Jolt Country

How To with John Wilson is one of my top five favorite TV shows of all time, and the last episode is next week, and there's not that many episodes so there's plenty of time to catch up until next Friday's swan song.

I rarely laugh out loud at TV shows, and never cry, and several times during the show's run I've done both at the same time.

God damn.

I always enjoyed his Cajun cuisine cookery and oft rambling storytelling. I gua-rawn-tee!

That's a funny joke.

I challenge anyone to watch the show and tell me it's not great.

I'm throwing down the gauntlet, because I figure I had to work an 80's arcade game into the conversation here to get anyone to pay attention.

(Commander replies with Beserk reference)

I rewatched the first episode of the first season. You can start anywhere, they start at a baseline of great, and fluctuate between great and amazing. The first episode was only great.

I don't get this guy. I wasn't going to say anything.

But no. I don't like it.

I get what's he's going for. Each video seems ENDLESS too.

How is that possible

Are we watching the same thing?

This is what I found:

https://vimeo.com/johnsmovies

I mean, same guy, but no, the HBO show.

https://www.hbo.com/how-to-with-john-wilson

Alright, I watched the first one on the Vimeo link, and I'll say this:

The HBO show is very similar in approach and tempo, but better and more crisply produced, since he had a lot more backing for the HBO show.

That being said, there are only two things I can think of that would make me love these things to death, and you not be interested, and also feel like they go on forever:

1. You are only listening to the words. Every single line is a joke, when juxtaposed with the visuals. If you aren't watching closely, sure, it's this nasally-voiced whiner droning on and on about nothing. If you are, then you will be laughing hysterically, unless...

2. We just have extremely different senses of humor.

The extra thing which makes the HBO show great is that they are longer, and the show ends up never being about what it's about, and what it's really about often ends up being very poignant, if not heartbreaking.

The latest episode is called "How to Watch Birds", and ends with a car exploding.

After reviewing again, the earlier ones were definitely like Spielberg's home movies as a kid compared to the Jaws of the HBO show.

To sum up, you're watching the wrong thing.

Thank you! Okay. So I caught a clip from I think the HBO show. And some guy at a grocery store started talking about the Mandela Effect. That is inherently interesting.

I don't want to imply that the guy's early videos were bad or anything, it just seemed like you "got it" after the first three minutes, but they were longer than that. Of course the man has honed his craft and become more focused, deadlier, laser focused, quite deadly and crazy as a fox.

I don't have HBO Max but I would watch his show, and when I get HBO Max some day, I shall watch his show.

We have found a middle ground, and I consider the matter amicably closed.

How to make everlasting friendships

I watched the first three episodes of the first season the other year. I'm among the people who don't get it, sadly. For me, the best aspects were just the information about things that I never thought to think about (like why there is so much constant street scaffolding in cities like NYC or Chicago) or the more in-depth research into something like the Mandela affect (and my surprise that there was as much to research as there was). I've meant for a long time to get back to watching it in the hopes that it would click at some point, but in the episodes I watched, I only remember instances of the wacky editing where I thought the contrast of what was being said and what was being shown was dumb. Maybe I'm not observational enough to see the full nuance of it all.

But I will try again! ... one day.

Oh wait, I did like the spring break guy in the first episode. That was pretty good.

Are you people not getting the jokes? I think you're not getting the jokes.

I might not be getting the jokes!

I mean, they're not like one-liner knee slappers, but watch what's on the screen when he's droning on, it's brilliant, or at least way smarter and funnier than anything I could ever do.

Maybe some people don't like it, whaddya gonna do.