Julio Torres's Surrealism Explained: His Comedy Style and Where to Start
A crystal with ambitions, a font that ruins a man's life, a visa application as an epic quest. How Torres builds a surreal bit, why it lands, and what to watch first.
Julio Torres's surrealism is quiet: he takes an ordinary object, a font, a shape, a colour, and calmly gives it a personality, a social status and a secret sorrow, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. This page explains how that style works: the techniques behind it, the themes underneath it, how a Torres bit is built, his peers and influence, and a ranked order to watch his work. For his biography and every credit up to his 2026 HBO special, read the companion Julio Torres career profile.
What makes Torres's surrealism different
A lot of surreal comedy is loud: escalation, shouting, gross-out, chaos. Think of I Think You Should Leave or Sarah Sherman. Torres works in the opposite register. His worlds are calm, pastel and beautifully lit; the delivery is soft and unhurried; and the strangeness is treated as fact, never as a joke the performer is in on. The effect is closer to a picture book or a fairy tale than to a sketch show, and it's why people reach for words like "dreamlike" and "magical" when describing him.
The other difference is that the surrealism always points at something real. A shape with ambitions is a joke about social climbing. A font that ruins a man's life is a joke about obsession and taste. A labyrinthine immigration process in Problemista is barely an exaggeration. The dream frame lets Torres talk about class, status and belonging without ever making a speech.
Five techniques behind a Torres bit
1. Objects with inner lives
The core move, perfected in My Favorite Shapes: he picks up a small object and describes who it is. Not what it does; who it is, what it wants, who it would be friends with, where it would go on holiday. The specificity is the joke. The shape isn't "sad"; it has a very particular, slightly snobbish kind of sadness. Color Theories (2026) applies the same method to colours, assigning each a personality and using them to sort people.
2. Total deadpan
Torres never winks. He speaks softly and evenly, with the faint authority of a museum guide or a prince, and lets the absurdity of the content carry the laugh. Because he commits so fully, the audience starts to accept the logic of his world, which makes each new turn funnier.
3. Taste as character
Many of his jokes are about aesthetics: which things are elegant, which are tacky, which are trying too hard. "Papyrus" is entirely built on the idea that a font can be an insult. His characters judge objects the way people judge each other, and that turns design snobbery into a mirror for class snobbery.
4. Production design as punchline
Torres thinks visually. The conveyor belt in My Favorite Shapes, the colour schemes in Los Espookys and Fantasmas, the toy-like fantasy sequences in Problemista: the look is part of the joke, not decoration. You can often understand a Torres premise from a still frame.
5. Fairy-tale structure for real problems
His longer work borrows the shapes of quests and fables. In Problemista, a visa deadline becomes a mythic trial, the bureaucracy a labyrinth and an impossible boss a kind of monster to be tamed. In Fantasmas, a lost earring is the excuse for a journey through a series of absurd side-worlds. The fantasy makes the frustration bearable, and funny.
Recurring themes
- Taste, luxury and class. Who is elegant, who is trying too hard, and what that says about status.
- Immigration and bureaucracy. Visas, forms, deadlines and the precarious position of a talented outsider, most fully in Problemista.
- Queerness. Present everywhere and rarely explained: in characters, in sensibility, in jokes like "Wells for Boys" about boys who don't fit the toy aisle.
- Childhood and toys. Toy design, wishing wells, small treasured objects: the imagination of a child, applied by an adult.
- Loneliness and longing. Under the pastel surfaces, many of his objects and characters simply want to be seen.
- Latin American settings. Los Espookys is set in an unnamed Latin American country and mostly in Spanish, treating the place as normal rather than exotic.
How a Torres sketch is built
Take "Wells for Boys" as the model. It starts in a familiar format, a toy commercial. It introduces one unexpected but specific premise: a wishing well for sensitive boys who need somewhere to put their feelings. It then plays the premise completely straight, with all the commercial's conventions intact, and lets small details deepen it rather than escalate it. There's no big twist at the end. The sketch simply leaves you somewhere slightly sadder and stranger than where you started.
That's the general pattern: familiar container, one precise impossible idea, total sincerity, and a slow deepening rather than a blow-up. "Papyrus" follows the same shape inside a psychological-thriller format.
Peers and influence
Torres's closest collaborators are Ana Fabrega and Fred Armisen, his co-creators on Los Espookys, and the director Dave McCary, who directed My Favorite Shapes. He belongs to a New York alt generation that includes Patti Harrison, who appeared with him in Together Together, and other comics who mix sketch, character and art-world sensibility.
His influence is visible in how many younger comics now treat aesthetics as part of the act, and in the space Los Espookys opened for Spanish-language comedy on American TV. Critics often reach for magical realism, the Latin American literary tradition, when describing his work; whether or not that's a direct influence, it's a useful lens for his blend of the mundane and the impossible.
Watch in this order
My Favorite Shapes
The purest distillation of the style, and only an hour. If this clicks, everything else will.
"Papyrus" and "Wells for Boys"
Two short sketches that show the sensibility working inside someone else's show. Watch "Papyrus 2" (2024) afterwards.
Los Espookys
Two seasons of deadpan horror-comedy, mostly in Spanish with subtitles. Torres's Andrés is a highlight.
Problemista
The film, with Tilda Swinton at full volume against Torres's quiet. His most personal and most emotionally direct work.
Fantasmas
Six episodes of sketches and side-worlds strung on a lost earring. Best once you're fluent in his style.
Color Theories
The newest special, a companion to My Favorite Shapes, adapted from his off-Broadway show.
For dates, awards and the full story of his career, see the Julio Torres career profile.
Frequently asked questions
What is Julio Torres's comedy style?
Gentle, highly designed surrealism. He gives objects, shapes, colours and fonts personalities and social lives, delivers it all in a soft deadpan, and uses that dreamlike frame to talk about class, taste, immigration and being an outsider.
Why is Julio Torres called a surrealist?
Because his premises run on dream logic presented as plain fact: a shape with career ambitions, a man destroyed by a font, an immigration process staged as a fantasy quest. Unlike shock-based absurdism, his surrealism is calm, pretty and internally consistent.
What is the best Julio Torres sketch?
'Papyrus', written for SNL in 2017, is the most famous: Ryan Gosling as a man haunted by the font of the Avatar logo. 'Wells for Boys' is a close second and a purer example of his gentle style.
Where should I start with Julio Torres?
My Favorite Shapes on HBO. It's an hour, it contains his whole sensibility, and everything else will make more sense after it.