John Wilson competes in a 9/11 bodybuilding competition on the third season of his HBO show. Photo: HBO
What's the craziest thing? did you see it on TV recently? Kim Cattrall's question «Will this work?» cameo in the series «And just like that?» Tom wins Inheritance? Matt Hancock sings Ed Sheeran in «Am I a Celebrity…?»
Step back, Matt, and put away the comb microphone. A new winner has emerged, though UK audiences will have to wait a little longer to see it in its entirety. This past weekend, after three sanity-warping seasons, HBO ended its screening of the comedy documentary How to Live with John Wilson. It went out with a crash, a whimper, and a roar of unrestrained madness.
The cliché surrounding American television comedies is that they are mass-produced and formulaic. But American television over the past decade has created, essentially out of nowhere, a new genre of comedy so insane that it's not really funny and is the closest thing to looking into the jaws of pure insanity. The market leader is the Netflix series “I Think You Should Go” with Tim Robinson. It's essentially Lovecraft's «Quick Show» — in one of the sketches, Robinson allowed himself to be humiliated by a crappy magician, but his wife took it as a signal to end their marriage. Starts funny and ends unimaginably dark.
This is also the trajectory of The Dealing with John Wilson, which uses a simple shot of Wilson, a former Long Island private detective and music documentary filmmaker, filming various scenes, armed with a home video camera. The first episode is titled «How to Make Small Talk» and ends with Wilson in Cancun infuriating the MTV crew and bonding with a lonely young man whose best friend has committed suicide.
There are giggles, but suddenly Wilson stares into space. Then, in its second year, came out How to Appreciate Wine, in which Wilson recalls a time he attended an a capella convention in upstate New York frequented by sex cult leader Keith Raniere, founder of the notorious NXIVM group, which included Smallville actress Allison. Mac
Dismayed by Raniere's «creepy» behavior towards other a cappella singers, Wilson and his companions investigated his backstory and found that he was on a number of cult watchlists, and also that several NXIVM members had committed suicide. “We yelled at Allison Mack and Keith Raniere in front of the rest of the a cappella band and wrote the names of the suicide victims on whiteboards they put up on the walls,” he says to the camera. As a result, the Wilson College professor threatened to expel him if he did not apologize to Mac, which he did.
“I then had to have a frank conversation with the dean of my college and try to explain to her who these people were and why they were so malicious,” Wilson told Vanity Fair. “She just didn't believe me. Since then, I have been tormented by this strange shame. All the graduates of the a cappella group said: “Why did you get involved in something like that?” «It's just a crazy drama that I never thought I could ever resurrect.»
This season, he tries to gain strength by going to the gym, and along the way, he volunteers to be photographed naked, but the photographer's equipment is stolen. He contacts a writer who writes detective stories about cats to help find a missing camera, which somehow leads to a 9/11-themed bodybuilding contest. Here Wilson meets a bodybuilding instructor who reveals that one of his former clients was a 9/11 hijacker.
John Wilson enters the world of competitive pumpkin farming in How To Season 3 Credit: HBO
«I felt proud,» says instructor . “I was pleased that I taught someone something serious that they were able to carry out. We may not agree with them, but they were dedicated to their cause. That's what I liked about him.»
These exchanges are strange, with bells. However, sometimes How Too… is surprisingly touching. In one episode, after initially crashing into a gathering of pumpkin enthusiasts, Wilson finds himself at the 37th Annual Vacuum Cleaner Collector's Convention held at the Marriott Suites Hotel in Scranton, Pennsylvania. This is where vacuum cleaner enthusiasts compete to pick up as much dust as possible in the shortest amount of time. One collector cries as he remembers telling his father about his passion for the vacuum cleaner shortly before his father's death.
