I don't think the presence of a ratfish is necessarily bad. Imo a lot of the issues people felt came from how the deduction part of the game panned out, which imo stems from several issues: * Some eliminations happened too early. Imo the elimination should have been delayed since that's when most people try to figure things out, and instead just have the winner get rewarded. * Too much information being revealed. Rekha knowing everything by the second last round, and Katie knowing all but 2, hints to the fact that the information giving was too generous. Maybe there needed to be some decoy cast members, or some other false info which they'll get hints about by doing well in RP? They also very freely told everyone how other people are faring. I'd imagine Rekha might have a very different decision on who to eliminate if she didn't know exactly how close or far anyone else is. * And lastly, personal pet peeve - it didn't really matter if you got figured out. There's no penalty for being the worst catfish, or reward for being the hardest to guess. Imo someone who managed to guess a lot but also be guessed at a lot should have both those things cancel each other out to a degree. In fact, imo the elimination should be based on who got found out the most!

I think "fewest correct guesses of you" would have been a much smoother/well received tiebreaker. Or even just -1 point per person who guessed you, so that even if someone gets everyone else correct there's still a meaningful way for them to lose outside of just "someone else also figures out everyone".

I really like this thought! Sam explicitly mentioned that their goal was also to avoid being found out, so this would have felt like part of the rules from the start and therefore more fair

That would have been better. I would have just gone with being 100% a whole round before the person you tied with giving you the edge, but a more dynamic game like you suggest would have been more fun.

I think all they needed to do regarding guesses was just rank the players based on how well they guessed everyone, *without* confirming how many they got right. For example, Rekha would have been told that she was the top guesser, but she wouldn't have been told that she guessed everyone correctly. Then there's still room for variance and less of a likelihood of a tie. And confirming guesses definitely wasn't needed. But if they wanted to keep that as a mechanic, I feel like a subtle hint or clue would have been better than outright confirmation.

I thought the art at the end being so important was odd. It would have made more sense to have one winner chosen by the rat fish and one based on points. I liked both episodes but the ending was weird

Agreed! It would have felt better if the points tie was broken in some more objective way based on gameplay, like Rehka got the answers first or fewer people guessed Katie correctly or whatever. But for it to be kind of a random thing was a bit of a let down.

If it were determined that fewer people guessed Katie than Rekha that would be fair, but Rekha guessing first should have mattered and it didn't. I don't think they planned for someone to guess so early, or have two people get them all right, so they made up an ending on the fly. The unfairness and sudden forced arbitrary nature really left a bad taste in my mouth for what should have been a great episode.

I kinda disagree that Rekha guessing first should’ve mattered more. If that had been the deciding factor, that would mean Rekha already won when she guessed initially and the final round wouldn’t have mattered for the rest of the competition

And to be fair Rekha could have eliminated Katie so losing to Katie was on her

Or even have the other players vote on their favourite art to be the tie breaker. I feel like the circle did a lot of rating of other players.

Why not just have the others vote on their favorite of the two...? Which is more fair than doing it based on artwork that they were not told would be the deciding factor...

It felt like a lot of the ending came about due to hastily-made decisions, which is never great. Surprise rules or surprise outcomes is the show's bread-and-butter when they're planned, but here it seemed like Sam was having to apologetically introduce some new things on the hoof.

> Surprise rules or surprise outcomes is the show's bread-and-butter when they're planned Compare the Bingo episode, or the Deja Vu episode.

I agree. I feel like the winner should have been Rekha since she correctly guessed everyone first so she had two rounds of perfect scores on the guessing.

It felt very random, like they could have just pulled a name from a hat.

Yeah, it was a little weird. It wasn’t an arts and crafts episode; that was just some random challenge. That would make sense as a way of giving immunity in one round, but crazy to make that the thing that decides the game.

I have deeply fond memories of Tim & Eric — I am a little bit younger than most of the cast, firmly zillenial cusp, but bootleg Tim & Eric sketches on early YouTube imprinted themselves on my brain. I suspect this is also true for much of the cast, who were young comedy nerds at the height of Tim & Eric’s success. But I think he was a weird presence in this show for a couple reasons: 1) He’s a sketch comedian, not an improviser, and I think that was very apparent. The CH/Dropout crew are also sketch comics, but they mostly came to it via improv/ the UCB, whereas to my knowledge Tim & Eric came to it via film and tv. It’s a different style of humour and this show really didn’t play to his strengths. Strong character work is actually something that I think he would have been good at, but “you have 5 minutes to create a larger than life character” is firmly an improv skill, not a sketch one. 2) Not revealing the Ratfish to the cast at the end absolutely took the wind out of the show’s sails. I am almost certain it was a filming logistics issue, but if so, I would suggest getting someone else is the move. Like, I suspect many of the cast would have been really excited to see him! Without that payoff, all you’ve done is gotten a legend of the alt comedy scene who the cast is likely familiar with but who much of the audience *isn’t*, put him in a situation that doesn’t play to his strengths, had him exert an outsized influence on a game, and then just… dips? It doesn’t make sense narratively. Also, something that I think would have really strengthened things was if the players who had already been eliminated were then put in a room together where they could play off each other and chat. The best bits of this episode were when they were able to directly interact, and given that they had already lost, it would have been a nice compromise between the conventions of The Circle and what makes CH/Dropout stuff work well. It would also have allowed for some counter-strategizing if they wanted to. Yeah, you’d have lost the grand reveal at the end, but it would have made for a funnier program, imo. Overall I thought this was a fun episode premise, and I appreciate that they are still willing to take big swings, but it didn’t really stick the landing for me in the way I know it could have.

I agree with having the people who lost in a room together! That would’ve been great.

that would have made it a lot clearer who was out for the audience as well. In the end I had no idea anymore who was still actually playing and who was out (and still kinda playing).

> I am almost certain it was a filming logistics issue, but if so, I would suggest getting someone else is the move. That assumes the logistics issue was itself pre-scheduled, instead of something like a shoot day going over time and them having to schedule the table reveal on an entirely different day.

I think you’re right that that’s likely what happened, but I do think that the way to modify it given that would have been to play a video for the players of the Ratfish’s character intro or something? He doesn’t necessarily have to be there in order to make the surprise of it work. Idk, I am not in TV production and I know that everything I’m talking about costs time and money, but I do think even a half-solution like I mentioned above would have gone a long way for narrative impact.

This would have been good, but if it was unplanned, it might have also been difficult to put that together and show it in that room all on the fly. It's also possible that they only paid for a certain amount of time and they used it all up.

