Jake and Amir Review and Top 10 Episodes

 

Ten years ago the original Jake and Amir series ended. A staple of internet comedy in that era, Jake and Amir if you aren't aware has a very basic concept. Jake is a relatively normal guy who sits at work across from his co-worker Amir, who is a weird guy, usually Amir agitates or unsettling Jake with his antics or eccentricities. Despite this it became an absolutely beloved series that lasted basically for 8 years and 800 two to five minute episodes. 

Because of how long the series lasted it definitely morphed a lot in style though a popular way of dividing it is into three eras based on the two times that Jake and Amir moved offices, the first time in March in 2010 and the second time in in January of 2014. I think a good way to do this is to briefly talk about my thoughts on each of these three eras, before giving my thoughts on the series as a whole and my top 10 episodes.

2007 to 2010 or Early Jake and Amir I know has probably the most vocal fanbase but personally I definitely find it the weakest era. Very early on it wasn't even meant to be a web series. For the most part it's just that for 2007 and sometimes in 2008 the episodes would be too simple, basically containing one joke each per episode rather then layering on the absurdity as later episodes are wont to do. There are things I do like about this era though. Starting in 2008 and really by 2009 the episodes would start resembling what they would be later. Hebrew and Thai Menu are both episodes I really like and they're both from 2009. This was the era of multi part episodes. Outside of Girlfriend and the Finale, Jake and Amir didn't tend to do longer arcs after the early part, but as early as 2007 with Lyrics Jake and Amir was doing multiparters and by 2008 they were doing four part arcs with the Florida arc. 

My favorite thing about this period of Jake and Amir though is the heart. Jake and Amir occasionally do wholesome moments however they work by far the best here. This is because Jake and Amir were still relatively grounded here. By late in the series Jake has commented on wishing Amir would die enough times Amir even comments on it, so when Jake decides to move across the country for Amir it feels inconsistent. Plus in later Jake and Amir they'd have a tender moment only to immediately follow with a joke mocking it. This kind of whiplash humor I get the idea for but it really takes it out of the moment. This was broadly Jake and Amir at their most grounded when Amir wasn't a chaotic reality-warping psychopath but was a weird co-worker and Jake the confused annoyed straight man. That leads to the moments like in Sick Day 3, Decision, and Brother 4 to come off as so much more genuine. 

2010 through 2013 or Middle Jake and Amir seems to be the most popular time for Jake and I would definitely concur. It's the longest period and has the most memes to come from it. Jake and Amir's voices both as characters and as writers came more into focus, with longer episodes that contained a faster pace and more jokes. Jake was given more dimensionality shifting from just a very average everyman straight man to Amir's antics, to someone desperate for popularity and praise, a representation not of just the status quo but of people chasing the status quo. This was good I think as it allowed him more versatility as a character. Amir became more exaggerated going from just a wacky and dim-witted co-worker to a chaotic mixture of sociopathy, lunacy, and obsession. This was a mixed blessing as it allowed jokes around him to go to further extremes but also meant it was harder to have any kind of human moment with him that was believable. 

Outside of the duo, the world of Jake and Amir definitely opened up. There were less arcs, but far more callbacks and episodes that referenced or sequeled-past episodes. This was when the girlfriend arc and Fired, the Jake and Amir 30 minute movie came out. This was also when a ton of characters were added into Jake an Amir's world. While some of these characters had rather basic jokes like Mike Fink who's entire joke is that Amir for some reason thinks he's Shia LeBeouf, the addition of more recurring cast allowed for more versatility. 

I broadly agree this is the best period of Jake and Amir where everything felt both iconic and free, where Jake and Amir could have an ep about anything, expand the world in any direction, and still have it feel recognizably Jake and Amir due to the chemistry between the main duo. 

2014 to 2015 marks Late Jake and Amir. While this stretch has a lot in common with Mid Jake and Amir there was a more notable sense that it was getting tired, something lampshaded in their videos ("POSTER Ideas don't you think we're scraping the bottom of the barrel.") The shortest period, this part still has great eps. The Finale are broadly all good eps, and Stock Market is a fantastic episode. However the series was sorta faced with two options neither of which were great, that being continue on the same as they were and letting it feel stale, or to keep exaggerating making it more and more of a cartoon, and episodes from this period broadly do one or the other I think tending towards the latter. The most wacky ideas in the series like them living in a muffin or Amir castrating himself without any pain whatsoever or randomly having two hot girls dance in his laundry room because "I'm a promoter." 

What I will say about this era is when it's on, it is really on. The timing and back and forth between Jake and Amir is never sharper then in the good episodes of this period. Tinder, Stock Market, Multiple Parts of the Finale, and DJ Business are all eps I at least considered for the Top 10. There are more individual episodes in this much shorter Late Jake and Amir that I rewatch regularly then Early Jake and Amir, however it comes with the fact that there are episodes of Late Jake and Amir like Copier that I don't have any desire to ever watch again. 

