Ink Tea Stone Leaf

Ariele and I recently began a re-watch of Game Changer, perhaps the only game show that I would recommend not only watching every episode of, but also re-watching for added enjoyment. As fans of Dropout and its many works, the two of us naturally have opinions about Game Changer, arguably Dropout’s flagship series (especially if one discounts the juggernaut that is Dimension 20).

As a matter of taste, I tend to prefer the games that surprise players, forcing them to think on their feet rather than abide by simple rules. I am also partial to those episodes which most further the “lore” surrounding host/Dropout CEO Sam Reich as a manipulative, kinky puppet master, whose players/employees seek to outwit and undermine him for the sake of comedy. The show has benefited from an increasing budget over seven seasons with a corresponding increase in production value, as well as a willingness to embrace true strangeness. It has grown into a remarkable, unpredictable, positively explosive engine of questionably wholesome insanity.

The most recent seasons have defied expectations by continuing to escalate the comedic spectacle beyond all previous limits, but among the earlier episodes there are still many brilliant gems. Because I am enjoying this re-watch so much, I’ve decided to rank the top ten episodes or groups of related episodes (including one from each season) from across the entire run—the ten that exemplify all which is best in Game Changer, at its most goofy, devious, and anarchic.

There will be spoilers here, because of course there will be. Surprise is an integral part of the Game Changer experience, but I can hardly explain why I think each of these games is great without telling you what happens in them. Besides, it is far more important that the players are surprised by what happens than the audience is, and I can promise you upon re-watching that the players are surprised every time.

#10: Jeopardy!

Contestants: Brennan Lee Mulligan, Ify Nwadiwe, Ally Beardsley

Season Three of Game Changer was produced via Skype/Zoom and on a greatly reduced budget, due to the coinciding catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic. Consequently, most of the games they play that season are basically parlor games, or else low-rent, low-impact versions of games that had already been played in the first two seasons. 2020 was a dire year for the entire entertainment industry, and Game Changer had to rely on the audience’s goodwill for its stars to limp along until quarantine abated and allowed for the return of real production value.

The most notable exception is “Jeopardy!”, which is slyly introduced by Sam as a mere recreation of the long-running namesake quiz show, and suddenly reveals itself to be a pirate-themed role playing game, in which the contestants navigate the “Jeopardean Sea” while interacting with enigmatic characters and, occasionally, answering trivia questions. The interactive “map” and illustrated settings and characters recall Dimension 20 in miniature, and as the players are all veterans of that show they are firmly within their element.

I don’t mean to disparage the rest of the third season, which pulls off a lot of great moments under difficult circumstances, but “Jeopardy!” is a genuine head turner. It is one of the few where the mechanics of the game itself rise above the level of what amateurs on Zoom might be able to throw together on short notice, and presages the kind of elaborate story-concepts the show would incorporate later on.

#9: Fool’s Gold

Contestants: Mike Trapp, Rekha Shankar, Jordan Myrick

There are several episodes of Game Changer that revolve around such combinations of game mechanics as wagering from finite supplies of points, performing outrageous stunts, and Shark Tank-style competitive pitching of projects and products. “Fool’s Gold” combines all of these at scale, as the players “invest” in the production of short comedy clips, as pitched by various of their Dropout colleagues. When the episode was first released, no winner had been chosen, because the subsequent online virality of the clips would go on to determine the points awarded. This made “Fool’s Gold” into something of an online event as the clips in both short and extended form circulated around social media, and the episode itself sprawled across time and cyberspace.

Short edits of Dropout shows are already popular on various platforms, so constructing an episode out of pieces specifically engineered for that purpose is a deep stab at meta from a show that already skirts that realm with regularity. For all its scope, “Fool’s Gold” is full of classic Game Changer themes: questionably kinky exhibitionism, wholesomely dada-esque absurdity, a slew of guest appearances by beloved faces, and the merciless exploitation of Brennan Lee Mulligan’s sense of dignity. It’s low-hanging fruit to observe that we’re all waiting for a full season of Dimension 20: On A Bus, but you have to admit that if such a thing were undertaken in earnest it would be as beautiful as it would be baffling.

