The 6 most scarily accurate parodies on Documentary Now!

A sendup of David Gelb’s celebrated Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, this episode lampoons foodies and food culture. Both works explore the extremely complicated and precise process behind what appears to be incredibly simple dishes. By relocating the action from Japan to Bolivia, Documentary Now! substitutes sushi for Chicken and Rice, a core dish of Latin American cuisine. Where Jiro carefully curates each dish working with the best seafood supplies in the country, Juan selects and, hilariously, must catch each chicken he serves in his tiny restaurant. The episode captures the crisp style of contemporary documentaries, combining talking-head interviews, including Hader as a questionable food critic, and the intimate process of the preparation by Juan and his less charismatic eldest son Arturo, played with wonderful cluelessness by Armisen. The seductive photography of each dish is a technical marvel, but it’s the way the episode gets at the heart of the doc—that is, the tension between honoring and being trapped by tradition—that makes this one of the series’ best.

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi is available on Hulu.

Capturing the amateur style of Dear Mr. Watterson: An Exploration Of Calvin & Hobbes, directed by Joel Allen Schroeder, this episode may be the meanest of the series, exploring the privilege of personal obsession at the expense of any and all objectivity in modern docs. Armisen plays a narcissistic man obsessed with the work of a single artist and is willing to abandon his newborn child and struggling wife for a cross-country search for people who share his niche interest. His selfish quest is amplified by a successful round of crowdfunding on the internet that grants him a hubristic motivation. It all crescendos into a reverse David and Goliath tale when the amateur filmmaker is bested by Ken Burns, one of the titans of documentary filmmaking. A cautionary tale of self-absorption, the ep channels the loss of objectivity into dark comedy.

Dear Mr. Watterson: An Exploration Of Calvin & Hobbes is available on Tubi.

What was meant to be a series by D.A. Pennebaker, Original Cast Album: Company became a single documentary about a Broadway show recording. The process, an attempt at preserving the ephemerality of theater, is a tense, claustrophobic experience in both the episode and the source. Co-written by musical lover John Mulaney, this one transforms Stephen Sondheim’s Company, a tale of Manhattanites and their romantic relationships, into Co-Op, a musical about the trials and tribulations of NYC apartment dwellings. Mulaney and co-writer Meyers up the ante by staging their cast recording after the sudden news that their show has been closed due to bad reviews. Bewildered and defeated, the ensemble cast perseveres. The climax of the episode is Paula Pell’s performance as a singer unable to nail their song, an homage to the original’s Elaine Stritch. A testament to exquisite production design, a dedicated ensemble, and a reverence for the original makes this a keeper—and even earned the admiration of Sondheim himself.

Original Cast Album: Company is available on HBO Max and Criterion Channel.

The Thin Blue Line, directed by Errol Morris, challenged the codes and conventions of documentary, and this episode pays homage to that game-changer about a man wrongfully convicted of murder. The Documentary Now! twist involves the man in question being so annoying that everyone wants to pin a murder on him. Breaking from the fly-on-the-wall, observational style of past documentary traditions, the ep perfectly captures the cinematic recreations and dramatic musical score that made Morris’ film both revolutionary and controversial. Plus, it’s an ace showcase of Hader and Armisen’s comedic personas, with the former being equally seductive and menacing and the latter having the preternatural ability to exasperate.

The Thin Blue Line is available on AMC+ and IFC Films Unlimited.

In response to this episode, Hader said, “Failure is something that’s hard to watch. It’s not supposed to be funny.” Perhaps this is why this one, based on the Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerin’s Salesman, is the peak of cringe comedy in the series. The original film follows four traveling salesmen attempting to sell bibles across the United States, which is comically updated to globes here. Both centralize on one salesman, Paul Brennan and Armisen, respectively, who are on lengthy cold streaks. The attention to detail, down to securing the same exact film stock, is commendable. And ultimately, it is the way the parody centralizes a critique of consumer culture and capitalist enterprise that provides the punch. Following desperate people trying to sell salvation (or globes) to other desperate people is a portrait of Americans that you have to laugh at to keep from crying.

Salesman is available on HBO Max and Criterion Channel.

Watching this episode right after its inspiration, Matthew Akers’ Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, is a testament to both the accuracy of the series and how funny real life can be. Both works follow a renowned performance artist as she prepares a career-defining retrospective and searches for new inspiration. Extremely faithful to the doc, this installment finds easy humor in the world of contemporary art and celebrity artists, while still maintaining respect for the artist and the work. In the time between the original documentary and the parody, Documentary Now! was able to include commentary on a lawsuit that developed between Abramović and her former partner and lover Ulay. Propelled to unimaginable heights by guest star Cate Blanchett’s exquisite turn, “Waiting For The Artist” also manages to be a brutal commentary about gender dynamics and collaboration in performance art. And the final visual punchline, involving the eternally funny trap door followed by Blanchett’s mischievous gaze, makes it a potent, poignant comment on artistic creation and slapstick comedy.

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present is available on HBO Max.