In terms of my general thoughts on the series as a whole, I like Jake and Amir a lot obviously. It's difficult for me to describe why something is funny very well outside of just saying that the series has great writing and chemistry between the titular duo. However if I was to try and describe what's funny about it, Jake and Amir's writing has a particular way of laying multiple absurdities in a short space to create something of a rhythm of absurdity. Whereas a stereotypical joke relies on one level of unexpected subversion Jake and Amir jokes often have multiple levels of absurdity within the same space either from unexplained details or Amir missing the point. Take for example a fairly normal exchange from "Fur" :

"You know there's a dead iguana in your pocket."

"Or am I just happy to see you?"

"It's a dead iguana."

"I'm also happy to see you!"

Here you can see how the series layers numerous layers and even types of absurdity into seven seconds such as Amir comically missing the point, using an expression wrong, and having a dead iguana in his pocket while protesting animal cruelty. This multiple layers of absurdity is really common in Jake and Amir and creates more unpredictability which engages the brain more then is typical. Jake and Amir filters this through a lot of different styles including Amir style, with a little bit of salt. The universal application of this style of comedy allows for the series to have a cohesive feel regardless of the topic it's being applied to. There is a reason that you can speak in Jake and Amir "style" quotes even if they are not directly jokes from the series, because the style of Jake and Amir writing is very iconic. I like how they can use it to apply to many different types of comedy from their usual straight man and weirdo routine, to ones where Jake is also a strange character of a different sort, to physical comedy, to videos where only one of them speaks (common when they are relaying a story of what insane thing Amir did recently) or not at all on rare occasions, to videos that include more characters such as the table reads and meetings episodes. Best of all there are some episodes that are Amir Style, a LOT of salt. 

However not all of the styles works. There are a few different types of Jake and Amirs that don't work for me albeit exceptionally rare. The most difficult for me by far are the gross out eps. I'm fairly disgust sensitive and Jake and Amir can definitely get gross with vomit or blood. It's not at common but about 1% of the episodes are hard for me to watch because of it. Second some of the side  characters are more of a hinderance to the series then a help. Will's character starts and ends with "eats his own feces", which is quite probably the worst joke in the series. Murph's bullying of Jake is often not very funny to me as it's mostly too in-line with real bullying and only makes me feel bad for Jake. Rarer then both of these of these Jake and Amir will occasionally soapbox about a social issue. It's maybe a half dozen eps in the series at most and earlier on they had a bit more self-awareness about it (How do you know so much? / Easy it's not hard to stay informed, you read an hour a day / How do you ACTUALLY know? / ...Daily Show, watch the Colbert Report.)  I even usually agree with them. I still don't find them very funny. These three styles of episodes are all very rare, each like 1% of the series or less so they're not that big a deal, but I'm not really a fan. Also some episodes are made "Amir Style" AKA No salt at all and those aren't very Taupe. 

The vast majority of the episodes are good. Like I said the amount of episodes I don't like are maybe a 1-4% percent, and even if some of the earlier episodes are boring or some of the latter episodes are too exaggerated, I would estimate that I at least enjoy 90-95% of their videos, and I would say that a substantial fraction are great.  My favorite style is definitely the standard Jake and Amir at their desks doing a back and forth but most alternate styles like relaying events prior, scrolls eps, Doobs eps, Ben Schwartz Eps, all make for their own fun breaks to the style. I think Jake and Amir is almost perfectly designed to appeal to a internet era audience with episodes that are short and which encourage replay view due to the density of absurdity per minute.

I'd like to humbly present my personal top 10 Jake and Amir episodes, might be a bit of a weird list for anyone else but I hope you enjoy:

One Almond: 

What is it that makes Jake and Amir: One Almond...heh... perfect? This is one of the most iconic episodes of Jake and Amir with some of the most well known jokes in the series. (It not only has the prior line but it has the response (Nothing, it's bad/Don't just say *perfect imitation* it's bad) Amir's confusion over what an almond is, 0 billion or 0 dollars question as well as subtler absurdities like "how much would you pay for courtside seats to the Yankees." It also has the joke I think anyone's who has been in the fandom any amount of times where they actually bought the one almond domain name and have kept it up for how long which honestly by itself makes me wanna put it on the list for how much they're putting into this joke. 

9: Breakfast

This episode has Jake come into find Amir with a ton of leftover breakfast. This ep has my single favorite joke in the series in it where Amir talking about grabbing a waitress arm and demanding in a serious voice that he wants one of everything leading to him saying "She takes me at face value because, duality of man or whatever..." A lot of Jake and Amir jokes have layers, but this joke has like 10 layers and genuinely keeps me up at night thinking about it. This episode also has Amir's very inconsistent style which is another joke I really like. The rest of the episode is fine, my only real complaint is that this episode is way too salty, I mean it's practically Amir style. 

