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Promotional art for My Favorite Shapes
Cover image credit: Promotional image via Prime Video

My Favorite Shapes

Julio Torres

HBO · 2019 · 57 min

A quiet conveyor belt of surreal, object-based storytelling.

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Julio Torres approaches the stage in a shimmering, retro-futuristic metallic suit, sits at a desk, and spends an hour presenting a series of small, inanimate items on a custom industrial conveyor belt. Instead of traditional setup-punchline structures, he uses these objects as vessels for highly specific human anxieties. There is an oval that feels deeply inferior to circles, a self-conscious cactus with a diary, and a Ferrero Rocher chocolate that forgot to wear its little paper skirt. It is a slow, quiet hour that plays more like an avant-garde art installation than a typical stand-up set.

Filmed before a live audience at Elsewhere in Brooklyn, the 2019 HBO special arrived just as Torres was solidifying his reputation as one of the most distinct voices in American comedy. Known at the time as an SNL writer behind cult-favorite sketches like “Wells for Boys” and the co-creator of the surreal comedy series Los Espookys, Torres used the hour to showcase his commitment to the strange. The minimalist stage design was crafted by his mother and sister—a stark arrangement of white Formica, clear plexiglass, and neon to complement his custom translucent plastic shoes.

Rather than doing standard impressions of celebrities, Torres does impressions of objects, like a slow-dripping Brita water filter and the plastic curtain separating first class from coach on an airplane. He inspects a Happy Meal toy of Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, offering an analysis of how a kids’ meal ended up containing a toy of a genocidal 15th-century religious figure. The special also features voice cameos from Ryan Gosling as a blue penguin, Emma Stone as a shoe, and Lin-Manuel Miranda voicing the Spanish-speaking cactus.

The set list

7 bits

  1. A tiny self-conscious cactus in a glass pot

    Features an inner monologue voiced by Lin-Manuel Miranda expressing anxiety and foreboding over the fate of the pot's previous resident.

  2. A blue plastic penguin on an automated toy slide

    Features a voiceover by Ryan Gosling depicting an existential crisis of being trapped forever between red and black penguins on a continuous loop.

  3. A Ferrero Rocher chocolate

    Torres scolds the candy for being annoying and leaving her little skirt at home.

  4. McDonald's Happy Meal nugget toys named Eric and Krisha

    Torres dismisses Eric as a brown oblong blob that sucks, while lauding Krisha for her undeniable star power.

  5. An action figure of Claude Frollo from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

    A childhood fast-food toy acquired at age nine that humanizes his idiosyncratic relationship with play and identity.

  6. Geometric shapes representing Flintstones characters

    Using a red-orange circle and a white triangle to explore the dynamic and relationships of Fred Flintstone, Wilma, and Betty Rubble.

  7. 'It is what it is' as his least favorite shape

    A critique of literalism delivered toward the end of the special.

How it plays

Tone
Surreal, whimsical, melancholic, deadpan, and childlike.
On stage
The self-described 'Space Prince'; deadpan, androgynous, poised, highly stylized, wearing a futuristic silver iridescent suit.
Pace
Deliberately muted and low-key; performs predominantly seated behind a foot-pedal-operated conveyor belt, eschewing broad physical comedy and eye contact.
About
anthropomorphizing everyday objects and geometric shapes, childhood memories and toys, rejection of literalism and the phrase 'it is what it is', class distinctions and social dynamics

What the critics said

Widely praised by critics as an imaginative, one-of-a-kind, and disorientingly tender visual comedy hour that challenges standard standup conventions through surreal defamiliarization.

In the room: Taped before an engaged live audience in Brooklyn viewing Torres's show-and-tell presentation via stage screens.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: hbomax.com, broadwayworld.com, tv.apple.com, press.wbd.com, vulture.com, theringer.com, decider.com, theatlantic.com, npr.org, themoviedb.org.

Backstory

Immigrant from El Salvador who moved to New York to study literature; obtained his green card shortly before the special debuted.

Details

Released
Taped
Elsewhere, Brooklyn
Runtime
57 min
Where
HBO
Director
Dave McCary
Topics
Before
Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents (2017)
After
Color Theories (2026)

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