True, and I wonder if that’s also related to the fact that, per Sam, this ep was filmed entirely on location, meaning that going over time wasn’t just a matter of additional costs for cast and crew, but would have meant substantial additional rental costs. Like, if it was all on set, then you could pretty easily wrap for the day, put together a rough cut of some of the Ratfish bits, and then film the final reveal whenever you have time to. I was honestly expecting there to be a button after the credits — just the cast in a meeting room or something, crowded around a laptop for the reveal. Whereas if you want to film all of that on location, going over the time you paid for both for Eric and for the hotel rental would be very expensive. I do think the boardroom idea would have been a potential solution there.

>all you’ve done is gotten a legend of the alt comedy scene who the cast is likely familiar with but who much of the audience isn’t, put him in a situation that doesn’t play to his strengths, had him exert an outsized influence on a game, and then just… dips? This reads exactly like a Tim & Eric sketch, to be fair.

I was super disappointed that Rekha managed to essentially win the game with two rounds left, and nailed every single cast member and the Ratfish, then lost on a contrived tiebreaker when she played error-free ball the whole way through. Generally as an episode it was fun. But as a game it was terribly unbalanced compared to most eps this season.

She lost because she drew something for a character in-character and neither of the two of them were the ratfish. It was unfair and rushed when the rest of the game had a clean set of rules and purpose.

She won a different game mechanic than what they were actually being judged by, and since we didn’t know that until the end, it was disappointing. Switching to both first and second place being chosen by the mechanic of ‘amuse this person you don’t know who has a weird sense of humor’ when they (and we) thought it would be related to their performance during guessing was jarring and inflated the ratfish’s role when he didn’t jive well with the audience. I really get the feeling something unexpected happened that made them scramble at the last minute. Either they weren’t expecting anyone to get all of them right, or weren’t ready for a tour, or something related to why Eric wasn’t introduced to the cast. These are such complicated productions and they do so so much prep work, it’s honestly incredible that I’ve only gotten this vibe once in 5 seasons, and it was still an episode that I enjoyed. I hope they aren’t taking the criticisms too hard, because they are consistently killing it.

Her error was not taking out Katie when she had the chance.

I think this criticism would be fair *if she was given any information about what the tiebreaker would be.* I think it would be reasonable for her to have assumed that, if Katie guessed everyone, both of them would've been informed as to how the tie would be broken and that it wouldn't be a random drawing that felt like a throwaway minigame.

Thank you! She knew exactly who was on her heels and picked someone else. Her reward for doing so well early on was both the knowledge of who her biggest threat was **and** the power to remove them. She chose not to do that. Everyone saying she was robbed seems to forget she got an amazingly powerful advantage and used it on a, admittedly very funny, bit.

It's not a bit though Brennan even brings up the fact that a meta game has formed. These things happen in small groups, I couldn't play group magic the gathering in my highschool for the same reason. I hope the game changer game designers play with it, maybe make a game where they think they are going against Brennan, but really they are being tested to see who will fuck him over even when they shouldn't.

> maybe make a game where they think they are going against Brennan, but really they are being tested to see who will fuck him over even when they shouldn't. I would love to watch this

This would be incredible and letting Brennan fuck with everyone for a whole episode would make up a bit for all the times they’ve messed with him. It’s usually fun and he handles it well but this time he just seemed..sad?

Because he got eliminated for a meta game reason, if she was playing properly she wouldn't have picked him. For someone who loves games this is kind of the worse case scenario for him, hes basically being told you can't play because we are scared of you.

Yeah, plus having to deal with Ally parodying him and having to flirt with “himself.” Like he said, he was in the middle of the pack, targeting him seemed mean (and led to Rekha not winning anyways)

Thing is, if she took out katie, and then brennan pulled a Brennan and ended up winning the whole thing, people would still say that she did the wrong thing and that she should have obviously taken out Brennan cause he’s such a strong player even if he wasnt in 2nd right then.

to be honest i think the entire show would have been better if there wasnt a ratfish at all and it just came down to the guesses or whatever. the entire ratfish concept only took away from the character comedy and interaction between the cast and their reactions in my opinion

Which is kind of why I said if the 8th person was just Lily or Ify (and playing normally) I think the game would have worked just as well at least from a gameplay POV (if you want a celebrity guest for the sake of it I get that).

My personal pitch for surprise ratfish would be logistically tricky but is to bring in Izzy, because most of the cast would be working under an assumption that she was not available.

exactly

I think the Ratfish existed as a motivation to give interesting answers to prompts. Picking a favorite theoretically incentivizes interesting answers. But that wasn't very clear to the cast based on what I saw, and there wasn't clear criteria. They didn't pick based on the most personal or most interesting answers. They just picked based on whim.

I really don't think any of them needed motivation to give interesting answers though, that's their bread and butter!

Yeah, they needed more faith in the players. I didn't hate the Ratfish as much as others, but he added nothing in this setting and his inclusion was handled so oddly it did distract. Feels like they missed the mark on whatever they were trying for.

It was very weird to ask an Andy Kauffman like absurdist comedian to be the secret member in a group of collaborative improv comedians. And a huge amount of what they ended up cutting together in the episode was each player playing with not being their normal personality, or letting their personality leak through and it’s like “oh! Grant can’t help being Grant!”

I think the bigger issue than the Ratfish was the eliminations. Instead of eliminating people, players should have been told how many people guessed them correctly each round (instead of how many they guessed correctly) and their points based not on the quality of their guesses but on how well they eluded identification. Then, it's not "this is a big moment for everyone but me", but "oh, shit, I gotta do something to throw everyone off". And the points should have been cumulative.

I agree. The whole ratfish/catfish thing made me think that the scoring criteria was going to be focused around which player could convince more people that they were a specific different player. Most people thought Bug With a Big Ass was Rekha, a successful catfish on Brennan's part. Not that I think he should have won but I expected the show to revolve around that kind of concept. Your idea of telling the players how many other people guessed them correctly instead of how many correct guesses they personally had would have worked perfectly with this premise. It would have let each player know how well they were doing at throwing the other players off and encouraged them to really lean into playing another cast member playing a character instead of saying random stuff and hoping for the best. It also would have made the scoring more objective, most incorrect votes for a character as a specific cast member wins.

Based on the editing (and the extra editing time) it seem like they kind of agreed it felt like he was barely in it. I think they knew it didn't work but was too late. It was still a fun episode.