8: Ace and Jocelyn 9

Ace and Jocelyn is a subseries in Jake and Amir where Amir pretends they are astronaut accounts from Outer Space and misinterprets everything happening to fit that narrative. In this one Amir catches Jake masturbating in an embarrassing fashion and blackmails him to go along with it. The humor of this mostly comes from Jake trying to spin Amir's deranged fantasy into one that is more reasonable by spinning it into the fantasy. I do wish it was a bit more of a playful back and forth as Amir just shuts down everything Jake says immediately but it's still really funny seeing Jake attempt to maneuver this deranged fantasy world of Amir's.

7: Brother Part 4

This episode is the conclusion to the Brother Arc where Jake's brother comes in and basically manipulates him out of all his money while Amir tries to warn Jake, disbelieving Amir for all the things he's done. This ep in particular takes place after Jake had his money stolen by his brother. Jake tries to save face while Amir comforts him without acknowledge it in some of the best writing in the entire series, both clearly knowing each other knows but not talking about it so that Jake can save face. A list like this you wanna put the emotional eps but I limited it to one cause it felt wrong to fill the list with them. When moments like this happen in latter eps, they tend to subvert it with a joke at the end which I don't really like, feeling like it saps both of their potency. Sick Day has a few great moments like that, Jake consoling Amir before leaving or hugging him when he returns, but they're emotionally simple. This scene is complex, it has the two characters in a place they usually aren't, Jake vulnerable and Amir consoling in a way that feels still in character for both and is honestly really touching. It even has a funny bit at the end without taking from it as we see Jake's brother get his just desserts when the foreign girl he was trying to bring over for himself steals the money from him and leaves him with nothing. 

6: Finale Part 5

Like with the emotional eps, I also wanted to put a part from the Finale in this one. It was a hard one but for pure nostalgia I went with Part 5. This has the final Mickey and Doobs sections, both of which were good enough that I considered episodes about them for this list and while neither is the BEST section of that type, they're both pretty good. It has the return of old CH stars Sarah and Streeter as well as the Eater Piefell Joke. It had a bunch of references to things from across the series, I mean each part of the Finale can be seen as a conclusion to one part of Jake and Amir, I think Part 5 is definitely the goodbye to the cast of characters built up over 8 years.

5: Celebrity Date

Some eps are Douchebag Jake eps where Jake and his obsessive insecure need to seem cool is the weird one. I am less a fan of the full reversal where Amir is relatively normal but the eps they are both kind of off, especially the ones where Jake is normal at first then transitions during the ep are always good ones for me. I considered both Rap Teacher and Screenplay for that exact reason but Celebrity Date I think is my favorite example. This ep has Amir get the phone number of Jaime Lee Curtis and talk about his need to start dating her to get an in with Hollywood with Jake switching to a needy desire to make her his wife himself. This has a pretty funny exchange even before the switch though it's after Jake goes Douchebag Jake that this ep is filled with some great back and forth. This ep has one of the best lines in the series with Jake pantsing Amir over for the phone number while proclaiming "All's BARE in SHOVE and floor." 

4: Stock Market

In this ep Amir is a stock market advisor at his desk. This ep is another great one for wordplay as well as the best Mickey ep as Amir advises Mickey on stocks. A line I will always remember from it "It doesn't matter to me which one of my clients is making that cheese Mickey, cause I'm still eating crackers like we're putting on the Ritz, Mickey!" just numerous lines like that with several layers. This ep is a great combination of that plus non-sequiters like "What Happened" *sarcastically* "Ba-na-na!" "Bad job mocking me you think I said 'banana'?" or Minnie (No Way! Mickey's married to Minne) actually knowing who did sys-ops for Maersk. I honestly don't know what else to say about this ep cause it's just really memorably funny. 

3: Bus

In this ep Jake and Amir are taking the bus back after got them kicked off the subway with his usual antics. This ep has my favorite description of Amir "A mix between Che Guevara, Bam Margera, and Dom Irrera" a line I think about constantly as being witty, surprisingly accurate, and also captivating. There is a ton of good gags this ep including maybe the single most influential exchange on my way of speaking in any Jake and Amir (It was a goof/You're a goof/EXCUSE ME, I have very thick skin but that was a low blow! / ... you're a goof?/ENOUGH!) I am constantly calling bad things goofs as a way of comedically unselling them, pretending it's a hard hitting insult. This ep has a ton of memorable parts, "there's anthrax on this train take off all your clothes" "I'm part of the 69%", "How can you start chants this easily" I really wanted to put it higher, it's just that everything this high is great, and Bus is just a touch unfocused to be higher.

