Saturday, December 26, 2020

How to with John Wilson


(hbomax.com, 2020) This is the best TV show I've seen in forever. Most of the short series consists of the meticulous lo-fi poetry of documentarian/editor Wilson illustrating his monologues about how to negotiate contemporary life with mundane, hilarious, poignant, disconcerting, joyful, astounding clips of the streets, stores, people, vermin, pets, signs, garbage, commerce, scaffolding, and feces of New York. The City is captured with more wonder and truth than the films of Woody, Marty, or Spike. While affecting a naive outlook he invites outgoing individuals to share seemingly bizarre aspects of their values and belief systems, but not because he is making fun of them or even because they are the world's weirdest people. It is because he gives them an opportunity to keep talking and does not stop listening. When a delightfully demeanored regular dude who is good at cooking, and good at explaining how he is doing it, also happens to open up about his theory of extraterrestrial infiltration, it is not because he is king kook, but because Wilson made him feel comfortable to share ideas that he, and perhaps many people you see all the time, find important. And while this may be the cheapest show on HBO, it is possibly the most masterful. Without spoilers, I have to acknowledge how genuinely brilliant it was for him to ask an intact-foreskin advocate about what recent movies he liked. Who would have known that question would lead to the best 20 seconds of TV this decade? How To Make The Best TV Show? Like this!

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