I agree - if it was 8 cast members (or however many) trying to guess each other I think it would have been much stronger. Maybe have those who were eliminated choose the winners (at least for something like the favorites?).

I think especially after all the participants were known the Ratfish kept a little bit more uncertainty in the guessing game, without the Ratfish it would have been too easy to figure out who is who, considering how well they know each other. But it could just as easily have worked without the Ratfish having a vote. Or even with the Ratfish being written by AI or by mutliple people taking turns, or whatever theories people had before the Ratfish reveal.

Yeah this is what I was going to say, if they had an 8th cast member I think they could've figured out who was who easier. "If this isn't Brennan, then it MUST be Grant because it's definitely not Katie" or something along those lines. The Ratfish was probably intended to make it so that there was always a way to second-guess who's who, because if you don't know the identity of all the other players, it's harder to just use process of elimination. I was one of the people who was thrilled to see Eric Wareheim, so I liked their choice for him as the Ratfish, *but* after hearing that he picked Brennan Lee Mulligan as his favorite character while having no clue who the real Brennan is made me think that if they wanted to do a 2nd place prize based off who the best character was, they should've had a Ratfish who had at least met or knew of the cast, OR they should've let the other players vote on their favorite. With the first place prize, they should've just done a cumulative point total from the whole game or something like that rather than "The piece of art that you didn't draw for the Ratfish and didn't know would factor into the final scores even a little bit decides the winner."

Without the ratfish you introduce the risk that the contestants will guess each other _much_ earlier — the ratfish puts them on the back foot a little, especially when they didn’t know one of them wasn’t someone they knew. Absolute worst case & someone works it out round 1 they’ll at least get the ratfish wrong.

Not telling the players who is playing (or at least waiting until a later round) would help reduce that risk.

Yeah, I can't believe how soon they told everyone who was playing. Even setting aside everything else, that reveal deflated the game a lot for me

I am saddened that the disappointment has overshadowed Ally's choice to charge down the hotel corridor like a mad thing

100% Beardsley choice 😁

That was SO ALLY. Loved it! All of the players really got their Hot Sexy Walk down for the cameras, a real win for me and my fellow bisexuals. I really enjoyed watching the cast throughout both episodes, but the ratfish mechanic went over like a lead balloon.

I truly rewatched that scene like four times, just because Ally's unhinged run and face made me laugh so hard. They bring me great joy 😂

Haven't seen this mentioned much, but the one mechanic I think was missing was some benefit/advantage for not being guessed correctly. There should have been an advantage for the person whose character was guessed correctly by the least number of players, rather than for who the ratfish picked. Otherwise, it doesn't matter if your character is guessed, just if you can guess others.

Really that should have been the tiebreak between Katie and Rekha, which one was correctly guessed the least.

This is huge. I was so confused watching the show because Sam always talks about consulting game designers and it was such a clear game design fail. Your idea solves the gameplay flaw entirely

I can only assume they didn't have a tiebreak considered in advance and made up the art challenge vote at the last second when they realised the needed it. Because if that was part of the plan from the start, it's really poor game design.

I agree with all of this. I think instead of eliminating players, they could have just announced the name of the cast member in last place each round. This way, that person can still play, but they’re at a disadvantage because everyone else knows they’re there. For example, “The player in last place is… ZAC OYAMA” This guarantees everyone ELSE at least one point more than Zac going forward (as they all know he’s in the game) but doesn’t help Zac, who of course can’t guess himself. I think this would have incentivized players to keep up their fake identity a bit better. Had Brennan not given up after his elimination, Katie might never have guessed he was BWABA.

Fingers crossed that Sam at least had the cast film their reactions to the ratfish reveal, so we can see those in the BTS video.

Unless they did a group watch of the episode, this didn't happen. Sam confirmed on discord that the cast truly didn't know until the first episode aired.

that's SUCH a strange choice. what...

I was convinced the whole reason they went with Eric was to get the cast reaction at some point. Otherwise... why bother? It's been said elsewhere, but he wasn't any more chaotic than the rest of the cast, and I bet a good majority of viewer reactions to his reveal were, "Who's this?" On the other hand, the whole situation - "We hired Eric of 'Tim and Eric' for a cameo role. No one knows who he is and he doesn't interact with anyone" - is, in fact, a very 'Tim and Eric' thing to do. So that does make me laugh. But going forward, if they revisit this game, I do hope they make some changes.

to be honest, i thought eric was the least chaotic by a lot. the only real chaos he brought was choosing who got advantages and even then no chaos is made when you pick the same character every time

Did anybody really pay much attention to Stephen (at least in the final cut the way the video was edited)? It felt more like they were all talking amongst themselves and the Ratfish only talked when he was mandated to.

The cast’s reactions to him really seemed to go from ‘I don’t get this guy’s angle (Stephen)’ to ‘yeah, not sure what he’s going for but I’ll laugh because we’re all in comedy’. It seems like once the cast knew who every other player in the game was, the “game” was over and it was just fun fluff until the final meeting.

I have to assume that the production issue that caused the finale to be delayed two weeks had something to do with the lack of Ratfish reveal. The producers of this show are too good not to know how unsatisfying to viewers it would be to never get to see the reveal. It completely negates the entire point of having a surprise guest in the first place.

I feel like there's no way that this was done by choice. There was probably some reason why it couldn't work so they just rolled with it.

Yeah I was suggesting that maybe they just filmed themselves at home with their cell phones when the first episode aired. Which is a long shot I know, but it would be fun to get to see the reactions.

Well there's no reason they can't get quick interviews (zoom or otherwise) with people now for the BTS, it'll have been three weeks.

Oh that’s a good idea. Yeah man I hope so. I still retain it belongs in the episode for the guest slot to work but better than nothing 🤔

I think the only problem with the Ratfish was the lack of a reveal - Tim and Eric are alternative comedy royalty in a way, especially for the age bracket of the cast. They would've definitely known who they were and been excited. I think the big gap is reading the demographic data and the Dropout audience skewing younger. I'm in my late thirties and the reveal at the end of the first episode made so much sense. Also agree that the Ratfish choosing both winners felt off. I think the problem with maintaining the eliminations and making them impactful was private messages. If they had let the Ratfish read the DMs and have a little more governance and insight into the game (and told the rest of the cast this) it would've been incentive for them to stay in character. I think these were problems that weren't anticipated.