#8: Make Some Noise/Round 4/The Substitute/Noise Boys

Contestants: Josh Ruben, Zac Oyama, Brennan Lee Mulligan

The first four seasons feature a recurring format that would go on to spin off as a popular Dropout show in its own right, Make Some Noise. The original idea, more or less, was for three comedians with a particular talent for vocalizing sound effects to compete for excellence in that esteemed craft. Over three additional iterations, each treated as an extension of the previous episode, the point totals grew higher and higher, and the premise evolved into Dropout’s own take on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, a game where the points famously don’t matter.

One of the original crew was unavailable to reprise his part for the Season Three episode “The Substitute,” occasioning the arrival of the aforementioned substitute: Michael Winslow, perhaps the greatest maker of vocal sound effects in human history, showing the younger generation how unhinged improvisational silliness is done. The “Make Some Noise” episodes are not as flashy or budget intensive as Game Changer can be, but they set a standard in demonstrating how far you can go with some talent, a few words on the prompt screen, and a relentless dedication to the bit.

#7: Survivor (Episodes 1 and 2)/Battle Royale (Episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4)

Contestants: Ally Beardsley, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Lou Wilson, Erika Ishii, Grant O’Brien, Katie Marovitch, Raphael Chestang, Tao Yang, Rekha Shankar, Lily Du, Adam Conover, Ify Nwadiwe, Jacob Wysocki, Vic Michaelis, Anna Garcia, Isabella Roland

Is it cheating to include a total of six episodes under a single heading? Not important. I personally don’t have much interest in the Survivor franchise as such, but its combination of high-stakes challenges and personal-political skullduggery translates into several hours of Game Changer shenanigans.

The tone of these episodes is appropriately balanced between convivial and cutthroat. Piling together as many College Humor/Dropout personalities as can fit on a single stage, there are many opportunities for the audience to enjoy both friendly repartee and friendship-ending betrayals. The challenges are like mini-episodes unto themselves, and the sheer variety keeps the experience fresh even across multiple cliffhangers.

A notable fact about the initial “Survivor” two-parter is that, at points when the cast are called upon to vote a person off the island, more votes are cast for host Sam Reich than for any actual players. It’s exactly that kind of camaraderie and class consciousness that fuels the renewals on all of those Dropout subscriptions.

#6: Escape From The Greenroom

Contestants: Brennan Lee Mulligan, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson

Sam Reich represents himself, in his capacity as host of Game Changer, as a devious puppet master who subjects his players to situations that threaten their dignity for the sake of comedy. In “Greenroom,” he shifts some of this responsibility to a demented, time-traveling alter-ego, while escalating the threat against the players about as far as it can go: they have a mere hour to solve a series of escape room puzzles before a “bomb” goes off, presumably destroying the studio and killing them all.

Luckily, the players are all adept puzzle solvers, and Dropout’s studio survives to bear witness to further chaos. They must play along with Sam’s premise of being the prisoners of a devilish plot, cleverly narrated by some classic escape room environmental storytelling and stage magic, but their righteous indignation and casual disrespect for his authority are pitch perfect in undermining his control without hurting the story. Everybody is having fun, even when they have no idea what is going to happen next: that’s great Game Changer.

#5: Yes or No

Contestants: Brennan Lee Mulligan, Zac Oyama, Ally Beardsley

The putative battle between Brennan and Sam over their differing views on game design—the former a strenuous advocate for transparent systems that reward players for their effort and ability, the latter delighting in the appearance of chaos and confusion—is one of the most consistently amusing story lines in Game Changer, and zeroing in on this dynamic has produced several excellent episodes. Few have ever matched the purity of the second season’s “Yes or No,” one of very few episodes that does not make the premise of the game explicitly clear within the first few minutes. In fact, discovering the premise is the condition for victory, and the game can only end when the player in last place explains why he never stood a chance.

The game itself consists only of a series of yes or no questions, delivered with amusing flair and variety but absolutely no context; the “correct” answer in each round is always the opposite of whichever answer is given by Brennan, so that the other two players gain points only when they differ with him, and he never gains any. His efforts to deduce the underlying pattern soon gives way to mounting frustration, culminating in a verbose, dramatic monologue of cathartic fury. This is the episode where Game Changer really found itself, and despite (or because of?) its perfect simplicity it is still one of the most memorable.

#4: One Year Later

Contestants: Jacob Wysocki, Vic Michaelis, Lou Wilson

Season Seven demonstrated a commitment to maximalism, with several new sets and big ideas competing to push the show’s boundaries. Much like “Fool’s Gold,” “One Year Later” bursts out of the normal constraints of time, in this case asking the players to depart the studio with a handful of prompts, then return a year later (like the name of the episode!) to submit their efforts for judgment.