2: Explanation:

In Explanation Amir is trying to explain to Jake what happened to his new X-Box. I said Bus is maybe the most influential to my humor and the reason I said maybe is cause explanation also exists. The ep has the Byron Murphy bit, the random "I'm GAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" and a line that is in the same league as "duality of man or whatever" with Amir getting to the end of the story and saying "So then I walk in, like a hero or whatever, and..." showing him smashing with a bat. It's a hilarious anticlimax to whole story set up with a fantastic line that adds numerous more layers of absurdity in such a simple line. This episode is great from start to finish and my only problem with is that it's a short episode being 75 seconds when most eps are 2-4 minutes long. 

1: Blowing Up

This episode doesn't get talked about nearly enough, to me this is exactly what I want from the series. So in this ep Jake and Amir are working on a script but Amir keeps getting called into the other rooms and having increasing dramatic breakdowns on the phone. I can't sing this episode's praises enough. The thing I love about Jake and Amir's writing style is the way layers of absurdity causes your brain to try and fill in the blanks for how this works and Amir's insane yelling on the phone does that three times, giving you just enough information that your mind races to try and figure out what happens. When he yells "YOU ARE NOT GETTING A DIME OF THIS MONEY, NOT ONE DIME! UNDERSTOOD I HAVE KILLED BEFORE, I WILL KILL AGAIN, THAT IS NOT THE ISSUE." it's not that my brain is trying to figure out what actually happens, it's that it's given just information that I feel like I'm getting a glimpse into the insane world of Amir. This ep incorporates a surprisingly high amount of types of humor in such a specific concept and the ending is actually one that manages to be both funny and kinda sweet. Jake has been trying to ask if Amir is alright and saying he can do this himself with Amir brushing it off but after the third Amir is like "Uhhh, hey I'm gonna have to cut out a little bit early..." and Jake immediately being like "yeah that's fine." Like it's both funny in how obvious Jake was going to allow it and yet nice in how he does actually want better for Amir. This episode is just everything I like in Jake and Amir in 150 seconds. It's got layers of absurdity, multiple types of comedy, sudden shifts between casualness and intensity, the exact type of dynamic I imagine between the two, and it's lowkey one of Amir's best performances in the entire series. 

Jake and Amir-verse Strategy Guide

 

How to be OP in the Jake and Amir-verse

Human Tier:

This is the tier for almost all the characters in the series save one. Characters in this tier range from Human Level to Wall Level in Power, scaling from Jake being able to inconsistently physically engage with Amir as well as having several kilojoule feats himself more notably throwing a pencil through Amir's neck and making breaking Amir's ribs with a clean break in one shot. He also claimed to be able to hit by a bus with no visible damage though it's very possible given his character that this was a lie to seem cool. Jake works out but he's clearly not superhuman in strength, with stronger characters able to bully him easily. In terms of speed the characters are human speed. 

The most important character on this tier by far is Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz or "Jake." Jake is the straight man to Amir's antics and usually doesn't have abilities. However that's only usually. Jake has also shown fourth wall awareness on several instances and high endurance to the point that when his tongue was kicked off he was able to crawl around in agony. He has shown extreme malleability as well able to live inside of a muffin in one of the most blatantly cartoonish things happening in the late series and in the very first episode in a bit of early installment weirdness he seemed to have the ability to slow Amir down in time. 

Jake and Amir has had a large cast of semi-recurring over the years, many of whom have gimmicks although these are rarely anything combat relevant such as Sam Reich Amir's old buddy obsessed with him who ended up their boss, Sarah Schneider Jake's crush, Emily Wayne Dolphin Murph's insane girlfriend, and their long suffering co-worker Pat Cassels. Somewhat more relevant are there are several characters with some manipulation ability including Pat who was able to fool the officer save for Amir. Jake's brother Kumal was another manipulation who scammed Jake. Probably the most notable is the antagonist of Fired, their movie Alan Avery who is a criminal that embezzled thousands from Collegehumor and took brief control of the company. 

There are also some characters with actual abilities. Physically Murph is one of their co-workers who is easily enraged especially when his girlfriend Emily is involved and is the physically strongest cast member, able to easily overpower and bully Jake regularly. Murph has also shown teleportation as when Jake fell backwards in a trust fall Murph just appeared behind him proclaiming that "I will ALWAYS catch you."

There's a dozen identical characters played by Ben Schwartz often mistaken for each other, a few of which have demonstrated powers. Cherry Dude is the real estate agent who sold Jake and Amir the muffin house and likely can fit into a muffin himself, having the same malleability as Jake and Amir. Both Charles Crushtooth the Milkman and the Doctor have shown the ability to teleport to the point that Jake when looking right at Charles thought he was the same as the Doctor who teleported into his exact spot. Sulu Candles is a movie usher who has shown hammerspace able to make objects appear. Ben Schwartz shows up in the finale and demonstrated the ability to somehow play a song with audio from Jake and Amir's life that he wasn't there. Finally while not an ability per se, Jope the Private Eye regularly uses Chloroform to knock people out. 