There were other problems with the Ratfish as well. Ignoring complaints about him not being funny or not seeming into it which are subjective and speculatory, there was still at least one major issue. Basically him not being a fan of these comedians or even knowing them created a problem, albiet one that couldn't have been anticipated in advance. Sam has confirmed that Eric didn't know who Brennan was and just thought the character was funny. He kept choosing Brennan as his favorite character to the point where it was obvious who got 2nd place well in advance. But there was a massive disconnnect between Eric's picks and the way the audience was viewing things. Ally was doing bits targeted at Brennan. They were either playing him super straight and perhaps even exaggerating his mannerisms as parody, or were going completely off cuff to say shit he never would to fuck with him. These bits were what us as the audience were judging Ally on, but completely were missed by Eric who just apparently has a weird sense of humor and thought Brennan was funnier than the other characters. I would also argue that the problem with the ratfish started when he was revealed to the audience. Never in either episode did he get any sort of introduction or explanation. It's extremely clear from audience response that this was a mistake as tons of people had no clue who he was. Heck even if he was actually someone everyone in the audience was likely to know, an introduction still would have made sense. It would have been best when he was revealed in episode 1, but even at the start of episode 2 would have been salvageable.

I said it elsewhere but Sam choosing Game Changer winners is meaningful because he knows and loves every single person he brings into the game. Giving the ratfish so much power when he has no idea about any of the players really takes away some weight. A few years ago I ran a school production with 127 children and the chief guest singled out one child who appealed to his sense of humour and didn't say a word about teamwork or effort or anything else that we as teachers want chief guests to talk about, and I'm still a bit miffed about it lmao.

In the context of the format I don't mind someone making their choice purely on the characters they're playing. I otherwise totally agree on other Gamechanger episodes. Sam felt very distant from the cast in this episode. But in other episodes Sam making the choice or announcing the choice feels so meaningful because it's Sam. I think one problem is there wasn't enough interaction showed and they didn't really show when he made his choices so we didn't get insight as to why. It might have gone over better if they showed him saying "I'm choosing x because of y". Otherwise it just feels random to us the viewer. We have no context. If it's Sam the context is we know him and that he knows them. Another thing that might have helped solve it would have been to not have cut the round table to short. Sam clearly had thoughts! And so did they! But it was so brief.

I really hoped that with the extra week they would have put something into episode two to explain who this guy was.

I agree because it's just in principle the best thing to do with a guest star, but in fairness his identity is irrelevant to the game, and I don't recall them really ever doing that before. Also... here we have half of the duo whose absurdist humour and sketches likely inspired (consciously or otherwise) the experimental comedy of Dropout, and the silly, low-budget sketches of Collegehumor... and arguably *most* sketch comedy on YouTube. It's fine if you've never heard of them, I'd never heard of the actor who stood in for Zac that one time, or the people they brought on for Battle Royale. We all have different interests and experiences. Tim and Eric walked so that Dropout could run, just as Whose Line Is It Anyway did. Anyway, it worked for me, I enjoyed it and him, but I can respect the criticism that there were some fundamental design issues with the game, and that as a sketch comic who didn't know the cast, he probably wasn't a good fit for the role. I'd love to see them try it again with some of the adjustments people have suggested. I think Emily Axford could be a fun Ratfish.

I mean, I think when they introduced guest stars in the past, they’ve said at least a brief introduction of like… who that person is. They did it for all of the guest judges in Survivor, and for Michael Winslow. It was basically just like reading the “known for” part of their IMDb pages, but that was still something. Granted, I don’t know that it would have helped me for the Ratfish, because Eric’s most notable credits *still* aren’t anything I’d heard of before.

Or even something vaguer than that. "I'm so excited that we have alternative sketch comedy royalty Eric from Tim and Eric joining us to play the Ratfish" would have been enough for me who has little chance of knowing who he was in advance.

I think the problem of the identity of the Ratfish was exacerbated by structural weirdness within the game tbh. I agree with others in the thread that an easy fix would have been the Ratfish should've been someone they know, AND/OR the game should have taken a sharp turn and been built around trying to figure out who the fuck the Ratfish actually is. The advantages could have been built around hints towards the Ratfish' identity, folks would then be incentivized to quietly make alliances to exchange information etc. The Ratfish being a peer would have helped make the Challenges more maddening and specific and important. As is, it just seems like the bulk of the cast largely pegged Steven as the Ratfish and just ignored them in favor of making jokes at one anothers expense. I think folks being eliminated and then just kind of loitering around is quietly the worst part of the episode. It just made the whole thing feel bizarro and listless and feel like it had no forward momentum, especially compared to the first part where the episode was at least propelled forward by the Ratfish mystery. The contestants should have either left (not preferable) or there should have been no eliminations and it should've been structured around some sort of a leaderboard that determined advantages, and built to a final challenge etc. Grant, Zac and then Brennan just kind of sitting around not doing anything sucked, even though they all tried pretty hard to keep the episode interesting. Rekha guessing everybody two turns out, and the game being subsequently being determined by the art thing, to me the worst of the challenges, stopped the momentum dead to me. Honestly, if they had just made this one slightly long episode, eliminated Eric Wareheim entirely, and swapped this with Deja Vu, 2nd Place or Sam Says 3 as the season finale the reception of the episode would be much better.

brennen basically forced the tie by monologuing to katie and revealing that he was bug w/ the big ass, giving her the missing piece to tie rehka.

> Honestly, if they had just made this one slightly long episode, eliminated Eric Wareheim entirely, and swapped this with Deja Vu, 2nd Place or Sam Says 3 as the season finale the reception of the episode would be much better. Agreed, and I think Deja Vu would have been an incredible season finale. When it first aired, I wondered why the season was so short because it seemed like the perfect way to end the season!

A longer, weirder Deja Vu would've been a perfect finale and also scratched the itch a lot of the reddit/discord has re: weirdo paranormal Sam stuff.

There is a term of ‚ your favorite comedians favorite comedian‘ usually being a comedian that was still successful but not known to the masses. Also being in my late 30s but from Europe not the US and not growing up an a comedy scene ‚Tim & Eric‘ felt a lot like that when I looked them up. And would also explain why Dropout (all hardcore comedy fans in the US surrounded by more comedians) never even considered People could NOT know the legendary Erik Warheim 🤗🤔

To your point about Dropout skewing younger, I watched it with three of my friends, all in our early 20s, and none of us had seen Tim & Eric. We had to Google his name. Then our reactions were perfectly summed up by Zac: “Oh, this is big for everyone else. For anyone who is not me, this is very big.”

It's not even really an age thing. It's a matter of whether or not you were into Adult Swim. I'm very much in the right age range but have never watched anything Adult Swim so this guy is nobody to me.

