Having just survived the brutality of Hurricane Milton, the Sunshine State now gets battered—this time with good-natured blows—by It’s Florida, Man, a six-part HBO comedy that highlights the types of weird and wild stories that first gave birth to the “Florida Man” meme.
Produced by The Righteous Gemstones’ Danny McBride and featuring a cast of comedians in absurd vignettes about crime, deviance, and general insanity, it’s a crazy companion piece to Drunk History, employing non-fiction interviews and over-the-top recreations to recount some of most moronic chapters in America’s recent past.
(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)
Created by Mark Herwick and Jeff Tomsic (the latter of whom also directs), It’s Florida, Man, which premieres Oct. 18, spends each of its installments on a different tale, and it starts with a doozy. In the summer of 2019, Orlando-born Phil was so obsessed with seeing Bassnectar—a DJ whose concerts he’d attended 33 times in three years—that, upon hearing that the artist was scheduled to play a three-day show in Colorado, he became fixated with finding a way to go. The problem was, Phil didn’t have cash for the trip.
Consequently, he turned to “America’s best website,” Craigslist, for help, posting that he needed money now and was “willing to do anything…within reason.” The initial responses he received were mostly about sex stuff, which he declined. However, his interest was piqued by a message from a man named Steve which said, “I have a request. It’s not going to be sexual. But it’s my biggest fantasy.”
Phil reached out to Steve, who told him what he wanted Phil to do: Cut off three of his toes, cook them, and eat them while Steve watched. “Damn, I really wish it was sexual,” thought Phil. Even so, he came around because “I’m a people person at my core. The customer is always right.”
This is pure, unbridled madness, and it didn’t get more normal once Phil convinced Steve to let him bring his friend Carolyn, a former Orlando Magic dancer, to this Thursday night cannibalism meet-up. In an amazingly candid interview, Phil admits that visiting this man’s house in the middle of the night was a clear violation of “textbook stranger danger” protocol. Nonetheless, it turned out he had nothing to fear, since Steve was not a deviant creep (at least on the surface), but a cheery guy with a nice apartment, big-screen TV, and friendly demeanor who offered them beers as he prepared a spot on the floor for the main event.
Sam Richardson, Ego Nwodim, and Randall Park play these real-life figures in It’s Florida, Man’s dramatizations, and their goofy performances convey the nuttiness of the scenario at hand. Better yet, Eastbound & Down legend Steve Little appears as Bassnectar, encouraging Richardson’s Phil to follow-through on the job by whispering in his ear and screaming from his DJ table. Little’s head-banging turn steals the episode, although just barely, since the actual Phil is a unique individual who unabashedly confesses that he eventually became gung-ho about sealing this deal, no matter the potential medical and legal consequences. A bit of closing irony concludes the saga in perfect fashion, underscoring the inanity that typifies so many outlandish “Florida Man” stories.
At least in the three additional episodes provided in advance to press, It’s Florida, Man never quite matches the dim-witted brilliance of its premiere. Still, it’s not short on berserk idiocy. The series’ second outing concerns Chris, whose missing teeth and frazzled, hyperactive demeanor suggest a familiarity with illegal substances, as does his initial pronouncement that “If you never wake, you can never dream. But if you die, you’re never gonna have a nightmare. You’ve got to live that nightmare to get through it to have a dream.”
The horrific ordeal Chris endured was, unsurprisingly, one of his own making, and it began when he embarked on a solo road-trip down Interstate 675 in a 2002 Econoline van. Having recently broken up with his girlfriend and sick of his job and life, Chris was embarking on what his friend Dennis calls “a search for fulfillment.” What he found, however, was not what might traditionally be viewed as rewarding.
Opting to stop at a fishing camp, Chris began cleaning up the area’s garbage and then saw a fence that, to him, represented “the border I want to break.” He ventured into the thick swamp and, ultimately, into a lake where he encountered an enormous alligator. A furious struggle ensued, costing Chris his arm
In It’s Florida, Man, Simon Rex’s over-the-top portrayal of Chris captures the man’s free-spirit wonkiness and furious determination, the latter of which kept him alive during his two-and-a-half day attempt to reach civilization. That Chris got himself into this mess is never in question, but neither is his bright outlook on his experience—a perspective bolstered by his belief that the gator was actually his reincarnated mother who’d come to take his arm in order to jolt him back to (figurative) life. Today, he endeavors to be a motivational speaker, preaching, “I’m in the swamp, the swamp is in me.”
It’s Florida, Man captures the mixture of rural stupidity, backwater outrageousness, and colorful personality that defines the state’s zanier inhabitants, and those qualities are on display throughout its other narratives.
In one, a woman working at a bar as a mermaid performer winds up in a protracted feud with her former co-worker, a witch, as well as her husband, a cop, who bought the house next to hers and began indulging in naked sex-magic rituals in their backyard. In another, a spurned lover plots to blow up his ex’s trailer by igniting a pan full of Ragu tomato sauce while wearing a bull onesie—a scheme that’s almost as ridiculous as the participants’ impressively awful haircuts.
Boasting the participation of Anna Faris, Jon Gries, and other notable stars (including Stephen Root in voiceover), It’s Florida, Man gets to the point quickly and efficiently, offering bite-size sketches fit for late-night consumption. Moreover, it recognizes that its ripped-from-the-headlines jaw-droppers are so loopy, they require only mild embellishment—a testament to Florida’s reputation as the home of America’s daftest.
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