Probably the biggest conventional threat in this tier however is Amir's rival who often changes his name, with his final name as of the finale being "Cock Smoke Dingleberry Tiny Penis All Male Orgy Fudge Out of a Hole into My Own Mouth Anthony Smith!" or Amir calls him "Smitty" and he's more commonly referred to... Doobs. Doobs is clearly meant to be a parallel to Amir and while he's only in 6 episodes it's likely he would have many of the same abilities. If you think he has the same as Amir he'd be in the higher tier, but going just off the abilities he's shown in his episodes, he's demonstrated hammerspace able to change clothing in a cut like Amir, social influencing able to successfully propose to Jake's date who was in love with Amir just to spite them, minor spacetime hax able to make a 3.5 hour movie take 4 hours and teleport a small distance from the stage to the audience, and most impressively his precog which allowed him to RSVP to an intervention once year in advance before it was planned. 

There is one more character who MIGHT change the tactic needed entirely, that being Lerona. Lerona was a girl who was Amir's girlfriend for a few days and Jake's for a few minutes before dying. She actually returned as a ghost. She can turn invisible though she oddly might not be intangible. Amir punched her and Lerona said "We're not transparent you know, it really hurt." I don't know if she just misspoke but it obviously really changes the tactics needed if one of the characters is incorporeal. 

So what possible counters can you use? So this verse's power is fairly low for its tier, and even for its tier lacks in offensive has basically only having Jope's chloroform and Doobs' supernatural charisma meaning a character who is high in the power level would be very difficult for them to put down. Defensively their only known abilities are superhuman endurance, extreme malleability on the parts of Jake and Cherry Dude, and the possible intangibility of Lerona. The last may or may not exist and the former two can be gotten around via using a non-bludging weapon and hitting a vital area from something piercing like a sword/gun or something exotic like fire. 

What the verse has is a lot of forms of spacetime hax from Jake and Doobs able to slow events down, numerous characters able to teleport themselves or objects, and most impressively Doobs' precog. The former while fairly rare for this power level, are relatively lowkey spacetime manipulation. Likewise all of these are activated abilities including Doob's precog as Doobs very regularly gets surprised even by people outside Amir. This leads me to think stealth would do well, much as Amir sometimes does. Having a minor spacetime hax can sort of be equivocated to having a small speed advantage which is something that can be countered by having a high degree of skill or intelligence, with this verse being relatively tame in intelligence feats and having almost no combat skill feat. 

This is good because another really basic strategy that would likely work well is the manipulator strategy. There are roughly two kinds of Jake and Amir characters, relatively serious and not prone to being manipulated but without powers, the straight men, and the wacky characters that actually do strange power type things like the above. This means a fighter of this tier who is also a potent manipulator can either overpower or trick anyone in the tier. Doobs is the most potent threat of the tier having the only sensory ability (activated precog), one of the only two offensive haxes (supernatural charisma), and the most versatile arsenal. That said Amir regularly mentally beats and enrages Doobs just by calling him a lame silly name. 

So who could use as a counter? One idea would be

Askeladd from Vinland Saga. 

Askeladd like a lot of Vinland Saga characters has strength and durability feats evoking the Viking Eddas with Askeladd being able to cleave a man in two including his metal helmet which is a more impressive feat of a strength by a good margin then the feats of the tier who mostly can just break bones. He is also at the same level as Thorfinn who was able to at least harm Thorkell with weapons even if Thorkell is clearly much stronger then both of them and Thorkell is one of the strongest characters in the verse able to bulldoze houses and throw boulders to sink ships. Askeladd would use his own viking armor and sword and could maybe withstand a serious hit from Thorkell or injure him which would be well above anything the Jake and Amir verse could do in raw power, aided by his endurance which is high enough that even strikes to his heart region don't stop him. While still human in speed he is able to fight Thorfinn who can blitz most viking warriors, showing superiority to most warriors in speed and putting him faster then the tier as well. Murph is maybe the physically strongest of the tier, and Askeladd lowballed is on his level in strength and durability, let alone Askeladd's advantages of speed, skill, and equipment. 

However Askeladd in particular is known for his mental stats for which he is compared to a snake. He has over 40 years of political manipulation learning to read people and turn them to his side, even pirates and raiders as well as enemies. He would find it very easy to manipulate all the very exaggerated personalities of the Jake and Amir verse to his side. He also is a highly skilled swordsman, able to fight multiple swordsman at once which is a master tier skill feat and could likely avoid Jope trying to use chloroform on him which is one of the few ways that they would be able to do anything to him. While there are characters here with powers unlike he'd ever seen, mostly minor space and time manipulation, I think Askeladd could very well adapt given his speed and much higher mental stats advantages, along with the fact that the sword is just a very good weapon for fighting a teleporting enemy since it can make broad swings and the entire length of the weapon is lethal even for the characters with malleability like Jake or Cherry Dude. 

