Josh Reviews How To with John Wilson Season Three

I was thrilled that the delightfully weird How To with John Wilson returned for a third season of six new episodes, though it was also bittersweet, because it was announced that the show would be ending after this season.

While the show might not feel like it has quite that same blast of incredible originality that it did back in its first season, it remains an incredible piece of TV brilliance and one of the most startlingly original and unique pieces of work I have seen in recent memory.

The series is a beautiful love-letter to New York City, and to all of the wonderfully weird human beings who populate that city, and this planet.  Each episode is funny and melancholy and weird and beautiful.  It’s hard to describe this show.  Each episode purports to explore a different “how to” topic, but inevitably the pleasure of each episode is in the unexpected (and often deep and moving) digressions that spring from that initial topic.

In this third and final season, the show remained funny and surprising and sweet and melancholy.  Each new episode was a joy.

I love the way John Wilson and his team can edit together a bewilderingly complex array of seemingly random shots of the craziness of everyday life in New York in ways that are hilarious and poignant.  I love the way Mr. Wilson seems able to find all sorts of bizarre individuals and talk to them (and get them talking) in a way that, at the same time, grounds their humanity and also plumbs the depths of their absolutely bonkers life choices.

Let’s take a closer look at the season, shall we?

In “How to Find a Public Restroom,” John explores the bizarre underworld of the hard-to-find public restrooms in the city and then winds up talking to a man who has decided to live inside an abandoned missile silo (and turn it into his mancave).

In “How to Clean Your Ears”, John wrestles with this particularly thorny aspect of basic daily human hygiene, and then winds up exploring various sound-related stories, from the people living in apartments buffeted by awful sound from the places they live near and/or their neighbors (and then, in an incredible turn, John manages to interview the noise-making neighbors, who proudly describe the loud midnight party they threw for their baby), to the people who live in a near-silent are free from the electronic, radio, and internet signals they believe are damaging their bodies.

In “How to Work Out”, John explores self-help workout culture, meets a trainer who had one of the 9/11 terrorists as a client (!!!), chronicles the way his Emmy nomination failed to bring him happiness, and then winds up at a competition of people growing unbelievably ginormous pumpkins.

In “How to Watch the Game”, John attempts to learn to become a sports fan, meets an obsessive lifelong Mets fan, admits that he fooled around with one of his male best friend in high school, and then meets the people who attend and run a vacuum cleaner convention.

In “How to Watch Birds”, John investigates this particular pastime and becomes fascinated with the “honor system” used as bird watchers report what they’ve seen, which leads to a spiraling investigation into the nature of truth in which John gets hooked up to a polygraph machine, admits that a few moments in this show have been faked, meets a man who think another ship was switched with the Titanic before it sunk, and then watches that ex-cop get blown up in his (John’s) car.  (Except that ending is, of course, a meta fake-out of its own.)  This was a stand-out amazing episode in a series in which every single episode is amazing.

The season and the series wrapped up in “How to Track Your Package”, in which John meets a man who runs a company that ships organs (the musical instruments, not the parts of your body), then visits a convention of people who all plan to have their heads and/or other body parts cryogenically frozen at the moment of their deaths, then meets a man who secretly cut off his own testicles when he was younger.  Wow.

John Wilson and his team have crafted something unique and magical.  I’ll miss this show!!  I loved every minute of it.

Please help support my site by purchasing a copy of my latest comic book, Brother’s Keeper, which tells a true story from Israel’s 1948 War for Independence.  Click here to order a print copy, or click here to read it FREE on Kindle Unlimited!!

OR, click here to order a copy of my graphic novel, José and the Pirate Captain Toledano, a story of Jewish pirates that’s also a powerful coming-of-age story about “finding one’s tribe” and one’s place in the world.

Please support my website by clicking through one of my Amazon links the next time you need to shop!  As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.  That means I’ll receive a small percentage from ANY product you purchase from Amazon within 24 hours after clicking through.  Thank you!