If you haven’t seen Episode Two of The Terrors of Jordan Mendoza, turn back now or SPOILERS below.
Episode Two opens on what looks like a dating video and/or Bachelor-type reality show. Jordan, financial analyst, Boston, 29, sitting for the camera and explaining that he is here to fall in love. It is played completely straight, right down to the lower third. Then a title card reads “20 Minutes Later” and we are back with Jordan in tears, heading home, because his date found out he is Asian.
That is the whole show in forty seconds. A recognizable format, played at exactly the right pitch, and then a turn that lands somewhere between funny and genuinely bleak before you have decided which one you are doing.
Steve Buscemi returns to set the table, in that half-whisper the show has already made a signature. “Hush, don’t wake him. He’ll be having his Night Terrors soon. It’s almost time.” He is credited and appears to be in for the full run, which gives the series a spine it would otherwise be missing.
The Letter
The first terror is a birthday party. Balloons, streamers, and David alone on the couch, talking with a young boy who stands in front of him and may well be the actual birthday boy (but it’s an Adult Swim show so you know where this is likely going). Over by the kitchen doorway, his wife Kathleen, and his brother-in-law discuss him with each other like he is not in the room. He gets this way around birthdays.
A third woman (we find out is David’s sister) Marissa comes in from the kitchen with the fix. They have found a way to cheer him up. David loves magic and Harry Potter. They have written him a letter saying he got into Hogwarts.
The letter comes down the chimney, because of course it does, and the title card drops:
What follows is the sketch committing much harder than you expect. David does not just play along; he goes fully over the edge. His family always thought he was a failure, and look at him now. He explains how Kathleen recoils when he touches her, and he tells her he does not have to pretend to love her anymore, because he is going to Hogwarts. When Marissa tries to reason with him, he tells her to shut up, their whole lives, the kind of sentence that tells you everything about how long this particular sibling argument has been running.
The reveal comes flatly from Marissa’s husband, the one person in the room willing to say it. “You’re a 35-year-old Filipino man, why would you get a letter to Hogwarts?”
David’s answer is that there must have been a mix-up. It says so in the letter.
Then it gets physical. A scuffle over the envelope. An attempted Avada Kedavra with an actual wand, which prompts an entirely reasonable “did you just try to kill me?” An Accio that goes nowhere. And finally, having run out of spells, David takes a run at a brick wall headfirst, because Platform Nine and Three Quarters is the only option left.
The door opens. A man dressed as Hagrid says, “You’re a wizard, David.”
David stands up bloodied, with chipped teeth.
Standard Dinner Party
The second terror starts in an office, with a group eating lunch and talking about their coworker Riley, played by Kate Berlant. One of them reports that Riley offered her some hot ergonomics tips. Jordan says she seems nice. A coworker named Jen, played by Mitra Jouhari, suggests Jordan could use some of those tips himself. Jouhari was one of the three creators, writers and stars of Three Busy Debras, and the deadpan she brings here is recognizably from the same place.
Berlant, for that matter, is in Netflix’s Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein alongside David Harbour, a special every bit as ridiculously weird as this one and worth your time if you have not seen it.
Riley, who has been sitting right behind them, gets up and announces she is having a dinner party with college friends. A standard dinner party. Title card: Standard Dinner Party.
Then the runner that made me laugh hardest in the episode. Riley’s computer announces, “YOU JUST HAD A BREAKTHROUGH,” and she explains it is her account with HeadKings, the new online talk therapy and sports betting app. The show does not linger on it, which is the correct decision and somehow makes it worse.
Jordan turns up. There are candles and place settings for a number of people, and nobody else. Her friends are running late, she says, she told them seven. Jordan’s phone says 9:32.
Riley wants a deep talk. Heart to heart stuff. Living room.
The living room contains a microphone on a stand.
What Riley actually has going is an unsanctioned poetry slam, and the episode plays this as a criminal conspiracy. She asks Jordan whether he is aware that it is forbidden to host a reading not sanctioned by the Slammers Union. Jordan is not aware. Riley is rebelling, and it starts in five minutes. Keep it between them, Fight Club style.
Jordan sits on the couch and watches her warm up in the green room, which is a corner of her house. She begins. He starts texting his coworkers to come and get him.
There is a bang on the door. Riley pulls a gun before Jordan can tell her it is only the people from work. It turns out they are union.
They slam her, which in this show means pounding their palms on the floor until Riley collapses, screaming in pain.
Jordan bolts.
The Tag
We go back to the Hogwarts party for the stinger, with David on his knees, bloody, asking “Hagrid” to just say he is really Hagrid. In exchange for favors. If you got to the end of The Boys, you know the register, and the show holds on it a beat longer than is comfortable.
Where it leaves us
Two episodes in, the shape is clear. Each terror takes a small social humiliation, the kind everyone has actually had, and follows it past the point where a normal sketch would cut away. Nobody in these things is a monster. They are people who commit to a bit far past the moment somebody should have stopped them, which is the most recognizable thing about the whole show.
One practical note, because it changes who can actually watch this. Episode one went up on YouTube ahead of its premiere and sits unlocked on adultswim.com. Sadly, with this episode (and likely the rest) there is no full episode on YouTube, and the stream on adultswim.com is behind a TV provider login. You can still purchase the show and/or individual episodes at your buy/rent service of choice.
Episode three lands next Sunday.
