The shockingly earnest anti-comeback of Tom Green

If you grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s as a Generation Xer, you either loved or hated Tom Green. You saw him as either some pioneering prankster and innovator of the cable-news troll or an obnoxious man-child desperate for attention.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, but Green’s influence on internet culture and podcasts such as Joe Rogan’s is undeniable. But then one day it just felt like he went away, much in the same way Dave Chappelle did. And just as online streaming platforms such as Netflix threw a ton of money at Chappelle, Amazon has now done the same with Tom Green.

This doesn’t, however, feel like a Tom Green comeback. Green is the focus of a documentary that reveals how he packed up his belongings in Hollywood, where he lived for twenty years, and retreated back to the Canadian wilderness, purchasing a farm, mule and chickens and rediscovering his family and rural Canadian roots. Green also released a stand-up special on Amazon, with an accompanying series documenting his new life as a farmer and all the pitfalls that come with it.

There is a long, ongoing debate around Green’s cult film, Freddy Got Fingered. Universally panned by critics, save the New York Times, the internet to this day debates if Freddy was simply a mosque of spastic jokes that didn’t land, or Green’s idea of taking Hollywood’s money and fame and spending it any way he saw fit, executing a brilliant troll on the industry itself.

Tom Green Country feels almost the same and acts as an anti-comeback of sorts. Did Amazon give Tom Green another pile of money to do wacky and prankish Tom Green things? If they did, he went and did the exact opposite.

Tom Green Country is shockingly honest and goodhearted, as well as deeply introspective and earnest. There is also a tinge of melancholy behind Green’s aged eyes and now gray hair and beard. Gone are the pranks and jokes on his parents, as they help him settle into farm life and reminisce about his battle with cancer. He brings childhood friends along to help repair a barn for him, nesting a time capsule into the walls.

Green acted as a kind of mischievous jokester in the Nineties and embodied the sense of humor of a generation grappling with growing up analog and adjusting to an all-digital world. He was also light years ahead of anyone else in Hollywood on the impact of the internet, predicting that one day anyone could stream videos online and create talk shows, reviews and podcasts.

He was right… and then like the generation he personified, he disappeared and simply wanted to be left alone. He’s still dabbling in stand-up, preferring small venues around Ottawa, where he appears on stage with his dog Charlie.

Green is still making podcasts, like the one where he interviews a man who claims he has a psychic connection to Sasquatch. There is, however, a mellowness to Green that simply did not exist before. He’s stopping to soak everything in and enjoy quiet reflection. Once again Tom Green feels like he’s speaking for a grown-up, midlife generation that for the most part just wants to be left alone in the woods from all the noise.