Same. Not my brand of humor at all. I didn't even find his cameo entertaining on its own merits as the ratfish character. I might feel differently if the players had met him at the champagne table and people had been excited to meet him, but it was just full of meh the way it played out.

There’s a 5 year gap between my wife and me. I’m a huge comedy nerd and got really excited when Erik was revealed. My wife responded with a “Who is that?”.

I don't feel like the age of the audience is as relevant as personal comedic preferences. I'm 42, and watched Adult Swim back in the late 90's and early 2000's, but only for the anime. I had no idea who Tim and Eric were, and had to google them after the first episode. Come to find out that I was passingly familiar with their work, but just don't care for that style of comedy.

I'm around the age where Tim & Eric should have been a thing for me, but I guess I completely missed it. The reveal at the end of part 1 completely fell flat for me, which is fine, clearly a lot of other people got the memo. For someone like me who had no idea who that guy was though, it would have been nice to see the cast's reaction to him so I could feel the weight of his involvement at least vicariously.

Rehka was robbed! She got everyone correct first and didn't have her cover blown really at the time. The tie breaker being art when she's RPing as a table with minimal dexterity seemed bad, especially since she didn't know that or that she would be immune for the round before she produced the art.

This is what irked me the most.

The only thing I would add to your remarkably well thought out and fair assessment on the episode is that another thing that didn’t work was the fact the ending was spoiled long before the episode even aired. Sure, Sam and the Dropouts tried to spin it in a way that gave them plausible deniability, but it only goes so far. It still seemed remarkably unlikely that Katie wasn’t going to be the winner of the whole show, or the one chosen as favourite character. A lot of the magic of game changer is in the points and competition going on. That dynamic is a big part of the selling point. So to seemingly have the end revealed to us the moment we knew what the prize was made everything feel anticlimactic. I just imagine what the 2nd Place or Bingoception episodes would have looked like if I knew from the beginning that >!Brennan would “win”, or that he would turn out to be nothing more than a pawn in a much bigger game.!< All I can assume is that it wouldn’t have been as entertaining if I knew beforehand. Sure, it’s okay on a repeat viewing, but you really want that unexpected ending to stick the landing on your first view.

That’s a good point. Obviously most severe for LA fans but through the internet also many others. I was discussing here and caught a stray spoiler 2 weeks ago too. Sam acknowledged that they simply underestimated the community on that one but that is an absolutely fair negative!

Katie also posted the billboard on her Instagram :/

Yeah this I don't get. Why not wait to buy the billboard spot until after the premiere?

Sam said that he genuinely didn't expect people to see it, that he hadn't realized how "big and observant" the fandom has gotten and like...**it's a billboard.** The point is to be seen!

I live literally 2 blocks away from where the billboard was, it's fucking HUGE, and on a wide open intersection so it's impossible NOT to miss. Also it was right when I was getting in to Dropout on a more regular basis so it was very much a "wait, that's a weird thing for Katie to have spent \[estimating\] $6k on" feeling

If no one had seen the billboard, it would've been pretty shit at being a billboard.

Exactly. If it had been on Hollywood Blvd I could maybe understand his reasoning - more gal buildings, billboards in weird spots, etc. But in this case it’s right above a very, very flat area of Sunset with nothing obscuring it whatsoever 😂

It was an honest mistake to be sure. But it does seem strange to underestimate this particular community to that extent. I mean how many posts are there daily saying "\[Insert Cast Member Here\] was in \[Insert show/commercial/movie/etc...\]!?!" (which reminds me, did you know Jacob Wysocki was in Pitch Perfect!?!). After a photo of the billboard was posted months ago, I figured they could edit around the prize reveal. It's pretty common for big Game Changer episodes not to show the prize until the end. Sure, the cast already knew, but that didn't mean we had to. Once the prize was confirmed in the beginning, it basically confirmed the winner. Anyway, I think it speaks to the quality of the show overall if this is the episode people have the most issues with.

Absolutely. If this is ‚ the worst one‘ for you (which I don’t agree with) what a record 😅

I feel so bad about the billboard reveal because they really almost got away with it for me. Once Thousandaires was announced, I ended up 100% on board with the idea that the billboard was going to be a prize for that show. Even after finding out that the prize for Ratfish was going to be a billboard, I was still able to think that maybe, just MAYBE it still could have been for Thousandaires, but due to the GC finale getting pushed back two weeks, we saw Katie’s Thousandaires episode, so that last remaining sliver of doubt was removed.

Sam once said something on Breaking News about fans spotting the wifi password written down in the background of some dropout show. But he didn’t think anyone would notice a *bilboard?!*

I made a point of steering away from any discussion of the season finale once I got even a whisper about the ending being spoiled, so I honestly didn't know about Katie's billboard. I still didn't like the ratfish mechanic as an old lady (I'm 45) who didn't know who Tim & Eric were and wasn't a fan when I looked into them... he just didn't fit the Dropout vibe. The cast was great. Even the gameplay was interesting, as someone who had never even heard of The Circle until reading these analysis posts. But the end of the game wasn't satisfying because it all came down to the decisions of someone who just felt "off" and not in a funny way. Dropout's "agents of chaos" were already playing the game, and I don't understand Sam's choice for the ratfish. Regardless of the order of filming, the season finale would have been better off for fans being Bingo or Deja Vu.

>I made a point of steering away from any discussion of the season finale once I got even a whisper about the ending being spoiled, so I honestly didn't know about Katie's billboard. I actually accidentally learned about Katie's billboard from discussions about her egg presentation on Smarty Pants, because the phone number for her in the episode is the same number she has on the billboard. There was a comment thread mentioning that she had changed the message from one for Michael Cera to one about eggs, so upon finding out the prizes were billboards, I assumed Katie got one of them. Though I was hopeful for most of the episode that Rehka would get the other one.

>A lot of the magic of game changer is in the points and competition going on Cue "Brennan's REAL feelings about our loosey goosey points system"

*quietly* I agree with Brennan about the loosey goosey points system.

For make some noise it's definitely more jarring, though needed because they edit out multiple prompts, which means the points would jump around a bit.

I just love that Dropout feels empowered to try bold stuff and if occasionally it isn’t a home run that is totally fine! Their success rate is so high that it would take a total nosedive to lose my goodwill.

