Good morning.
You must’ve known that I was one of those guys who absolutely loves How to With John Wilson. I mean, I’m a 38-year-old man who lived in Brooklyn for 15 years! I seem to be both awed and enamored of the life around me while also feeling deeply empty and melancholy for reasons I don’t quite understand. Perhaps it's because of the beauty and fragility of all that life swirling around me and the fact that I’ll never know or understand it all. And the circle goes round.
By now, I usually assume most people have heard of or have at least seen an episode or two of How to With John Wilson. But with the oversaturation of streaming content in the past five years (that may correct itself now that major media companies are realizing, perhaps, that more isn’t more and that there aren’t enough people or hours in the day to watch all the things even if you make them for fan-based audiences and it seems that the power of library and licensing may be coming back into vogue) it's hard to really know who has seen anything.
At the risk of waxing poetic about John Wilson, I’m going to wax poetic about John Wilson. If you don’t know about the show there’s plenty to read about it. Headlines like “How to With John Wilson is still unlike anything else on TV” and “How to With John Wilson Is Still TV’s Most Profound and Bizarre Miracle” pretty much sum it up. I don’t know if there was ever a show that made me think “How is this on TV?” more than How to With John Wilson. (A close second, for me, is probably watching The Dana Carvey Show on ABC when I was 10 years old.).
I also don’t know if there’s been a better TV show or movie that truly captured what it’s like to actually live in New York City. The hours and hours of footage Wilson filmed while walking around New York, when stitched together around the meandering narratives of each episode, distill the sensation of moving from one borough to another and feeling a distinct change in the air, in the pace of life; of walking down busy avenues and somehow managing to overhear the most surreal snippets of conversation; of being in a place that feels so full of life but also so empty and lonely. And each time John leaves New York as part of whatever thread he is chasing down, when he returns, it recreates that sensation of being away and then being thrust back into the city and its many different rhythms all playing at once.
The show came to an end—after three, six-episode seasons on HBO—on September 1st of this year. And three episodes from this past season perfectly captured what I’ve loved about the show from the beginning.
The final episode was, like so much of the series, truly unlike anything I’d ever watched before on TV or in the movies. The closing monologue of the final episode, spoken by a man who works for a cryogenics company that John Wilson has come to know in his attempt to figure out “How To Track Your Package,” is stunning to watch because it shows you a person living a life you probably never could have imagined and honestly, openly discussing how he came to live that life and why he’s never talked about it before.
The first installment of the season “How To Find a Public Bathroom” was an example of a John Wilson episode that leaned more toward the crazy comedy of life rather than the profundity of the loneliness we all, at some level, feel. When John tries out a self-cleaning bathroom in a park in New York or when he meets Stinky Steve who owns a septic tank business but also owns a property on top of an abandoned missile silo that he is trying to convince his family to move into it is hard not to laugh at the absurdity of what you’re watching.
And then there is “How To Work Out,” which winds its way to John Wilson attending the Emmy Awards where his show is nominated. He loses to John Oliver and then isn’t allowed into the HBO after party because his name wasn’t put on the guest list. Making his way to a roof terrace in drizzling rain, John looks over Time Square and sees a billboard for his show on a building. And in that moment, John questions why he’s even making his show. “You start to wonder if getting big really ever made anyone happy…And you wonder if your ego will ever really be satisfied.”
In an interview with IndieWire earlier this year, Wilson reflected on the show ending.
“I don’t want to sound like a crybaby,” Wilson said. “It’s been great. I love the platform I’ve had. It’s a dream come true. I just thought it would feel different.” Asked how he thought it would feel, he paused at length. Finally, he said: “I don’t know. Just different. It was just an ambient thought I had after a while: ‘OK, what’s next?”
That quote from an interview about his show ending paired with those reflections in his own show on a roof in Manhattan in the rain embodies perhaps more than anything why I love John Wilson and why I loved his show.
We’re all after something. And we’re all sure it's going to make us feel different. But then, if we’re lucky enough to get it, it's never quite what we think it's going to be. And, so, you wonder what’s next.