The only words I could use to describe my first time in New York were “holy shit” and also “wow, it is genuinely unbelievably cold here.” The former is an absolute cliché, while the latter reveals my undeniable Bay Area privilege. (The micropuff fleece isn’t coming off unless it gets to AT LEAST seventy-five degrees.)
The air in New York seemed different, it took on a quality that reminded me of shag carpets, a hazy linen draped over a city that knew it was more important before me, and will be important after me, arguably even more so. The MTA trains were older, louder, and seemed to be more mechanical in their nature, a sort of technological honesty I didn’t pick up whenever I rode BART. Both, however, featured incredible subway performers, although I did get a bit lightheaded when I saw one of the them dislocate his elbow and then pop it back in. Still, I was impressed. I gave him $2 when the hat came around, all that was left in my wallet after buying an AirTrain Metrocard. As I handed him the bill, I asked if he knew the best place to grab a slice for a first timer in New York.
“Don’t ever ask me that again”, he shot back, and immediately headed out the exit doors with the rest of his crew. As they closed, I saw a bronzed, muscular arm intervene, belonging to the very same man from just a moment ago. His head poked through, and said: “But if you’re around Prospect Park, Pino’s is pretty good!” As the train began moving, an elderly Orthodox Jew curling his beard sitting to my left nodded. “He’s right, you know.”
I fell in love, like I always do, rather quickly. I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older that the love I have for cities is cobbled from things that are immediately apparent, mixed in with things that can only come after a vast amount of digging, a sort of urban exploration for the soul of a place. (I am really trying to not sound like a millennial travel magazine writer, but it’s almost impossible not to, when it comes to a place like New York.)
It’s a pastiche, one that’s woven from the obvious, like a dirty water hot dog, to the elusive; moments that can only be described as “it’ll find you, actually”- a Princess Nokia secret show, or running into a friends after years of not seeing them in Central Park at 1am, or keenly eyeing what Jason Sudeikis picks up at the bodega while you spy on him from the frozen foods aisle.
It’s a city that will kill you if you let it- hopping off the AirTrain with a duffel bag my dad lent me, I got stuck in the turnstile a whopping three separate times. With each one, I saw “real” New Yorkers scoff at me, a few being subtle, most of them, not so much.
It’s these same “real” New Yorkers that are masterfully depicted in “How To With John Wilson”, a show that wrapped up it’s series finale just a couple weeks ago. It’s my favorite thing I’ve seen on television, maybe ever, and a nearly religious ode to the mundane.
An even bigger cliché than what this piece opened with is the concept of “New York plays itself.” Audiences have been hearing that since the sagely Martin Scorsese took off his first lens cap, all the way to the bright-eyed, sometimes-cancelled Lena Dunham, who described the city as being the omnipresent fifth gal pal in the appropriately titled ‘GIRLS’. And it’s true- in a city that is so prized for it’s diversity, everyone has a story. But what if those stories were just little bits and pieces, and the characters weren’t really characters at all, but real people? Wouldn’t this be the most “New York plays itself” production of them all, a portrait of the most American city, and it’s most honest?
It was, and it is.
In “How To”, the camera is focused on the citizens of the five boroughs answering questions, sharing stories, and regaling their past. The power of the show, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, is it’s tiny little glimpses into people’s lives, the crumbs of who they are, and how they turned out that way.
The great balancing act of How To is just how much insight you gain into a person with just a few minutes of footage- but it is, again, at the end of the day, only a few minutes of footage. When this balancing act is performed perfectly, as it often is in the show, you can gleam the entire nature of a person just from a couple scenes.
John Wilson is a master of asking questions. He employs the oldest, most sincere method of inquiry- he isn’t really interested in what he asked about, he’s interested in seeing how you answer. He is digging to find a kernel of truth about a person, a diamond in the mine of the subconscious.
