Why “Joe Pera Talks To You” makes you feel so many things

Today on Instagram Joe Pera announced that his show “Joe Pera Talks With You,” was canceled. The show was created by Pera who played a high school music teacher in Marquette, Michigan, a real town in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula. It featured comedians Connor O’Malley ad Jo Firestone who played his raucous car mechanic neighbor, and his girlfriend and choir teacher respectively.

In theory, the show seemed like a bit of an odd duck on Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s late-night programming block that debuted at the dawn of the century back in 2001.

Adult Swim, though not as “adult” as its moniker made it out to be is often filled with irreverent, absurdist cartoons, live-action shorts, anime, repurposed Hanna/Barbera shows, and has twice revived dead network cartoon shows such as “Family Guy” and “Futurama.” In other words, it is a weird hodge-podge of creativity that has, over the years, blossomed into a major brand in entertainment.

In the early days of the programming block, Adult Swim created shows like “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast,” “Sealab: 2021” and “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law,” repurposing old, somewhat-forgotten Hanna/Barbera properties that had been acquired by Ted Turner and Cartoon Network and turning them into absurdist comedies.

From there it moved onto fully original programming like “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” “The Squidbillies,” and “Robot Chicken,” among other shows that blossomed out of minuscule budgets that allowed creators to make weird, lo-fi, transgressive television for younger audiences. It was, in some ways, what MTV was to generations who came of age in the ‘80s.

The programming block now features some of the most quoted/memed, whether annoyingly or not, shows on TV with shows like “Rick and Morty” and “The Eric Andre Show.” What was once a small, fringe block of TV has since grown into a cultural touchstone for entire generations, now attracting big names from network TV like Dan Harmon, Matt Groening, and Seth MacFarlane.

Enter Joe Pera, an unassuming, quiet, painfully awkward comedian from Buffalo, New York, who delivers jokes in his clipped whispered way that just shouldn’t work, except it does. To explain it to somebody who’s never seen the show, it would be accurate to say that Joe, though only in his thirties, told jokes the same way your really nice grandpa does.

You could definitely describe him as wholesome, which is jarring on a TV block populated with the likes Tim Heidecker, Eric Warheim, Eric Andre, and Seth MacFarlane, all of whom create comedy that is neither wholesome nor heartwarming.

Take, for instance, the first season’s third episode, entitled: “Joe Pera Takes You on a Fall Drive.”

Most of the episodes feature a framing device, in which you accompany Pera as he either teaches you about something or has you experience something with him. Though it’s not an educational show, it has this sort of PBS-doc style where Pera talks to you and delivers wholesome messages.

So, back to “Joe Pera Takes You on a Fall Drive,” in which Pera, due to his fear of pumpkins (“even though he’s bigger and more powerful than them…and he owns a credit card…”) drives a pumpkin, firmly secured in a seatbelt, on a drive around the Upper Peninsula of Michigan so that he can lay to rest the one-sixteenth of his soul the pumpkin has taken.

To explain, his friend and fellow iron enthusiast Gene tells him at the beginning of the episode that when he carves a pumpkin, he gives it a piece of his soul.

“It’s a bit like how your grandmother puts a bit of herself in her cookies,” says Gene to Pera and his grandmother, both dressed up as the albino dread-locked twins from the Matrix films as they wait for trick or treaters.

The episode then ends with Pera taking the pumpkin to one of the “300 estimated waterfalls in the U.P.,” and dropping it into the river while a swell of folksy violin, drum, and guitar play in the background in what can only be described as a strangely beautiful moment that certainly can drive the viewer to tears. I know I certainly have been close to tears many times while watching his show.

The show always seems to be on this balancing act between melancholy and pure joy. Don’t get me wrong, the show is not depressing. Quite the opposite. There is something comforting about Joe laying his pumpkin to rest over the sweep of crescendoing folky choir music. There is something comforting to him pondering about the infinite nature of the universe and how Stephen Hawking once cheated on his wife, saying, “It’s a terrible thing to do, and I don’t want to defend him but try thinking about it from his perspective for a moment. He spends all day thinking about the universe and how big it is. How our star, the sun, is just one of dozens of stars in the galaxy, which is just one of dozens of galaxies in the known universe all set against handfuls and handfuls of time. If one guy cheats on his wife, what’s the big deal? Thinking further down the same line of thought…if we’re so tiny and insignificant if you’re able to find one person in the entire universe who cares about you, why would you want to disappoint them?”

Though that quote appears in the YouTube exclusive clip, “Joe Pera Talks You To Sleep” which would later become an episode, it’s a pretty accurate summation of the show. It’s a show that disarms you with its oddball hunky-dory comedy while smashing you over the head with melancholic and hopeful messages. It’s a show that aims to make you laugh, while simultaneously delivering valuable lessons on the universe, grocery shopping, life and death, and how to make the perfect egg bite.

The show’s aesthetic harkens back to the early days of Nickelodeon, with shows like “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” in the way it consistently breaks the fourth wall and tells surreal stories about small-town America and the inherent weirdness of suburbia.

It seems to be a show designed to just make you feel better, something Pera credits to his fellow cast member and writer, Jo Firestone. In fact, Pera, much like the character he plays in the show, seems to be a very kind, gentle guy.

“It’s unfair that I have my name on it,” said Pera in a Vulture interview. “Because it’s so much Marty Schousboe, the director, and all of the writers, and the design team. I think you can see every writer’s different style, and the kind of jokes they like to tell in the script if you look for them.”

“I just wanna give a better answer for Conner and Jo,” said Pera in an interview with Paste. “…I would love to have my character on the show drive off a cliff or something and have it just be Jo Firestone’s show, and just have me be able to write for her because she’s a better performer and more interesting than I am.”

And yes, it is important to mention that as much as this show is very much in the vein of Joe’s particular style of comedy, a lot of the show’s charm should also be directed at the entire team. From Jo Firestone to Conner O’Malley to Marty Schousboe, the show’s director, to Holland Patent Public Library who made most of the show’s beautiful score, the show is filled with amazing and talented folks who created a show that feels more comfortable than a well-worn sweater.

The third season, which aired from November to December in 2021 dealt again with heavy subjects like death, anxiety, and parenting. Yet, it still maintained that offbeat joyful charm. It’s a shame that it’ll probably be the last time we’ll see these characters and the beautiful town of Marquette, Michigan.

I could talk for hours and hours, recounting favorite memories from the show, like the time Joe recreated the 2001 movie Rat Race, or the episode about the Alberta Rat Wars, or the joke about how Joe can’t show ventriloquists at school for fear it would be too political because as you all know “all ventriloquists are Republican.” So, rather than recount all of the show’s greatest moments, I’ll instead just leave you with this clip of Joe hearing “Baba O’Riley” by The Who for the first time, something he interrupts the weekly church announcements to tell the whole town about. It’s a pretty good summation of the joy this show brought me all these years.

Thanks, Joe. And everybody else who made one of my favorite shows. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that your show meant a lot and helped me feel more comfortable about my own life, in only the way this show can. You taught me that there’s genuine beauty and joy in the simplest of things.