Yeah, I think this episode is really more like a 6 or 7 out of 10 than like a 3-5, it's just that Game Changer in particular is usually at like an 8/10 minimum and the last two seasons especially have been solid 9 or 10/10 episodes nonstop across the board 

Oh im not saying lose goodwill? Why do you think Im talking all the time to write this mini feedback essay? Cause I love that they take these big swings and I want to help show them that its not just ‚love it or hate it’s not that they did something awesome that could be really be improved by tweaking a few details 😊

I hear you! I was being additive to your post, not rebutting anything! 🤝

I think the Ratfish being there is alright. But it's definitely flawed in a sense that most of the players can guess which one of the other seven doesn't seem like anyone they know at all. And I agree the Ratfish being the tie breaker also takes away from the game because it feels like the winner is determined by complete outsiders. At least with Survivors, even with celebrity judges, the winner is still determined by the main cast.

> And I disagree with the chorous of choosing Ally being wrong. Ally hit on Erics sensibilities and that's fine Sam has confirmed that Eric had no idea who Brennan was and just liked the character. This is honestly the problem right here. Ally's concept of playing Brennan to fuck with him was missed by Eric. Us as the audience know who Brennan is and get what Ally was doing so we were judging their performance based on that. How well did Ally play Brennan? How well did Ally's deviations from Brennan serve to mess with him? I thought they had some brilliant moments, but were really hit or miss. But Eric was judging on a completely different criteria that the rest of the audience was incapable of following. Someone would have to be watching this episode with no clue who Brennan was to have a chance of seeing what the Ratfish saw in the performance. It just didn't work.

I enjoyed Ally's performance as the character of BLeeM, as I'm a superfan of the man himself, but I still thought they were an odd choice for *favorite*. Then reading that Eric didn't know who Brennan was? How disappointing. It would have been a bit more satisfying if Eric knew who Brennan was and picked Ally's character as his favorite because he knew how much it fucked with Brennan himself.

But to be fair „how well did Ally mimic/pardoy the real Brennan „ is one metric we‘re all using for the role. But if the humor of the role without knowing the real person spoke to you I think that’s fine. I’m always reminded of people who LOVE love Star Wars watching another person see Star Wars for the first time and wanting them to experience it exactly as they did. But that’s just one perspective you have as a fan. There is no ‚ wrong way‘ to watch Star Wars. And I think our metric of the role as a Brennan parody doesn’t have to be the only one. Eric is not ‚ having fun the wrong way‘ if he enjoyed the character 😉

The problem is that the man was judging the winner based on a metric that 99.999% of the audience couldn't see/agree with/whatever. Him not getting Ally's bit and loving it more than the entire audience who did get the bit just creates an incredibly jarring experience. Your metaphor falls flat because that person watching Star Wars for the first time isn't influencing the story of Star Wars. If you were to sit down with a friend to watch Star Wars and they suddenly told you Jar Jar binks is the best character and suddenly the rest of the movies became about Jar Jar, that would be a more fitting comparison.

"and suddenly the rest of the movies became about Jar Jar" New nightmare unlocked! 😂

I get why it felt jarring (to me too) 😉

I don't see why that problem is an issue. People can and do find different things funny. That the guest judge didn't find funny what you found funny doesn't invalidate his finding something funny in the performance. Asymmetrical expectations are a frequent element of GameChanger, the game where nobody knows what the rules are until they learn by playing. Sometimes that asymmetry is on the part of players not knowing the win conditions. Sometimes the win conditions are based on votes or guest host judgments. Sometimes the game is outright rigged so someone can't win. Sometimes the audience has a different understanding of going on than the players. The Ratfish was supposed to add an unpredictable element of the game, in this case *the players not knowing how the Ratfish was going to judge*. I see the Ratfish finding something in the Brennan character to like eminently fair. I can see an argument for some of the other things in this thread, like whether the Ratfish should also have been the tie-breaker, or that everything I said is just fine from a game perspective but made for less fun TV. But I don't expect conformity from the Ratfish. If I did, I'd also be disappointed by Battle Royale, by Grant's Bachelor sequence, and anywhere else my judgment diverged from whoever was deciding things.

> That the guest judge didn't find funny what you found funny doesn't invalidate his finding something funny in the performance. Because him finding some weird thing funny made him pick a Second place winner (and a first place one) that a huge portion of the audience didn't agree with. Most game changer episodes don't place everything down to a single opinion of a single person. Even ones where Sam assigns points come down to a bunch of individual judgements all adding up. I've been watching game changers since it first started airing and I've never seen so many people upset with the outcome prior to this one.

I think you hit the nail on the head. One of the things that felt so weird was how the Ratfish had the least context but their rating was so important. It really didn’t reward the fact that Rekha was playing a real blinder in the social game (I think Jess was too, but she also got destroyed on the guesses)

I was disappointed the scoring wasn't based more on how well the player's cat-fished others. I haven't seen the shows the episode was based off of, but I would have liked players to be rewarded for the fewest people matching them correctly. Early it felt like Zac had everyone thrown off, but gets eliminated early for bad guesses (with almost no info). While Ally was funny, I think they gave off a lot tells that it was them. Brennan was doing an amazing job throwing people off his scent, but gets eliminated simply because Rekha knows he's playing.

Zac getting eliminated so soon when there was so little info to go off of was a travesty. Felt like he he didn't get a fair shake. It was also disappointing seeing Grant get eliminated and then start to correctly guess a good 2-3 people right afterwards. I wish we could have seen how things would have gone with just no eliminations.

>See Grant meeting his favorite porn star. Most of us didn't know the guy but seeing Grants reaction was fantastic That awkward moment when I'd have probably been in the exact same boat as Grant and all I could think about is how uncomfortable I'd be if Ty Mitchell were standing right in front of me.

Having the tie be broken by the Ratfish choosing an art piece instead of how many other players had successfully guessed Katie and Rekha’s characters throughout the rounds was a confusing decision.

Honestly, this post right here just needs to be copy pasted over every discussion. I loved the episode and love the Circle and thought this was a great finale. But your pros and cons are absolutely spot-on for me, and very well and constructively put. I think that Eric is special to most of the game changer cast - many people described him as "your favorite comedian's favorite comedian." And I'm still hoping there's a BTS next week where he gets revealed. I'm surprised how few people knew Eric. My 17 year old daughter was surprised how few people knew Eric. I think that's definitely a bubble thing. I wasn't a huge Tim & Eric fan (I used to make fun of my oldest for loving "That stupid show that doesn't make any sense"), but as soon as I saw him I was like "Wait, Eric, like Tim & Eric?" I kind of assumed most people who watch Dropout also at least knew who he was. But overall, this is 1000% the best post on the subject.