Obviously the biggest threat in the tier is Doobs due to his precog and his own supernatural charisma which is maybe the only weapon the tier would have to get through Askeladd's defenses however in a direct fight Askeladd is faster and far more likely to try to manipulate Doobs at first then the other way around with Doobs as well as just being able to stab Doobs with his sword. Doobs only really wins if his precog warns him of the fight and he acts uncharacteristically rationally. But for another counter you could use

Verminous Skumm from Captain Planet

Skumm is a Chemical Mutated Rat who is considered a major physical threat to the Planeteers. The Planeteers have numerous upper end wall level feats such as Wheeler kicking down a metal door and Linka being caught in an explosion, along with upper end human speed feats, giving Skumm a broad stat advantage. He naturally wields his tail, claws, and teeth as weapons the latter of which are piercing weapons that could bypass Jake and Cherry's malleability, without even getting into his powers. Chloroform is highly unlikely to work given Skumm's extreme chemical resistance and the hood he wears over his head and he can likely resist Doob's charisma as he is considered the second most evil character in the series after Zarm, enough to resist Ma-Ti's power of Heart which can control emotions. 

Skumm is a mutated rat who seeks to spread sickness and does so from the shadows, naturally using stealth and manipulation to spread urban decay. He can telepathically command rats, a swarm of toxic rats being one of the most dangerous animals in the real world to humans like comprises this verse and which at human speed nobody in the tier has a good counter to. His plans usually involve spreading illness via disease ridden biologically engineered objects like food, something that Amir has done to the office before in episodes like Bagels to devastating effect. Outside of physical disease, he also attempts to spread emotional disease and decay in the form of bigotry, his psychological manipulation being incredibly potent in a verse as emotionally unstable as this. 

All of this is without talking about his ring. Skumm eventually becomes one of the five ring bearers to summon Captain Pollution. Skumm's is the Toxics Ring that is able to summon toxins. Against a verse of humans with normal biology this would be a devastating biological attack meaning it really doesn't matter if he's attacked by everyone in the tier at once. Even Jope's basic chloroform works on Jake, Amir and Jope himself, let alone whatever super toxins Skumm uses. The only downside is that Skumm does not seem to have any particular way of effecting Ghosts so if Lerona really is intangible, she might pose a problem to him. For the best counter, I would suggest

Jessamy from Changeling: The Dreaming

Jessamy's stats aren't given but she would have stats at least on par with the weakest other Changelings. This means she should scale to Wall Level, higher into it then anyone in the verse, from a few feats like Hopscotch, a basic 1 Dot Cantrip that doesn't improve durability allowing Changelings to jump on top of buildings. This would likely require between 20 to 50 Kilojoules whereas this tier at best downscales from Amir being 10 to 30 Kilojoules, and falling from a building gave Amir a bloodied mouth while any random Changeling can tank using Hopscotch. Jessamy as a Changeling fights using Chimerical Combat, basically combat on the imaginary plane the way children do but with the ability to cause real effects. This would easily allow her to hit Lerona and can mitigate the malleability of Jake and Cherry as she can simply say a stick she is holding is actually s sharp sword.

Jessamy is a Sidhe, the royals of the Changeling world who's birthright ability is her passive supernatural charisma that gets people to do what she wants. This is similar to what Doobs and Amir can do, except Jessamy does it passively before someone like Doobs would even think to try her. It wouldn't even work if he tried as the Sidhe can regularly resist each others' manipulations. Chloroform might work except Jessamy is a Sidhe of House Ailil, the Unseelie House of Spies and Deception. Jessamy despite her innocent princess facade is a potent manipulator spy who can evade the best mundane detectives notice let alone Jope, who's a comically inept private eye. The only one who could resist Jessamy's supernatural charisma is Jake who can resist Amir's, but not only is Jessamy likely as strong as Murph who regularly bullies Jake from strength alone, but Jake is also highly psychologically vulnerable to trying to impress pretty girls like Jessamy like a much saner version of Amir's friend Cheryl. House Ailil is known for its stealth and manipulation which would be the strategy most likely to work here. 

