Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Joe Pera: Slow & Steady’ On YouTube, Where He Tries To Remain A Cool, Calm, Collected Comedian

How could a guy whose claim to internet and small-screen fame is his ability to lull you to sleep, how could that guy also keep you laughing for a solid hour of stand-up? That’s the enigmatic paradox of Joe Pera, ladies and gentleman!

JOE PERA: SLOW & STEADY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Adult Swim viewers have come to know and love this Buffalo comedian, first in his late-night “informercial,” Joe Pera Talks You To Sleep, then in a holiday special, Joe Pera Helps You Find the Perfect Christmas Tree, and finally a three-season series, Joe Pera Talks With You, in which he played a fictionalized version of himself who taught choir students in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where he had a fearful girlfriend (Jo Firestone) and a hot-tempered neighbor (Conner O’Malley), but always found time to help them and his other neighbors feel at home.

Eagle-eyed and eared fans also may have spotted Pera in a fifth-season episode of Search Party, or heard him voice the bureaucrat Fern in this year’s Disney/Pixar film, Elemental.

Pera has performed stand-up on both Conan and Late Night with Seth Meyers, but this is his first hour comedy special.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?:  Imagine if Mister Rogers did stand-up comedy.

Memorable Jokes: OK, so perhaps Pera doesn’t compare himself to the late great children’s TV host Fred Rogers, insomuch as he does compare himself to travel writer and TV personality Rick Steves, even going so far as to tell us: “This is the closest you can get to Rick Steves doing comedy.” Just please do not compare him to Jeffrey Dahmer, or at least how Evan Peters looked portraying the serial killer. “It was a difficult few months after the Dahmer show came out on Netflix,” Pera quips.

“I’m the type of guy who looks like his wife died young,” Pera also says of himself, spinning the premise into a scenario in which he’s a widower, left to care for a daughter in the second grade.

Joking that The New York Times had asked him to write a dating and sex column for the newspaper, Pera at one point shares his latest draft, reading off a piece of paper and extrapolating later how talking about a court ruling on tomatoes could be considered a red flag on a first date.

But for a brief moment, we also suddenly hear Pera sound not so cool, calm or collected; rather, as he explains it afterward: “before the show I took the pill from Limitless.”

In the final third of the hour, musician Ryan Dann (with whom Pera is now collaborating on a monthly podcast, “Drifting Off with Joe Pera”) joins Pera onstage to perform meditative music and sound effects while the comedian reads from a big book to help put this special to bed.

Our Take: Pera also describes himself now as “an alternative comedian at the tail end of the second comedy boom.” In the moment, it’s in reference to a tall tale about supposedly losing his virginity during the Battle of the Bulge.

But in a very real sense, Pera stands out and apart in this era of digital defined largely by trending TikToks and crowd-work clips.

And not just because of his vocal delivery or his onstage demeanor, although both of those character traits do define Pera to a large degree. When you combine his gentle tone, with his nervous hunch, accentuated even more whenever he hunches over and extends his arm to read from a paper he’s holding in his shaky hand, it’s a sight that might confuse viewers unaccustomed to Pera. That he not only commits to this tact, but then also decides to engage in crowd work anyhow, testifies to his actual inner confidence as a comedian.

So when he asks you to picture a squirrel handling a full pita chip, if you’re in the audience and do respond audibly, don’t think Pera will be so easily rattled.

He may joke and does here that the YouTube kids will go crazy, typing “Cringe. Cringe cringe cringe.”

But they’re much more likely to go crazy loving and sharing Pera’s clips.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Pera wonders where we might’ve gone wrong as an American society and thinks it’s when we saw William Hung audition for American Idol two decades ago and mocked an immigrant for trying his best. “Maybe if we were a little nicer, The Sopranos movie would’ve been better,” Pera jokes. At the same time, we also wound up with Pera in the deal. And that’s a pretty good deal.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.