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.

Only three seasons?! Why gone so soon? 

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. 

Who made the call to end — you or HBO, or both? 
After we got renewed for Season 3 and started to talk about the life of this project, it felt like a mutual thing between HBO and me. 
I think of you as the Boswell of the New York eccentric. If you're not around to document him or her, who then? 
I am still filming casually although not on steroids as I usually am during production. I feel like the city is going to continue to change and I feel like we captured a really historic moment in the city and the country over the three seasons.

The series did arrive during the pandemic. How much did it define its tone? 

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. 

Long Island does get some nice shoutouts — including the famed Montauk dive, Liar's Saloon, in 'How to Watch Birds.'

 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. 

What's next for you — and with the ongoing writers' strike, any chance "How To" might get called back for a fourth season? 

 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.

Your parents (who still live in Rocky Point) ever give you any career advice? 
[Laughs] My parents stopped giving me career advice when I was a teenager and they realized I wanted to keep making movies for the rest of my life. If it'd been up to my mom, I'd have been a teacher by the time I was 23. But they've always been extremely supportive and were really excited this worked out for me.