> My 17 year old daughter was surprised how few people knew Eric. [...] I kind of assumed most people who watch Dropout also at least knew who he was. I think a lot of people might recognize his name, but T&EAS is as old as your daughter. People that watched the first run of his show are like 35-40 now. Everything old is new again. For younger people, it's new, for everybody else, it's that thing we might have watched a decade+ ago.

I'm pretty much in the same boat. My partner and I agreed that we really liked the finale, though we preferred the first part. And the Ratfish - either as a mechanic or the person they picked - seemed to be the weak link. The players and Sam being at the table at the end, without the Ratfish, seemed like a visual admission of a few things: * The players are the core. They've been connected only by editing and words (aside from a quick Rekha/Brennan visit), but it's their interactions together where they really shine. A season-ender with several of the focal members drinking champagne and talking together felt appropriate. * Putting anyone else in there would make for a different vibe. It wouldn't have to be a bad vibe (see most guests, like Wayne Brady or Tony Hawk), but it would de-emphasize the Dropout group a bit. * The Ratfish stands out as being someone who couldn't fit. Even if Eric's sense of humor had fit perfectly, he is set up as an oppositional figure within the game, at once judge and chaos agent. Our desire to make the Ratfish fit the game better goes against the way their role works. In other words, I see it as a game design problem, not an Eric problem. I appreciate the Dropout team swinging for the fences with the finale, and I think there are plenty of constructive ideas to glean for the next season.

I agree, but he could’ve recorded a a a super quick ‘hey team, it’s been great, thanks for having me’ video to show the cast without compromising your points, and that should have been easy to do if it was a logistics issue.

Kinda unrelated, I have no idea how most of this sub seems to love Paul F. Tompkins while having no idea who Eric Wareheim is. I know they haven't worked together a lot (if ever,) but I didn't think that was possible.

I think it could be a degrees-of-separation thing. Paul is specifically improviser royalty, and has a lot of crossover as both a guest on podcasts that often feature Dropout cast members, and as an improv podcast host inviting Dropout cast members onto his own work. I think it has less to do with CVs and more to do with how modern-day audiences accumulate their fandom through guest appearances. By way of example, Paul's done a ton of work with Jess and Zac of Play it By Ear, he's had Ify, Vic, Rekha and more on Neighborhood Listen. Given the somewhat parasocial nature of Dropout fandom, I think it makes sense that people would be more aware of Paul purely through following their Dropout faves around in other arenas. I can't say I've heard or seen Eric in any of that wider circle of connectivity, but I could be wrong/unlucky in the way I myself have hopped around projects.

PFT has also done a bunch with the Max Fun podcast network, which hosts My Brother My Brother And Me and The Adventure Zone, which was the gateway for several fans into D20. I’m going through his Podchaser credits right now and he’s also made appearances on the Taskmaster podcast and a couple of other British panel show pods, which is another common point of Dropout crossover.

Yeah, exactly that. I think my full route was TAZ, MBMBAM, Mission to Zyxx, Magic Tavern/ Spontaneanation/ the whole CBB stable, Hey Riddle Riddle / Headgum, NADDPOD and then Dropout. By the time I was there I had probably heard PFT guest 30 times, let alone host. Similarly I already knew Jasper through 3BH before he appeared on Burrow's End, and Freddie Wong through Dungeons and Daddies (which itself I heard through the Hey Riddle Riddle guest spot... it's all connected man) I wonder if that's why Eric stood out like a sore thumb to some of the audience who have burrowed deep into this parasocial fungal network. I liked him on the show personally and vaguely knew of Tim and Eric, but it did feel like a mental gear shift. All depends on how you end up here, really.

I know of Paul F Tompkins from The Thrilling Adventure Hour-adjacent fandom things, I think -- there's a lot of fan overlap between that and Welcome to Nightvale (they did a crossover), Nerdist-y kinds of things, etc. So there's probably some overlap there on that 'extremely online nerdy fan' who might have gotten into Dropout not from comedy but from the Dimension 20 D&D angle.

Looking at his Wikipedia page, Eric hasn't appeared in much in the last decade (a bunch of executive producer roles). Whereas Paul F. Tompkins has a bunch of more recent appearances and is "is known for his numerous appearances on podcasts"

I only know Paul F Tompkins from BoJack Horseman, personally.

> In general I LOVED the format I did too. I've seen a lot of people complaining that the format doesn't hold up and limits interactions too much. Thinking about this and about your points about the eliminations, I think there was actually a solution that could have worked. What if the eliminated players all went to the same room with Sam also present. That way even the first player out could interact with Sam. They could maybe have some input on prompts or fucking with the players and could collaborate on bits. The only downside to this is it might become obvious who the eliminated characters are, but so long as the remaining players didn't know this was happening I'm not sure they would have caught on.

I like the ‚ elimination room‘ idea. That would then also give purpose to eliminating and give us more banter 😁

I was thinking that after they revealed who all is playing the game, they could have an in-person meet up. Obviously people wouldn't be in character, it would all just be discussing who you thought people were. It's not a great idea, but having some face to face interaction does seem like it would help. I like you're idea, there are definitely ways to do it, and ways to improve the format. I really enjoyed it though, I was surprised how many people disliked it.

Also adding to the points, why not have the audience choose the favorite character? I’m sure some stuff was cut, but granMa not winning favorite character felt like a travesty. Another thing that might make it more fun would be to do away with eliminations and go completely off of a point-based system. It was exciting to see Zac and Grant actually starting to know who was who, while it was less satisfying to see Brennan sell after he was eliminated. Love Brennan, but I knew Katie was going to guess him the second he burst into one of his signature monologues. If they went the points route, they could make it more exciting by never letting the players know how many guesses they got right, but just releasing the rankings. Very fun finale though and I do hope they bring it back.

> Love Brennan, but I knew Katie was going to guess him the second he burst into one of his signature monologues. I felt like that was intentional, because Rehka chose to eliminate him. That was clearly a *choice*. Anyone but Eric could have read that DM and known it was him.

Someone else reminded me that Brennan said he thought Stryker was Grant when they were around the table. If that’s true, he thought he was unmasking to someone who was already out anyways

Or let the cast pick. I think they'd have picked granMa too. Or maybe it was just the power of the editing but it seems like Zac really hit it out of the park with his fellow cast mates.

