Joe Pera Talks with You

Hey, ILX. I'm talking with you!

i don't really get how this show is so good. it's sweet and cute, which are not words that could be used to describe almost any other tv show i like, but somehow it's subversive and edgy, but also very funny, but it's very episodic, but also there are full character arcs and narratives, but each episode is only 11 minutes long??? i don't understand

it defies norms for sure

season 3 was great

yeah they basically cracked the code on making a perfect show

it's absolutely among the best things on right now. Jo Firestone doesn't get enough love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGLBRoVl-mY

(i once brought doughnuts to a job interview)

one more, kind of impressed he's been doing this bit for over ten years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAMTye8xfLQ

I kinda don’t like watching old clips of his from before the show where his character is fully formed.

Yeah, I was watching some old Conner O'Malley thing where he briefly showed up as a character (a not terribly un-Joe Pera-esque character, admittedly) and it weirded me out a little.

Jo's new special on Peacock where she has old people doing standup is very sweet.

ok yall wanna get freaked out check out :50 in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CVf3us5c4g

^^ I saw that with the big disclaimers at the beginning, and I dunno. Still feels in character.

I mean, "Joe Pera" is a schoolteacher, so he has to have a college degree. And in the same way he thought it would be a good idea to recreate Rat Race, I could see an even younger "Joe Pera" doing that act.

ultimately I don't think Joe Pera and "Joe Pera" are all that different - no more than say Nathan Fielder in Nathan for You or some of Tim Heidecker's various characters...still it's weird to hear him doing a different voice

but I guess that is the appeal of the show, the characters feel three-dimensional and real. I like the fact that Pera isn't used as a punching bag the way most comedy shows would. the way his students & neighbors treat him feels very authentic to me. he's this boring dork but ultimately people like him even if they don't really want to get to know him

so great that that exists.

im sure ive posted before that there are jokes i remember from seeing him at western ny open mics around this time that popped up in s1 of the show. its amazing how once he figured his character out he just stuck to it and ran with it. i still remember the feeling of seeing him at an open mic at some awful upstate bar and listening to all the macho badboy maron-wannabe standup dudes all roasting him amongst each other, "what is with this mr rogers guy, is he stupid?" etc, and i was like "this guy is obviously the funniest person in this room by a factor of 1000"

the bit he did on Conan where he mocks up some Christmas card from the future including his "very tall sons" and proceeds to just show it to just one person in the audience is really great

There are quite a few less than flattering descriptors I can think of for Marc Maron but, uh, "macho" is not one of them.

<3 <3 Joe Pera though, still need to catch up on S3

i guess i was using "macho" more in terms of that kind of comic-as-gunslinger, "traditional standup uber alles", anyone doing anything weird is "cheating" mindset that he used to be very hung up on (less so in recent years as he's softened, but certainly 10 years ago)

Oh I get that descriptor, for sure, Pera is such a wonderful exception to that. Maron just spends so much time dwelling in and displaying his insecurities that it's hard to think of him the macho type.

Joe Pera's on VCR Party Live RIGHT NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnu5F6MT14I

hello melinda!

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Okay I am binging this wonderful show. but! Two episodes from S2 are missing from the Adult Swim website. “Joe Pera teaches you to play piano” and “Joe Pera Has a Surprise for You”. The last one is crustal for the rest of the season (I saw it on a plane’s inflight entertainment center before I saw the rat of the season LOL.

I’m watching S3 and I’m starting to think there is a Werner Herzog documentary vibe? The drone episode with the interview with the astronaut and the watching the sunrise guy. Also the solo cello music in that episode is very Ernst Reijsiger.

he's gonna be on tour soon! all over the Midwest! I'm from the Midwest!! He's coming to Green Bay!!! shit, I might see him three times!!!!

Officially cancelled "for now" :(

oh no!!! what a bummer. this show was amazing and I am pretty sure there won't be anything else like it on TV for a long long time

Can’t wait for the live show later this month.

Adult Swim must have realized they had a good show and panicked.

heartbroken

Surely someone will pick this up. Not like it needs a big budget to produce.

it sucks, not just because the show was so great but also because it ran so counter to everything Adult Swim usually did, which I think actually made it a really cool fit for them

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-farewell-screening-with-joe-pera-and-friends-two-day-pass-tickets-383000363397

Still pissed there’s apparently no place for a show like this on the zillion streaming services and channels.

2 day pass sold out instantly but i am gonna go to s2 and s3

So that new Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix. It’s a little uncanny.

There’s no regional connection between the two as far as I know and I’ve never seen interview footage of Dahmer, but it’s like they found a guy who looks like Joe Pera and told him to “do Joe Pera”. Or Pera’s thing was quietly “do Jeffrey Dahmer” the whole time.

https://www.gawker.com/culture/joe-pera-dahmer-netflix-evan-peters

If Netflix reads this — they don’t have to do another serial killer show. I have another idea. You know the women who used to appear in the Big Buck Hunter game? They’re all older now, and I’ve reached out to them, and I’ve got them signed on to do a film interpretation of Hamlet. If Netflix reads this, I hope they know that we could do it at a fraction of the price of Dahmer.

I'm here for whatever this guy's next move is

recently I had an old friend - someone I've known since middle school - stay over at my house while in the middle of a 12-day hike from Madison to Sturgeon Bay. I put this show on and he absolutely loved it. He won't stop texting me about it. such a shame nobody has picked it up. I mean how much could it possibly cost to make this show?

dude knows his Dragonball Z!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJIDjehZm40

http://www.keweenawreport.com/featured/adult-swim-show-runner-donates-11000-to-clk-schools-music-program/

Good guy Joe Pera, helping out UP music students. Maybe he is more than a larper Yooper after all :)

What a strange headline, "Adult Swim Show-Runner", not like "Adult Swim Star" or "Joe Pera" or whatever.

yeah that article is wrong on a number of levels: those weren't "stand-up shows," that was the two day screening of every episode of the show at Bell House. He had the UP teacher onstage with him at the start of S3, seemed like a nice guy.

That was a great experience btw, lots of shop talk and fun being in a crowd of Pera obsessives who clapped at every title card.

that blog sucks for sure, I am guessing the more legit UP newspapers and TV haven't published the story as fast

Saw him this past Friday. The music playing over the PA as people were getting seated included the MC5 and the New York Dolls. There were two openers, one of whom was Ryan Dunn who did the music for the show. He was really fun and engaging. The next opener was comedian, and longtime Pera collaborator, Dan Licata (he played the DJ in the "Baba O'Riley" episode) who was decidedly hacky and mediocre. Joe came on, and his entrance music was the Jam's "In The City," which was a pleasant surprise. Joe did a LOT of interacting with the audience, and it wasn't the usual crowd work type of stuff, either. He would ask the audience a question, and then asked people to respond "one at a time" -- which they did. Then he asked us to vote on, for instance, if a squirrel could carry an entire pita chip by itself. The ending of the show was like a slowly deflating balloon, though. I saw Tig Notaro do something similar, where there's a bit sort-of being worked up to, and the performer just kind of riffs hoping they'll hit upon something funny enough to end on. I dunno, maybe Joe was working out half-written material or something -- he brought Ryan and Dan (who was funnier in this bit than in his opening set) back out for the last 10 minutes or so. But overall, a solid and hilarious show. I had never heard Joe swear or talk about sex, so that was weirdly jarring.

lots of other fun merch here but:
https://shop.merchcentral.com/collections/joe-pera/products/joe-pera-new-looks-for-the-modern-man-poster

It does kill me how you can tell which of his jokes are his favorites.

need to start an accidentally joe pera thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd74F_NrsCQ