Normally, the excitement derived from the production side of Game Changer derives from the efforts of the show’s art and prop departments, to which the players must react; “One Year Later” flips the dynamic, asking the players themselves to produce the most stunning and hilarious set pieces they can envision. This invites collaborations and surprises, some of which are truly unhinged in ways that Sam and his writers could scarcely have dreamed of when they turned the prompts over and let them run loose in the world.

Once the eighth season is upon us, it is an open question whether Game Changer will continue to go bigger and bigger, or whether the quest to surprise the players and audiences alike will require a turn to an altogether new direction. However the next season sets the tone, if it does so as effectively as “One Year Later” it may just be in the running for a spot in a revised top 10.

#3: Sam Says/Sam Says 2/Sam Says 3

Contestants: Brennan Lee Mulligan, Isabella Roland, Lou Wilson, Zac Oyama, Jacob Wysocki, Ally Beardsley, Vic Michaelis

“A game for babies,” says Sam Reich in the beginning of the third episode of the “Sam Says” series. Surely everybody will have no trouble following the rules, and surely the action will remain confined to the space around their familiar podiums. No, not really; the first two episodes had already established the potential to turn this simplest of childhood games into a recipe for chaos and relentless psychological manipulation. Whatever remained of the fourth wall was already less of a wall than the ruins of one, and where was there to go but through it?

As the game develops, simpler prompts are replaced with calls to improvise elaborate scenarios and undertake open-ended challenges. These almost always go off the rails, and although the trigger phrase (“Sam says,” naturally) is occasionally withheld, these trained improvisers can seldom help themselves. Many a point is thereby lost following an otherwise brilliant sequence of bits, leading to much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the players reexamine all of their life choices. A moment later, they are back in the fray.

#2: Deja Vu

Contestants: Mike Trapp, Ify Nwadiwe, Siobhan Thompson

For sheer reality-bending madness, “Deja Vu” takes the cake. Drawing inspiration from the movie Groundhog Day, the players are repeatedly hurtled “back in time” to the beginning of the game, filming the same sequence of challenges over and over again. Like Bill Murray, they have the opportunity to perfect their techniques and improve their performances each time. Unlike Bill Murray, they are haunted by subtle differences that accumulate with each attempt, like artifacts on a cursed VHS tape.

The gist of what is going on is fairly apparent by the start of the first repetition; what makes the episode really work is the variety of ways that “the same” events can be repeated ad nauseum without becoming tedious in the extreme. It is a genuinely impressive feat of execution for a premise that, ironically, would probably not work nearly as well a second time around. Or maybe it would! Certainly “the wenis” will never get old, punctuating each return of the cycle with its delirious joy.

#1: Ratfish (Parts 1 and 2)

Contestants: Rekha Shankar, Ally Beardsley, Zac Oyama, Grant O’Brien, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Katie Marovitch, Jess Ross

“Ratfish” is a social deduction game, a genre of considerable popularity in recent years. Like most such games, it relies largely on its players’ friendship and knowledge of one another’s idiosyncrasies to deliver an entertaining experience. This sort of thing jibes well with the Dropout Cast, who all seem to genuinely like each other, and with the Dropout audience, who seem to adore the cast with even greater fervor. Arguably, this could be a weakness when presented to viewers unfamiliar with the lore of Game Changer and all the past interactions the inform the present’s inside jokes. But as an epic finale to Season Six, it is entertaining and rewarding in the extreme.

The premise of “Ratfish” is that the players have to create improvised alter-egos, and then guess the true identities of the characters they interact with through the internet, without any foreknowledge of who else is playing the game with them. They must also suss out who among them is the Ratfish, a mysterious eighth character played by a special guest star. After watching six seasons of this show, the efforts of these comedians to anonymously make each other laugh without revealing their tell-tale comic sensibilities is exciting and completely hilarious.

It is my understanding that many fans of the show were confused and disappointed when the identity of the Ratfish, comedian Eric Wareheim, was revealed, as despite being an influential comic he is not an especially famous one. For me, that twist simply made the episode better, connecting the show to a larger comedy world without simply catering to what the fan base has come to expect. For an episode that is as much about the art and craft of comedy writing as anything else, that variety is an invaluable spice.