That Wilson had a knack for touching heartstrings was already confirmed in the first series, where the How to Make Risotto article simultaneously served as mediation in the Covid lockdown. With a looming pandemic, he tries to cook the perfect Italian meal for his elderly mistress. He fills those empty hours of isolation by honing his risotto-making technique, but his owner is hospitalized. She later returns and he finally presents his risotto. It's stupid — as long as it's not destructive.
Emotions also subside when, after being told he can't film at the Burning Man festival, Wilson encounters a man trying to build a house under a huge former missile site, though this puts his wife off. He also meets a woman who has run into two serial killers — after starting the day by cleaning her ears (only to be intimidated by how loud New York sounds). As Wilson watches, the woman explains that one of the killers was a man she only knew in passing. She was in a relationship with someone else. “Sorry, I kind of got hung up on this,” Wilson says. «Have you dated a serial killer?»
Viewers will not soon forget the notorious episode about covering up damaged furniture, which culminates in a conversation with a man whose business is growing foreskin for people who have undergone circumcision. On weekends, the anti-circumcision activist goes to karaoke bars and plays popular songs in support of the foreskin (“there would be no good skin”). If David Lynch included this in the film, people would accuse him of going too far.
If you thought the foreskin guy was dark, buckle up for the finale that Wilson decided to end the show with. Allegedly, this is a polite diatribe about the loss of personal parcels. We discover that Amazon supply theft is an ongoing problem in New York. One woman recalls ordering medicine to freeze her eggs and sitting on the porch all morning to make sure no one steals the package.
John Wilson reveals conspiracy on Titanic
A constant figure in all of this is Wilson, who speaks in a slightly hoarse, stammering voice. He also loves obvious jokes. For example, while researching the problems of delivering human organs, he «accidentally» ends up in an Arizona musical organ store that is adjacent to a huge Organ Stop Pizza restaurant. When he grabs a pizza and an organ materializes from the floor, playing Abba, he strikes up a conversation with an elderly gentleman named Mike, who, it turns out, works for Alcor, a cryogenics company whose headquarters are nearby.
Freezing your body to bring it back to life at an unspecified date in the future is costly. Mike says that some customers opt for the more economical head-only package. Later, after attending Alcor's 50th birthday party, Wilson learns more: One man says that his mother and father are frozen and that he plans to join them.
“Of course you would like to resurrect your parents. if they were dead,” he explains. «It's like a Cadillac freezing.» And there is a woman for whom one body will not be enough when she returns. “We need alternative bodies,” She says. «Very like a wardrobe of bodies.»
The convention ends with Alcor executives singing «Freeze, Freeze me, oh yeah» to the Beatles' «Please, Please Me». Wilson clearly raises all this at some level. But its facade never cracks. He keeps a damn curiosity about everything — like Louis Theroux's gonzo.
But even that facade crumbles as he catches up with Mike again. After believing Wilson, Mike reveals that he was haunted by sexual urges in his youth. So much so that he decided to purify them by self-castration. “Secretly removing testicles… people think it’s crazy,” he shrugs, adding that when he was frozen, he left instructions to “those things” [i.e. his genitals] do not reattach.
This is a comedy? Black documentary? A portrait of human sadness, secretly carried into the air? In a way, it's all three at the same time. «The whole project of the show is very anthropological,» Wilson said this week. “I wanted to create each episode so that viewers can somehow see a part of themselves in each community, no matter how specific their obsession is, because you see a lot of media that point the finger or make fun of people with weird obsessions. «.
The first and second seasons of How To are available on iPlayer, but the British audience will have to wait for the third season. However, it is worth being patient. At a time when television feels like it was built for streaming algorithms, Wilson has created something crazy and daring — a violent comedy that exposes humanity in all its eccentricities. But one that also comforts the viewer with the knowledge that no matter how ill-prepared they think they are for modern life, there's always someone much crazier.
Wilson put it perfectly right at the start. the part where he ended up in Cancun trying to perfect the art of idle chatter. “The more you talk to someone,” he said, “the harder it is to hide who you really are.”
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