Todd Montesi’s PN & Friends Is The Deliciously Oddball Webseries You’ve Been Craving
By Matt Levy
If you’re a New Yorker in your early 30s, you’ve probably seen 200+ webseries by now. I know I have. It’s just a fact of life. Often, these webseries are bland, disposable and about roommates. They don’t stick and fade to the back of your memory. PN & Friends created by Brooklyn-born comic Todd Montesi is the rare episodic that eschews this fate and remains embedded in you like a hearty, loud and subversive meal. The premise of said series is simple. PN (played with Steve Martin-like above it all joy by Montesi himself) is a “Man-Child” who’s just trying to be a man. He’s a dork trying to do right. The lawful good archetype in a chaotic universe. Through his pure lens we examine society and sitcom tropes. Montesi, who appeared on HBO’s Crashing described PN as, “Good Times meets Curb Your Enthusiasm with a little bit of Adult Swim thrown in for flavor.” I see it as a mixture of Get A Life and Seinfeld with its genre bending subversion. His friends say, “It’s so weird!”
The series started modestly as Montesi’s attempt to make a comedic short that wasn’t just a sketch and something with a bit more heft way back when in 2010. The episode, titled PN: Cable’s a Ripoff was a sitcom roughly based on his experiences growing up in Brooklyn and has evolved into a fun, absurd cartoony thing. Each episode is shot with smartphones using natural light and sound and through that endearing filmmaking approach Montesi and Co. have created a weirdo universe that they cast with oddball comedy veterans like Tracie Jayne (Wolf of Wall Street), David Voice, Adam Murphy, Paul Hallasy, Faisal Alam, Doug Brian and to name a select few. The show also supplies lo-fi charms when people not associated with the production interact with the cast and these impromptu moments are incorporated into the show. For example, in the Unlikeables Return episode, Satan (yes, the show has a Satan character) yells, “No one will ever love you,” to actor David Voice at Penn Station and a random man yelled back, “What? You’re so annoying! You’re scaring the kids!” It’s these moments of spontaneous, inspired brilliance when Montesi knows he’s onto something special. And don’t forget there’s an episode featuring Anthony Scaramucci. Yes, really.
The creator, who referred to himself as a shy, fat kid that liked watching TV (weren’t we all; I certainly was), added that he’s “A big fan of sitcoms as an art-form. I wanted to make a show that celebrated and also deconstructed the form while using material from my stand up act and life.” Montesi had been trying to pitch his PN project for over a decade and every time he described it to the industry, they’d reply with questions like, “Why is the main character still living at home with his grandmother? Is he divorced? And what’s up with the guy that lives in the bathroom?” These are all great questions for sure but these people just didn’t understand Montesi’s vision.
Finally, like a true artist, the showrunner in Montesi kicked in and he decided to produce PN himself to show the world what he was trying to accomplish. The man in front of the camera also writes, directs and edits every episode seeing the project from conception to completion using a Curb style of sitcom shooting where he outlines an episode with key lines, beats and improv. It may seem like a lot but Montesi maintains a breakneck pace and releases at least one episode of the series a month, which range in length from ten minutes to an hour depending on what the story needs in order to be told always ending in a morsel of a moral with PN addressing the camera selfie-style about what he just learned. The man must not have a moment to sleep with all of the constant production.
For this review, I screened three of Montesi’s favorite episodes of PN & Friends released within the past year. The first episode I viewed, the 16-minute Snowed In (released in March 2019) opens with a bit of foreshadowing as PN wields a knife exclaiming, “He might have to kill someone.” We flash to the present and now our hero is lounging in co-star David Voice’s immaculate apartment decorated with action figures. The two of them are brash, proud, not at all self conscious and LOVE the WWE. The story kicks into gear when David sees on his phone they’re going to be snowed in and the two of them prepare for a long stay indoors. This was filmed over a year ago but obviously feels very prescient. The show, edited by Montesi and Joe Pontillo makes excellent use of Batman-like transitions and the jokes about not going out fly at the viewer fast and furious. We see that the twosome is low on food options for the vegan PN as the only food options in the apartment are, “Fireball, steak and vodka. Also Toothpaste.” Nosferatu-like shadows loom large behind our protagonists as they spiral into unhinged, gleeful madness. David Voice captures a cat. Referring to PN’s inability to eat cats, Voice says with a straight face, “I thought vegans just didn’t eat cows,” which got a belly laugh out of me. The whole piece is wonderfully low-res and it feels like the actors are having the time of their lives with acting styles from an alternate reality. There are confessions about love letters to Judge Judy and Hillary Clinton as well as a brief lapse of sanity that was hinted at in the beginning of the episode. I won’t spoil this one but the reveal is very smart and a nice cultural commentary. Comments on YouTube ranged from “Really your best one yet” to “Toothpaste and fireball- that’s going somewhere.” They’re both right.
