Great Lakes on the Small Screen | Joe Pera Talks With You
In September 2020, after those months of lockdown, I spent a glorious day visiting my best friend from college. It was one of those visits of the time; we visited almost exclusively outdoors. We were sitting on a bench having a late summer ice cream cone and she said, “You guys might really like this show I’ve been watching. It’s a total delight. It’s called Joe Pera Talks With You and it’s on Adult Swim”. I remember asking her to repeat that last part… I’d never heard of the streaming service before. But my husband and I hunted it down, and what a gift it was.
Joe Pera is a comedian with a slow, earnest, mumbly delivery and persona that he seems to retain in all public interactions and presentations; any separate persona seems unknown. Joe Pera Talks With You evolved out of his stand-up comedy, debuting in late 2018. Critics and general watchers praised the show.
In it he plays a gentle middle school choir teacher (named Joe Pera) in Marquette on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (the UP). Each short episode tends to revolve around a topic that Joe is talking with you about. He speaks directly to you, the audience, about things ranging from rocks and minerals to cold weather sports to how to write an obituary. Between monologues on these topics, there are storylines of Joe’s quiet, content life on the UP. We’re with him as a friendship grows into a romantic relationship with a fellow teacher who is also an apocalypse-prepper. Joe’s beloved Nana passes away. Joe navigates a friendship with his neighbors, the Melskys, who are kind and also a little rough around the edges.
The show is slow, meditative, absurd, funny, off-beat. Frankly, the show is a lot like the UP as I experienced it in our summer 2022 visit. Our visit was inspired in great part by watching the show which was filmed on location in Marquette. One of the best episodes (S3:E1) revolves around Joe helping his friend Gene pick out a new “retirement chair”. When we were in Marquette we were so excited to drive by the furniture store where the episode was filmed. I hope you might have the chance to watch the episode and appreciate its simple joys.
Almost exactly a year ago, the show’s cancellation was announced after the third season. Although we’ve all built a thick skin for the fleeting world of television shows, my friend and I exchanged texts lamenting our collective loss. A New York Times writer in an article on the slate of TV cancellations late in 2022 wrote that the cancellation of Joe Pera Talks With You “stings the most” and concluded with a turn of opinion that remains so memorable to me: “We live in a time of relatively abundant television, and plenty of it is good, but very little of it is special. ‘Joe Pera Talks With You’ was though, a free verse Midwestern ode to tenderness and wonder”.
You can find Joe Pera Talks With You on Max, Hulu and Amazon Prime.
In the first episode of the show Joe stands in front of the Lower Harbor Ore Dock in downtown Marquette explaining the history of iron ore. We felt the same awe and reverence in summer 2022.