All of this is without even going into her Noble Arts. While hers aren't known, it's likely this would give her a level of versatility and hax similar to Doobs. A single dot of Soothsay would give her a precog that is nearly on Doob's level. A single dot of Chicanery allows one to disappear into darkness. And if she has noble Arts, something like a single Dot in Chronos is roughly comparable to the time manipulation of Jake or Doobs. She doesn't need these abilities but her likely abilities would be the ones that are strong in the verse. Fae do have some particularly strong weakness to cold iron but no one in this tier even uses weapons let alone cold iron weapons. They are also weak to Banality, especially Sidhe who's fraility is a higher weakness to banality. However no one in Jake and Amir except Jake ever reacts to Amir's abilities as strange, only as annoying, meaning that the verse outside Jake would have very low banality, allowing Jessamy to function normally. And with Jake Jessamy can defeat him just by acting sweet and then beating him. 

Wall Tier:

The Top Tier of the verse is Amir Valerie Blumenfeld, easily the character who's shown the most feats and abilities by a wide margin and probably the top tier of the verse. Amir not only scales to the above wall level feats but in Hotel Room fell out of a hotel window for multiple seconds in nothing but a towel and only got a bloodied mouth, a feat of likely between around 13 to 30 Kilojoules, in the wall level range. That level of power isn't different from where the prior tier was, but what IS different is speed. One of Amir's two most used powers are his freakishly fast speeds, able to regularly change what he's wearing or do other acts in the matter of a jump cut before anyone can react. Amir regularly travels distances that would that would take many minutes to do in seconds including traveling from Jake's home to the office in 6 seconds, gone from McDonalds to the office in seconds, and went from his desk to Forever 21 and back before Jake could react. This would suggest speeds hundreds of times faster then normal humans if not higher, which would give him supersonic or hypersonic speed, speeds that are actually rather hard to match in this tier. 

Amir has a lot of abilities, somewhat inconsistently. Defensively, Amir has the same malleability that Jake and Cherry Dude does, has numerous superhuman endurance feats including castrating himself without pain, a regen factor strong enough to regenerate his tongue being kicked off in one day and use of his legs in one day, as well as the best stealth of any named character in the verse he uses to mess with other characters such as pulling Jake's genitals out of his pants without him noticing. 

Offensively Amir has an extremely broken supernatural charisma that lets him basically brainwash entire crowds and even seemingly affect the metafictional editor of Jake and Amir which is possibly the source of his inconsistent powers. Amir has also had numerous weapons including multiple guns and knives capable of cutting him alongside others he can pull out at any time with his hammerspace, the  other of his most commonly used abilities. Outside of that he was able to physically hurt Lerona suggesting he may be able to hit astral plane entities and in the finale he was able to telekinetically choke Doobs to Death through a pre-recorded message showing the ability to affect someone through technology into the past as well as telekinetically.

Amir also has numerous other potent abilities. He can teleport, possibly as far as to California from New York, and he regularly shows precog that can show things that will happen a day in advance. He also has shown fourth wall awareness on many occasions. He also has a lot of more minor abilities such as minor heat emanation and voice mimicry. 

From a vs standpoint Amir has high speed for his tier and access to pretty strong abilities for a wall level of character however countering him isn't impossible in part due to his many weaknesses. Amir's abilities are very inconsistent potentially because they might come from influencing the editor. While hammerspace and enhanced speed are pretty consistent, many of his abilities are seemingly contradicted such as him getting hurt by comically weak things and while he has precog, he also regularly gets surprised. Similarly while he can control people with his charisma, he is usually hated as an annoyance and menace by his coworkers showing this is an ability Amir has to actively being using and is not passive. This seems to me the best strategy would be an ambush type strategy which conveniently gets around Amir's very high speed, someone that can win stealthily and quickly. 

Amir also has two more prominent weakness vs-wise. One is his lack of intelligence. Amir varies in intelligence from literally animal tier to actually pretty devious, but most of the time he is very unintelligent not just in lack of knowledge about the world but lacking in critical thinking skills and judgement. The other is that he's very easily afraid. While blunt trauma doesn't seem to scare him, he fled and hid from a thunderstorm, he yelled in terror when he saw himself in a very basic ghost Halloween costume, and once gave a homeless man thousands of dollars because the man told Amir he was the boogeyman and to give him all his cash or the man would boogey him. 

All this leads me to believe that a good strategy would be something like a ghost. While Amir can still effect them physically, it's not cheating, the combination of stealth, being spooky, and often physical body ignoring hax make them extremely well suited for being someone like Amir, especially if they are relatively clever about it. That said pretty much any kind of scary monster of similar stats that uses an ambush strategy would do well, especially if they have some way of bypassing Amir's physical defenses. 

Stray from Champions Online

Stray is a Level 9 Minion and while he would have nebulous scaling, he should be above Tutorial (About Levels 1 to 5) Champions. These Champions can bullet-time as well as scale above normal peak humans in the verse who can themselves bullet-time meaning should be pretty solidly supersonic, around Amir in speed. They can also pulverize large piece of rubble trapping people and use lampposts as weapons, suggesting wall level power on par or surpassing Amir. 