The second episode I caught, running around 15 minutes, was the tenth one entitled Groper Goes MAGA (released in April 2019) and is the closest to the Adult Swim comparison the show gets. This edition starts up with our hero in bed alongside Sean Michaels’ wife (Tracie Jayne). Turns out it’s the loudmouthed and charismatic David Voice from the previous episode inexplicably screaming about sex and pushups. PN runs as far away as he can and into his uncle Groper (Taiger Williams) who owes him money but soon cons PN into working as a PA on the set of his music video. There are great jokes throughout but my favorite was the con man simply telling PN, “The favor is what it is.” The episode transports us to the music video set where Groper, dressed like Kanye with a MAGA hat raps with politicians in the background dancing in cut out masks. Melania is in a leather jacket and is clearly a man. It’s these bizarre turns that permanently emblazon this show deep into your mind. A white rapper (Matt Nagin) identifies as “transrational.” More than anything, this episode was a fairly deep commentary on how neither of the two major political parties in the US knows anything. More absurd humor abounds when bantering with an undercover cop and Groper quips, “Undercover? I don’t see no blankets.” It’s wordplay like this that eases the tension of the heavy satire that the show delicately balances.
Finally, I caught The Crush (the 13th episode released in September 2019) and this was easily my favorite of the bunch clocking in at 39 minutes of off-the-wall parodying of Brooklyn love. PN protests gentrification until a cute, vegan Brooklynite (Kenzie Klem) swings by and he changes his tune to “Save the animals! Trader Joes!” Their meet cute is played for laughs as our lead shows our woke transplant around the neighborhood where they get to know each other and PN discloses that “Blogging about wrestling is my singing.” Off-kilter bits litter this episode with an outdated TV salesman on the neighborhood sidewalk; in fact, he’s played by the charismatic transrational rapper Matt Nagin from the previous episode. Nice to see recurring characters. This led to the most inspired bit of the series where PN’s friends (Nagin and Taiger Williams who plays his uncle Groper, also from the previous episode) give him advice on what to do with his new squeeze. “Get it in right now,” one tells him. Another, referring to PN, advises the enlightened gentrifier, “Don’t mess with my nephew.” She replied with, “No, I don’t plan on it.” This scene perfectly captured the awkwardness one deals with when showing off a new significant other. It’s a light touch but is the rare human insight in the series that cuts deep. We return to humor as PN’s object of affection’s boyfriend (the self appointed hashtag doctor played by Ian Ghent) appears to razz him. The episode turns into a competition for her favor as Ghent hurls easy racial jokes at our hero who handles them with dexterity. The newfound throuple travel to Coney Island. At this point, the show flexes another one of its creative muscles- the Brooklyn couple gives fairly grounded performances while PN is as broad and vaudevillian as possible mugging to the camera. This contrast brings on some real laughs as our lead addresses the camera leaving the others oblivious to his knowledge that the camera is fixated on him and this is all a show. The episode features a few more comedy golden nuggets about our female lead’s passionate cluelessness regarding her music career and another where the show parodies Jordan Peele films. The whole enterprise has a shaggy dog feel and is reminiscent of 70s comedies where anything goes. It’s truly worth a watch and reaches sublime heights in places.
The series already has a bit of a cult following from Montesi’s UG! COMEDY SHOW!! And our fearless showrunner hopes PN & Friends moves on to a deserved, larger platform in the near future (cough HBO cough Netflix cough). Let’s get this baby on streaming and ensure that the early 30s demographic catches it for sure and aren’t relegated to watching another web series. Let’s get it to the platforms and make it just a “series.” In the meantime, the cast and crew is currently in the middle of producing a quarantine episode, and Montesi teases that, “The show’s gonna get REAL INSANE.” For a taste, here’s an upcoming clip.
To whet your appetite for the present, feel free to find Montesi and iterations of the show on the World Wide Web by visiting:
PN & FRIENDS, The Complete Series
PN’s Instagram with his daily “Two Cents”
Montesi’s Instagram
Also, Montesi runs a daily, quarantine comedy show on his UGCOMEDYSHOW Instagram.
Finally, a word from PN himself. “Just do your best, guys. PN OUT.”
