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By Coren Feldman
There's something very strange about Joe Pera. He's a man in his 30's with the presence of an octogenarian, a single man with the fashion sense of a midwestern dad and a high school band teacher who's actually enthusiastic about his work. There's nothing flashy or dramatic about him. Quite the opposite, Joe Pera is plain, soft spoken and polite. Not the type of brooding protagonist we're used to seeing in today's world of gritty reboots of 90's kids cartoons. (Did you know they're a making Powerpuff Girls show where they're adults??)The TV character Joe Pera is a persona of the comedian Joe Pera, though it's hard to find any videos of him not in his role. Joe Pera Talks With You follows Joe through his daily, largely uneventful life as he shares his thoughts on various subjects or shows you things that interest him.
"Hi there. I'm Joe Pera."
The truth is that Joe Pera Talks With You doesn't feel like it should work as a show. There's very little plot, virtually no conflict, and most importantly for a comedy - no one to make fun of.
Most comedies—even the more wholesome ones, like Parks and Rec or The Office—tend to have a comedic scapegoat at the expense of which the show finds many of its jokes. Comedies, whether standup, TV or movies, tend to make jokes by dunking on other people. A common standup trope is men ostensibly talking about how much they hate their wives, which is... supposed to be funny, I guess. And where in standup comedians like Josh Gondelman have shown that you can be funny without picking on anyone, Joe Pera Talks With You has brought that same ethos to TV.
The comedy in the show comes from its specificity, from Joe's unbridled and unironic enthusiasm for everyday things like rocks, food, and music, and the interactions he has with the people around him. Joe Pera is a feat of comedy that's hard to explain or emulate. It's a character that's so well developed starting with his sense of fashion and following through to his mannerisms that just watching him walk into a diner or listen to a song can be funny. The show isn't laughing at him at any point; he's quite confident, happy and well adjusted. It's just letting you into his world, one that can be both funny and kind at the same time.
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Coren Feldman is the founder of CorenTV. He's currently writing a tv show about a guy who runs a tv show website by day and fights crime by night, but the problem is when does he sleep??? |