Stray is a Ghost Dog from the Old Western Turn of Burnside raised by Talisman to guard it. As a viciously angry Ghost Dog, Stray would basically combine Amir's fears of ghosts with his fear of Rotem, terrifying him and keeping from acting strategically. Champions Online ghosts can teleport and levitate meaning he should be able to pretty easily follow a fleeing Amir unless you think Amir's teleport range is much farther, though given he is likely to use a normal animal ambush tactic this is unlikely to work. Even if you gave Amir time to work he has basically nothing that works on a ghost other then hitting it which is unlikely to help much an social influencing which is unlikely to work on a dog that can't actually understand his language. 

The only real weakness to this strategy is that Stray doesn't have any kind of offensive hax and would just have to kill Amir by tearing at him a bunch. While this is likely to work on a panicked Amir, given Amir's regen and endurance it may actually take a sec that could allow Amir to flee if you think he has Country Scale Teleportation. For a character that can kill Amir a lot quicker you could use

DemiMeramon from Digimon

DemiMeramon is a Baby Digimon and scales to the other feats of other Baby Digimon including destroying trees and blocks of ice, wall level feats broadly comparable to Amir. Speedwise Baby Digimon's speed is unclear, but they should downscale to a fraction of the speed of Rookie Digimon, who are able to lightning-time. This would make them high end Hypersonic which is at the top of the speed category that Amir is near the low end of, giving DemiMeramon a pretty substantial speed advantage over Amir. 

DemiMeramon is a Fiery Ghost Digimon. Just its presence would terrify Amir and instantly break his resolve. Attempting to strike it would also be a bad idea for obvious reasons. Attacking with fire also bypasses Amir's defenses. Amir might be highly malleable and able to regen the use of his legs over a night, but fire just giving him severe burns isn't the kind of thing he's ever shown the ability to regenerate. Even if he teleports away, if he's on fire, he will still be on fire wherever he teleports, and Amir is very likely not knowledgeable enough to know how to put himself out. DemiMeramon doesn't need to ambush given he actually has the speed advantage though he does do that as well for added bonus, and DemiMeramon's weakness to cold and water is unlikely to come up as Amir is no obvious way to take advantage of that weakness. 

The only thing that might be a problem is that Digimon are all data, and Amir does have technopathy. I don't think this would be a problem for DemiMeramon given Digimon regularly get into data absorbing battles and can't one-shot either, along with DemiMeramon's overwhelming offenses of being ghostly, speed, etc. but if you want the best counter to Amir I would recommended

The Ghost Fisherman from I know what you did Last Summer

in terms of stats the Ghost Fisherman not only scales above the original Fisherman who withstood a car crash without injury as well as scales above Barry who was hit through a wall by a car crash, as well as smashed through a solid wooden trap door. Ghost Fisherman can also basically tank shotgun rounds. All this easily puts him in the wall level range, likely above Amir. In terms of speed Ghost Fisherman has a feat of sending fifty text messages of "I know what you did last summer" at the same time. That's 350 words in total sent in a second or two. At an average human typing speed of 40 words per MINUTE this could very likely put Ghost Fisherman in the same speed tier as Amir from being several hundred times faster then a normal human when sound is roughly 100x faster. 

The Ghost Fisherman has traits of both zombie and ghost, actually being closer to the Celtic Revenant then anything. However Amir can hit ghosts fine, that wasn't why a ghost would be helpful, it's the terror caused by seeing a "ghost" and needless to say the Ghost Fisherman would absolutely terrify Amir. The Ghost Fisherman is known for stalking victims who got away with murder and slowly causing terror in them through inducing nightmares and other supernatural atmospheric effects before attacking them. Amir and Sam in the Florida multi-parter offhandedly mention murdering someone meaning he is the type of target the Ghost Fisherman would go after. 

In actual combat, the Ghost Fisherman has better stats by far then Amir in pretty much all regards, fighting numerous opponents at once, smart enough to hack into machinery prior to getting powers, and his undead body having functionally infinite stamina. Amir might have better range but with both able to teleport this is not very important. The Fisherman uses for offense his famous hook. Not only does he target the vital organs which would bypass Amir's malleability and regen, but if Amir tried to teleport away, something a terrified Amir is unlikely to do, the Fisherman would be teleported with him so long as his hook is in him. Even if he's not connected to him at that moment the Fisherman is adapt at just continually stalking his target Revenant style. The only thing Amir could try to do is use his charisma to try and the Ghost Fisherman over but not only is that something he's extremely unlikely to do against a ghost but Ghost Fisherman is a supernatural force of vengance unlike anything in the Jake and Amir-verse that it's unlikely to work on. Even if it did, Amir can't maintain his control very long and he has no way of doing permenant damage to the Ghost Fisherman who has functionally infinite stamina and a regen factor to return from being thrown into a wood chipper.