Every episode was funny, but at Pera's pace, which is to say that a ten-minute-long installment could potentially only have ten jokes sprinkled throughout, but each of those jokes would make me laugh out loud.

In the ninth of thirteen episodes, Joe organized a Rat Race-themed scavenger hunt for some friends. The tone took a hard left turn when Joe's partner Sarah (Jo Firestone) had to break the news that Nana had died and from here the rest of the season was still very funny while making room for Joe to grieve a person central to his life.

It was real grief, where things aren't okay for a long period of time. Not screaming and crying and catharsis, not prestige drama grief, just a long, slow revelation that things hurt less and less until the pain was gradually gone. Joe Pera Talks With You is a profoundly human show where an idiosyncratic man you probably can't meet in real life appreciates everything around him, and by the end of the second season, it had expanded its scope to tackle loss, not as a one-time special episode but as an ache that never stops announcing itself.

There is a scene in episode ten, immediately after Nana's death, where Joe struggled to explain to the camera how to write a eulogy, and I think about it often. Joe didn't vocalize his stress, but was clearly incapable of both dealing with it and the episode of TV he had to create. Sarah picked up on his discomfort and led the camera outside for an impromptu lesson on plants. It's a kind of tenderness you don't see in art-- one person intuiting their partner's feelings and doing what they can to ease the burden. There's no big discussion, not even any knowing glances, Sarah just makes five minutes of space for a person she cares about. It aired in January 2020.

We're almost two years out from that moment and Joe Pera Talks With You returns softness to a world that's anything but. I anticipated these episodes in the same way I do days when I can see family members. For the next five weeks (with a one-week break), we're going to get two episodes of Joe Pera per week. I'm thrilled to be able to talk about these episodes with you.

Part of the reason I spent so much time recapping last season in this first review was to hopefully get across how little I can see coming here. The first two episodes of this season are wonderful, but it's possible we'll be thrown off-balance again during an out-of-nowhere shift in the story. Over the course of Joe Pera's first season, Joe fell in love and realized his partner, Sarah Conner, was a terminally nervous timebomb. (I think I only realized the joke behind her name after the season had finished.) Season two saw Nana's passing, but also Mike and Sue Melsky (Conner O'Malley and Jo Scott) separating and reconciling and Joe's best friend Gene (Gene Kelly) celebrating an anniversary and taking Joe to Milwaukee to connect with his sons. After "Sits With You" and "Shows You How To Build A Fire," I don't have much of a sense of which threads will continue and expand as the season progresses.

In "Joe Pera Sits With You," Joe and Gene go to a furniture store to buy Gene a "retirement chair." Gene has to find the perfect chair to last the rest of his life and Joe, ever helpful, is excited to join in on the hunt.

The Marquette of Joe Pera is full of distinct characters, like furniture store employee Rhoda, but they aren't overly quirky. They aren't like the recurring cast of a sitcom. They don't have their one special thing. They share their specific ideas about how to eat breakfast or what weather is best for gardening, but none of it is goofy. This is a show devoid of Kramers.

That's not to say the characters aren't exaggerated; Mike Melsky is a loud, obnoxious fart in the middle of whatever room he's in. It's just that Joe Pera treats Mike with dignity. His rougher edges have history. It helps that he's played by Conner O'Malley, one of Joe Pera's writers and easily one of the funniest people alive (shout out to the late, great Good Good Comedy, where I saw Pera once and O'Malley and Firestone three times each). Mike is broad but he's real.

It's interesting, then, to open the third season of Joe Pera Talks With You with two episodes focusing on an already quiet show's quietest characters. After the Gene-focused "Sits With You," "Shows You How To Build A Fire" is about Joe and Sarah camping alone in the woods. Sarah's worried the world is finally ending and asks Joe to head out of town with her. He grabs their go bags. We learn some of the history of Marquette's burned churches but this is primarily a show about Joe comforting Sarah and turning down a chance to get half-off turnovers with Gene.

Intentionally or not, it's a mirror of that scene I mentioned from last season, where Sarah does what she can to ease Joe's mind. That's what this show is, between its characters and between itself and the viewer. Joe Pera Talks With You bears witness to experiences most art doesn't. I am as thankful for it as Joe and Sarah are for each other. I look forward to watching this season with you.