In the phenomenal fourth episode of Season 3, titled ‘How To Watch The Game’, John stumbles upon a vacuum cleaner collector’s club in Scranton, Pennsylvania. (As an aside, How To, and John himself, have a knack for sniffing out weird, mesmerizing corners of America.) After going to the club’s annual convention, trying different models, and chatting with a surprisingly diverse age range of vacuum enthusiasts, he zooms in on one man with an especially large array of vintage Dysons and Hoovers.
After asking a few questions about the models, the man begins to speak on his father, who passed away last year. He breaks down, and the discussion veers swiftly from antique cleaning objects, to how much he missed him, how the vacuums were a nice reminder of the time they spent together, and of the strange hobby that his dad learned to accept, and later, embrace.
It’s an exploration of the human condition, cobbled together from thousands of hours of footage, masterfully cut down into half hour blocks. But it didn’t take any real time for the show itself to become that way- How To was taking swings like this from the very beginning.
In the pilot, John explores everyone socially anxious person’s worst nightmare: that’s right, an episode titled How To Make Small Talk. In every episode, John gives some preliminary advice, set to head-scratchingly accurate footage. He tells us it’s always good to fall back to the weather, but to avoid any discussion involving climate change. As he finishes the line, this image appears on screen.
It’s strokes of genius like this that keep you laughing- the comedy in How To is an intoxicating cocktail of absurdism, the surreal, and the bizarre things you catch when you film constantly in a city of six million people. It’s a show who’s thesis is something that I have very much embraced in my personal life, the concept of “you just don’t see that anymore.” It’s a celebration of everything absurd, a toast to embracing how strange, yet beautiful, life can be.
The pilot eventually leads John to a resort in Cancun of all places, where, unbeknownst to him, MTV is filming their annual MTV SPRING BREAK SPECTACULAR. He is exceptionally out of place, and wanders the resort while scantily-clad men and women do keg stands, famous DJ’s hit buttons on computers, and MTV employees admonish him about filming. While taking a break from it all, John encounters Chris.
Chris has come to Cancun to “just, you know, party, and enjoy Mexico”. He is, on the surface, someone who is simply here for a good time, just another among hordes of college-aged revelers looking to bask in the glory of being young and hot.
Then, John bumps into him again. This time, the setting is quiet, with the waves gently crashing behind them. Chris is lying down on a beach cabana, holding a Monster energy drink. It seems like John has caught him in between all of the bacchanalia of the week.
But…there’s something about Chris’ eyes. There is a loneliness behind them, an almost immediate solitude after Chris fires off a quip about drinking, or a hottie he saw across the pool. He is forlorn.
If everyone at the resort is there to embrace hedonism, Chris is looking for it’s most primordial form: to simply forgot who he was, even if only for a little while.
Chris has come to Mexico shortly after his best friend killed himself. The forlorn look in his eyes is a product of feeling lost, of not really being in a place, but haunting it, looking for anything he can latch on to for a deeper sense of purpose.
Chris also came to Mexico alone. I won’t ruin the conversation he and John share, but it’s one of the most genuine things I have seen on television. It shows a tiny little slice of who we are after, and who we can be, after some of the greatest hardships life throws at us. It’s deeply moving, and, if you’ll remember the title of the episode, it’s also the opposite of what John was looking to find out. Sometimes the best small talk is none at all.
—
Those are just two episodes out of the eighteen that fill out 3 seasons of How To. Each one is a strange, beautiful portrait of someone, often, multiple people. They always start, and sometimes end, in New York City, a place where many people start, and sometimes, end up. I felt something very strange when I finished the last episode of season 3- happy.
Often, when I get to the end of a show, I’m either sad to see it go, or relieved that’s it’s over. There’s really not much in-between, and that’s the way it’s always been for me.
But when those last few frames of a New York City sunset burst on screen, accompanied by John’s final words of advice, I was smiling.
And while it may sound like pure insanity, that’s the power of art, and it always has been: the ability to make you thankful that you’re alive, gracious that you’re able to share the human condition with someone you might not ever meet.
Thank you, John. I can’t wait to see what comes next.