Mario’s Musings: Dispatches From Elsewhere
A lot of stuff is filmed in Philadelphia, but nothing ever seems to actually take place in Philadelphia, unless M. Night Shyamalan is filming it. Limitless was filmed here and then we had to pretend the film took place in New York. But then, Jason Segel came to Philly and seemed to fall in love with the city, which brings us to Dispatches From Elsewhere.
Dispatches From Elsewhere was created by and starring Jason Segel, who seemed to enjoy making a summer out of appearing in random locations throughout the city, including photo-bombing a few engagement photos. It was a scavenger hunt amongst the population over who would run into Jason Segel and the rest of the cast, and have the best story about it.
The show is a pretty simple concept (yeah, okay Mar). The first episode focuses on Jason Segel’s Peter, who lives a pretty routine life. He wakes up, gets out of bed, goes to work (“work stuff”), gets dinner, and then ends up back where he started that morning, in bed. In between all that he occasionally looks at flyers on street poles, until a chance encounter with someone who puts up the flyers makes him finally take one, which leads Peter on a new adventure along with countless others in the city.
The show itself has a lot of trademark Segel humor, such as when Segel’s Peter is checking out the flyers, and has flashes of what he thinks those flyers would lead to, such as a “Force Field Test” where he gets fired at by guns and cannons. Segel himself plays his usual Marshall Erickson/Peter Bretter type character, only slightly more soft spoken than they are. The first episode is mostly focused on him, so we only get a brief taste of Eve Lindley, Sally Field, and Andre Benjamin’s characters. The first episode ends with the transition into focusing on Lindley’s Simone.
I got to see some of the show being filmed in Rittenhouse Square, which ended up being a critical scene in the pilot that aired this past Sunday. Seeing Jason Segel live in person for the first time working his magic was pretty amazing. My second encounter was more humorous; I’m walking down Walnut Street around 8pm, talking with my sister on the phone when I happened to notice someone walking beside me, talking into Air Pods. Now, being a six-foot tall person, I’m usually the tallest person in the room in most cases, so of course I notice anyone taller than me, as was the case with the person on my left. I look over and see Jason Segel, to which my reaction is to immediately hang up on my sister, quickly text her to tell her who is walking beside me and try and play it cool until I can hopefully ask if I can get a picture with him. That opportunity never came as he was on the phone, and I didn’t want to be rude.
On set!
More on set.
A week or so later, I was leaving a networking event and happened to be standing outside the Continental on the corner of 2ndand Market. I notice a lot film crew around but don’t really think anything of it until I look to my right and see Sally Field and Andre Benjamin standing there under an umbrella. That scene they filmed later on that night was in the pilot episode as well.
Anyways, this is a wild show, so if you’re in the mood for something completely different, I highly recommend at least giving the first episode a watch, if for nothing more than the dancing Bigfoot.