‘Fantasmas’ Brings Us Into the Surreal Life of Julio Torres

Julio Torres’ new HBO series Fantasmas takes its name from the Spanish word for “ghosts,” which Torres’ fictionalized alter ego wants to use for a clear crayon. When a Crayola executive asks why anyone would want such a thing, Julio argues, “Some things aren’t the normal colors, or play by the rules of the rainbow.” 

Torres himself has no interest in normal colors, whether in his movie Problemista or his previous HBO show, the surreal supernatural buddy comedy Los Espookys. He can look at ridiculous things and treat them with intense seriousness, or vice versa. The two most memorable segments he wrote during his time at SNL were a digital short film where Ryan Gosling became obsessed with the fact that the Avatar films used the Papyrus font for their logo, and a fake ad for toy wells for sensitive boys. A color is never just a color to him, not when he can think more intensely about it than would seem rational to anyone else.

Fantasmas is sketch comedy by way of black box theater. Scenes play out on minimalist sets, mixing philosophical questions with absurd tangents. In the first episode, for instance, the fictional Julio is in the back of a rideshare, where the driver insists on leaving the TV tuned into Melf, an Alf-esque Eighties sitcom (starring Paul Dano) about an alien that moves in with a suburban family. Suddenly, we are just watching Melf, which takes an unexpectedly adult left turn, and it goes on for so long that it becomes fair to wonder if this will last for the rest of the Fantasmas episode.

Later, in the midst of discussing the need for an official “proof of existence” document in Fantasmas‘ strange parallel reality, Julio offers his theory that the letter Q should be in the back of the alphabet, along with other oddball letters like X and Z. This leads to an extended sketch featuring Steve Buscemi as the living embodiment of Q, presented as an aging punk rocker who was too far ahead of his time, while X and friends are young and cool.

That’s more or less how all six episodes of this Fantasmas season go. There’s an ongoing story of sorts, with Julio trying to put off getting his own proof of existence — and the lifetime of conformity that he thinks will accompany it — by obsessing over an oyster-shaped birthmark that every doctor assures him is non-cancerous. He has friends, including a pushy household robot named Bibo (Joe Rumrill), plus his agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez), who’s technically a performance artist playing an agent, but who’s been doing this particular piece for so long, she “just does agent stuff.” And there are questions about his career, with Vanejsa pushing him to do a credit card commercial or play a superhero in a streaming series, while Julio wants to make more idiosyncratic projects, like a Lion King remake where the main character is a zebra who questions why the lions are in charge.

Mostly, though, the Julio stories exist to provide a framework on which to hang the sketches, some revolving around Julio and Vanesja, many incorporating notable guest stars: Aidy Bryant as a woman who fashions toilet dresses (“Every toilet is a she. And she, she ought to be dressed.”), Bowen Yang as an elf suing Santa Claus for back wages (and Julia Fox as an overly-sexed Mrs. Claus), Dylan O’Brien as an aging actor on a teen drama who wants to say something deeper with his art (and who is randomly dressed in women’s red lingerie when he has this epiphany), or Emma Stone (who’s a Fantasmas producer) as a Real Housewife type who discovers her reality isn’t at all what it seems to be. 

If you’ve seen Problemista and Los Espookys, then some of this will feel familiar, and not just because Torres’ former co-stars Tilda Swinton, Ana Fabrega, and Bernardo Velasco all have cameos. There are certain themes and stylistic motifs that Torres returns to again and again — Swinton plays a water spirit who lives in Julio’s commode(*), just as his Los Espookys character frequently sought answers from garishly-dressed spirits. But they work more often than not (the Santa trial is one of the few that lands almost entirely flat) because they’re so obviously specific to this creator-performer, and because they’re done with such imagination even when he’s returning to old ideas.

(*) Between this and the Aidy Bryant idea, it’s clear that Torres enjoys humor involving toilets — just not what we traditionally think of as toilet humor.

Later in the premiere episode, a fellow rideshare passenger tells Julio that she’s a teacher, and asks what he is, professionally. He thinks on this for a moment, and replies that he’s “A Julio… I wake up, and I just sort of Julio.” Sounds about right.

The first episode of Fantasmas debuts tonight at 11 p.m. ET on HBO and Max, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen all six episodes of this season.