Rocky Point's John Wilson, 'a true original,' talks 'How To's' final season

Scarcely a toddler by human or TV standards, the acclaimed "How To With John Wilson" will nevertheless begin a third and final season this Friday (HBO, 11 p.m.). 

Why gone so soon? We'll get around to that, but for those new to this TV gem, "How To" comes from a Rocky Point native by way of Queens who explores his adopted city through a determinedly whimsical lens. That how-to tutorial business is but a comic ruse — one that gives Wilson license to celebrate New York's eccentrics and oddballs, or her lonely and dispossessed. The narrative twists can be funny but more often poignant because Wilson and his ever-present camera see deeply into the humanity of his subjects. He tends to see something of himself in them too. 

In this final season, Wilson, 36, offers advice on how to find a public restroom; working out; ear-cleaning; watching sports (and birds); plus how to track lost packages. After visiting a vacuum cleaner collectors convention in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he returns to the Long Island home of his beloved grandmother who had died not long after he wrapped the second season. That yields the most moving scene of the series.

Long Island is revisited again in "How to Watch Birds,"  with a quick shot of the Big Duck in Flanders. Later in the episode, anguished by his own ethical lapses, Wilson pays a visit to the old Montauk dockside landmark, Liar's Saloon (just in time, too, because it was closed shortly after and re-christened Marlena's Pack Out this past spring). 

There's a pensive quality to this last season while mortality (his, ours) seems very much on Wilson's mind. "How To" did in fact launch the depth of the pandemic but how else to explain a series' ending visit to a cryonics gala in Scottsdale, Arizona? (Hilarious, incidentally.) 

A true original, there's never been anything quite like "How To" on TV before. Three-and-done does indeed seem way too soon.

Newsday spoke with Wilson recently.

I felt like on the surface it could go on indefinitely but each episode is very dense as I'm sure you've noticed. There are all these parts of the show where there is the memoir stuff, and the anthropological stuff which depend on each other and I never want that to feel redundant or weak. I want to end on a strong note and for the arc of the project to feel deliberate. I'm afraid if I extended it much further, it would meander. I'm just always afraid of making something bad. I can handle someone telling me something is bad that I thought was good, but I can't handle them telling me something is good that I thought was bad. 

I was a little worried that the pandemic would come to define it after Season 1 but if anything it energized us more to document this very bizarre transitional moment in the city politically and socially. Yeah, I feel like there's a bit of melancholy no matter what [but] I just think that's my default mode a lot of the time. It's equal parts melancholy and this strange satirical optimism in the face of that. 

 It was one of my favorite places out there even though I've only been there a handful of times. It was sad when it closed but I was really happy I captured it the way I wanted to remember it. 

 I don't see that happening, but — yeah — that's what's nice about nonfiction stuff. You can let the world around you write it for you. I have a few ideas I'm excited about but just because of superstition, I try not to talk about them before they materialize.