Sarah

This is one of the funniest series I've watched in some time. It's quite genius, in fact. It's weird, cringey, hilarious, and absurd. The beauty of the series is these 'lunatics' find their own kind of contentment. If you go through the entirety of the series, you see that it's not just creating characters to humiliate them. It's to show that not everyone has the same path. No matter your limitations or mental issues, mistakes, or hardships, the path to happiness looks different for all of us. There is beauty in that, and a message I think that gets lost with the outrage police.

After waking up way too early for a Saturday, I turned to Hulu to pass the time, and stumbled across this documentary. I love documentaries. There is a fairly predictable cadence to most documentaries, so you kind of know what you're getting. This one, though, was different. And I loved it. Ben's motivation for making the film was clearly very personal, and I'm not sure he knew that going in. Instead of it being, "this will be a good documentary because Johnathan is a great subject", we find Ben questioning essentially everything. Johnathan is obviously talented--he's had a good career (and he still has a nice house and isn't living on the street, which is kind of a feat unto itself). He's a powerhouse and has known great success. Ben, on the other hand, is at the genesis of his career. He's uncertain, inexperienced, and lacks confidence. Most of us have been there--we are figuring stuff out and we don't know what he don't know. And like most of us, he turns to family and friends for advice and support and opinions. That's real. His mistakes are real too. Seeing him take a hard, uncomfortable look at himself, owning his mistakes, and resolving to make things right was beautiful. Johnathan's 'forgiveness'--his willingness to even talk to Ben again is kind and generous and lovely.