How to Have Empathy with John Wilson
“Hey, New York.”
These words begin most episodes of How to with John Wilson. It is our narrator, the titular man himself, his voice sounds as if he has been called on in class when he wasn’t ready to speak. He talks in second person, always referring to “you” as he makes his way through the streets of New York. He begins each episode with his prompts like “How to put up scaffolding”, How to be spontaneous”, or “How to watch the game”. He takes a camera everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE.
What always starts simply becomes more convoluted and strange as he goes. John Wilson’s show is produced by Nathan Fielder. Who, for my money, is the best at finding pockets of humanity otherwise underexplored. Fielder on his shows Nathan for You & The Rehearsal dig into how people trust him, put up with a lot out of politeness or a want of money/camera time. In Nathan for You he started making the joke on the business or the idea he had come up with. Making poop flavored yogurt is an example I think of often. But in episode 4 of titled “Gas Station; Caricature Artist” I think Fielder stumbled upon what would become what makes him so fascinating and a lightning rod for comedy, cringe, controversy, and another c word I’m sure, not that one, in a sentence that I probably should’ve changed before publishing. What he did was come up with a gas rebate that in order to get you must take a shuttle to the top of a mountain and do a scavenger hunt that was designed to never be solved. What ensues is a small group of people, initially just wanting money back on their gas purchase, that slowly drop off one by one over the course of the day and night on the mountain. Eventually you are left with people who tell stories about their life. They cry, they try answer clues to get their money, and don’t seem to be thrown off by Fielder’s intention awkwardness and antisocial behavior.
In a way Fielder met his match. He met earnest, honest, strange, and determined people which would define his show as it goes and later even more so in The Rehearsal. In Gas Station he comes clean and ends up cheekily saying essentially the real rebate are the friends we made along the way. That seems to be enough for the group. Then, the episode ends with a scene that I’ll never forget. That’s what John Wilson bottled and does a version of almost every week. It’s the television version of what Roger Ebert called an “empathy machine.” He was referring to film, but what Fielder, and now Wilson do is take you inside the human experience with humor, deep feeling, and intent and then does a seemingly organic magic trick that sometimes features anti-circumcision activists, corrupt a cappella competitons, or a 9’11 tribute body building show.
Fielder did this front facing and eventually making himself the center of the show in very personal and odd ways. Wilson has always been the center even though he is rarely ever seen. We are his eyes. Often episodes make me think of Being John Malkovich in the way they take the uncomfortable moments and put you directly in it as if we are in John Wilson’s head but everyone isn’t just saying “Wilson Wilson Wilson. Wilson Wilson.”
It is constantly narrated to shots of whatever he sees and is doing, but throughout those adventures are personal essays cut to montage of seemingly random people or things in the city that he cuts to tell a story. It’s a gimmick I never tire of and would watch for much longer than he chooses to edit them. But that’s what makes his show so powerful to me. It seems silly, homemade, and easy. But it sneaks up on you. Every episode, no matter how disconnected parts can feel to one another, Wilson always turns the camera metaphorically on himself even if he almost never literally does.
And more often in this most recent and final season of his show he is coming to grips with his discontent and mistakes and experiences that defined his life. They are usually tossed off and not focused on too heavily. But that makes them hit even harder. Because he is telling a story. He has crafted a way to take you in a roundabout path towards enlightenment of what it is to be in a place where everyone is in a tribe and it’s easy to feel left out. Where everyone is paying too much for everything & public spaces have been ruined by capitalism and the wealthy. Where you are who you spend your time with and until you fix yourself you can’t find hope in outside sources. It’s mostly funny, with momentary glimpses of profundity. In his more self examining season 3 he digs into memories of his dad giving him swimsuit issues of magazines hoping he wouldn’t be gay but it led him to being “so horny he fooled around with male best friend all summer” and they never talked about it. That’s something entire movies and plot lines in stories can be built around and it is maybe 10 seconds of his show.
Wilson builds and builds and builds until you don’t realize how high you’ve gone and once you finally do he lets you back down on solid ground gently so you never felt for a moment anything was out of control. He makes everything seem predetermined and easy. But the whole point of the show is the opposite. People can be anything and you should be open to them and new experiences. But don’t expect those experiences to be the change you seek. You have to do the work. Living behind an artifice whether it be a camera, a vacuum obsession, the county’s biggest pumpkin, or your giant glistening muscles won’t help you sleep better at night unless theres a good reason behind it. Reasons like the people you love (cut to a shot of a man in a cat costume hugging a person in a dog costume at a subway stop) and the choices you’ve made (cut to a shot of someone stuck in a funny position in a revolving door at a bank). I’m Major Rich. Thanks for reading.