Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Tori Preston | TV | April 1, 2026
If you listen to Podjiba, you probably know that I am a big fan of Julio Torres and Dustin isn’t. We usually wave off our difference in opinion as an issue of “weirdness,” something I’m typically drawn to (in comedy and elsewhere) that Dustin simply isn’t. He gravitates toward more grounded, emotional entertainment, and Torres tends to occupy a space that is fantastical and absurdist. His brand of humor is so wildly specific, it’s hard to describe. It relies less on punchlines than on a peculiar point of view - observational comedy, based on his imagination rather than any sort of shared reality - and you either vibe with it or you don’t.
In his first HBO comedy special, My Favorite Shapes, Torres stood behind a conveyor belt and told stories (some anecdotes, some fantasies) about the odd assortment of objects that trundled by. He imbued every inanimate object with some intangible meaning, some imagined hidden life, only he could have arrived at. Toy swans had matching toy shadows and toy souls; a penholder became Tilda Swinton’s apartment. It was a showcase for how he sees the world, the curiosity that drives him to find the extraordinary behind the ordinary, and that has become a throughline in all of his work.
His most famous SNL sketch, “Papyrus,” was about one man’s fury against Avatar’s unlikely title font. The man may have been played by Ryan Gosling, but we all know who was really fuming about the lazy graphic design choice. Torres’ most obviously autobiographical work, 2023’s Problemista, is about a young artist from El Salvador and his struggles to secure a work visa to stay in New York City, but even there, what could have been an exploration of the mundane tyranny of immigration transformed into an examination of the challenges creative minds face trying to function in a tangible world. His most recent series, Fantasmas, had a hysterically insufficient log line - something about a search for a lost earring - that failed to capture all the detours featuring toilet dresses and hamster nightclubs.
Torres has always embraced the label of “niche” - of “weirdness” - while trying to find a way to invite us all into his slice of the world, but I think his latest comedy special is an important evolution of his style toward something… dare I say… accessible? HBO’s Color Theories is based on a limited off-Broadway show Torres created for himself, something that’s more of a lecture than a stand-up special. On a stage designed like a book, he explains how colors can be used to classify and interpret our world, and if that sounds absurd, then you’re right - but it’s also convincing. Red is anger, yellow is joy, green is calm, blue is logic, and navy blue represents authority. Spoiler alert: Most of the hour-plus special is dedicated to unpacking the evils of navy blue.
What makes Color Theories work is that Torres isn’t justifying his conceit, or himself, to us. He approaches it as if it’s the most logical, understandable topic in the world - as if we’re already on the same page he is - and it turns out he’s right. I’ve never considered what color Ellen DeGeneres is, but when he says she’s yellow on the surface, but red inside, I wholeheartedly agreed! Every example, every tangent, makes so much sense that it stops seeming absurd at all. Even when he blows up his own premise in the special’s final moments, acknowledging that his own color classification system is itself a navy-blue thing, he offers an alternative rooted in his central curiosity.
I won’t spoil that conclusion, except to say that if all his work before Color Theories was about revealing himself to the world, then Color Theories is ultimately about the importance of revealing ourselves to each other, of sharing our points of view. And that is exactly what Color Theories itself does. Torres is still showing us how he sees the world, but he has found a way to invite us into it. To show us how to see what he sees. And if we’re all on the same page, can we really say he’s too “niche”?