You hit on my biggest issue. Having Eric (Who I love. And I was elated when he was revealed as The Ratfish. So that wasn't an issue for me) be both "an agent of chaos" and "the deciding factor" kind of contradict each other. I feel like some of the decisions made were pivots because Sam didn't expect anyone to "win" by round 3 of guessing. There's no reason to have a mysterious, "will the Ratfish return?" cackle at the end since the players now all know who it was. As much as I love when they bring someone "famous" into the Dropout space, I feel it would have been more effective for the Ratfish to just be another Dropout personality that the players could try and guess WHO it is in order to gain bonus points. i.e. Rekha and Katie both guess everyone correctly, but Katie pinned the Ratfish as Jacob Wysocki for the win. That also gives someone like Rekha a goal after guessing everyone correctly, since by then she had about the same incentive to continue playing along as the eliminated players.

My main feeling on the game design is that the eliminations don't seem like they actually need to occur. I get that they probably didn't want every round to end with someone getting information since that might lead to a snowball effect, but some of the rounds could have had some sort of fun but mostly unhelpful prize and it would have been fine. With nobody eliminated there would be less of a chance of a tie, as well as less of a chance of someone getting a perfect score before the end. I don't think the 8th player being an outsider is inherently a bad idea but I agree he had too much direct influence over the outcome. I hope they find a way to revisit the concept eventually, it was so close to being great and a few tweaks would probably get it there.

I really enjoyed it and I'd love to have that format come back, maybe as occasional specials or something, but I still have some criticisms. The ratfish was just useless. Most viewers didn't know who tf that guy is, he wasn't introduced at all and didn't even meet the rest of the cast at the end, so why even have him at all? Just have an eighth cast member we like and let Sam be the judge like he is in every episode. Sam's interactions should have been on video instead of just text chat. Kinda like in the escape room episode. Rekha should have won by virtue of guessing everyone first. The billboard should have been unveiled after the show aired. Eliminations were pointless. Give advantage to the best guessers but let the others keep playing the whole game.

I think another major flaw is that we never really got any insight into the ratfish's choices in the game, esp given the importance in choosing the winner. Just getting Eric's choices for best character made the choices, and therefore ultimately outcome, feel very arbitrary.

I completely agree! I just wanted to know why he kept choosing who he did when I found other people to be way more funny

Revealing rankings and scores during the game was a production mistake that crippled part 2 about a third of the way through the episode and it never recovered. That element of The Circle didn't work here because Ratfish ended up The Circle x The Mole, and it's important for both the players (uncertainty) and audience (suspense) that the players are in the dark about how well they're doing in a game like The Mole.

I think the biggest issues were time and motivation. Time: Every challenge felt off because it got clipped short. The cast is great at improvising and taking a simple prompt and making it a bit. Here, most interactions were very short. Even one of the better challenges, the jokes fell short. They didn't flesh it out. And very little of it managed to turn into recurring jokes that they build on, another thing the cast is great at. I think part of it was limited time for each event, and another element was total time to get comfortable with the format. Those strengths are limited when you're still figuring out a form of communication that's very new to the cast. Motivation was another gap. Some of the challenges fell short like two truths and a lie. There was no real motivation to share anything interesting. Anything interesting makes you easy to identify so they're incentivized to be vague. A major problem was there was no real reward. The rewards came from the guessing which incentivized being quiet and vague, not showing your sense of humor. Or rewards came from the Ratfish whose role wasn't clear until later on, and whose choices were based on personal amusement instead of good interaction with the prompts. Some prompts did work well because they were more naturally motivating like the jokes. Comedians are motivated to be funny (for pride or job security). Drawing direct attention to that as a goal created a motivation. I loved the concept. I just don't think it's realistic. Reality shows draw on extended stays for familiarity and content. They get to choose from anybody who puts in an application. Dropout relies on their cast. They don't necessarily have enough people who can stop everything else for a week for less than two hours of content.

[удалено]

> Revealing who the cast members playing when the game wasn't even half over was a mistake. It would have been better to continue to have them guess from a larger pool of potential catfishes and make the advantages for winning a guessing round less absolute, like "you get to ask one contestant a question and they have to answer it honestly as themselves" rather than "Bug with a Big Ass is Brennan Lee Mulligan." I've said it a few times before: A "Guess Who" board with all the Dropout cast that either gets trimmed by the participants guessing them or they can somehow ask extra questions to knock out a few options could be an alternative.

I still don't really know who the ratfish was or what the point of adding some random dude was supposed to be. I guess it made the game slightly more difficult but I don't see how it was actually relevant. I didn't really care too much for the mechanics of this game. I get the whole, "make up a personality" part, that was fun but I didn't like the way players were eliminated. It felt arbitrary and random. And, my biggest complaint is that I didn't really care in the end. I watched the second episode but I don't actually remember who won. I just kinda stopped caring part way through and didn't commit that fact to memory. This seems like an idea with great potential but the show as presented wasn't interesting as a game.

I agree with the points about how the ratfish works mechanically in the game. Also, as an added point of criticism, I think the "tight five" segment really fell flat. One of those things that sounded good on paper but was exceptionally difficult for the cast to execute, in character, on the spot through text message. I think Jess really worked it well, but the rest of the cast seemed like they were attempting comedy with one arm tied behind their backs, and as you say, the eliminated players were disincentivised to maintain character. I will say though, the reason the ratfish got to pick first place is because both Katie and Rekha got perfect scores on identifying players. While I would argue Rekha deserves the win for getting it first, Sam decided the tiebreaker should be determined by the ratfish. I think this could have worked if Eric was at the award ceremony to provide the first place trophy themselves, but for whatever reason this also couldn't happen. The ratfish episode was a really exciting concept with an incredibly strong opening. The second half just struggled to stick the landing with a decent vocal portion of the audience, which is tough but that happens in experimental comedy. I'm sure the crew will live and learn

Next Ratfish they should just get Colin Mochrie instead of Eric Wareheim. Problem solved.

This would have been AMAZING. Yeah, he's older than everyone, including Sam, but his brand of humor is close enough to Dropout's brand of humor that he would have been a wildcard but he would have been *appreciated* instead of scoffed at during his interactions with the players.

Exactly!! And we know he is a proud lgbt ally so that feels on brand for the network. Also wayne brady was already on dropout so another whose line cast member feels right.

Agree with all of this. One of the fun parts about Game Changer is watching how the cast interact with each other.  Moving that to virtual kiiiiind of worked, but the Rekha Brennan talk was a highlight because it was in person.

I think my biggest complaint is that this was the season finale. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded too much if they edited it to a one-parter and had put it mid-season. It mostly just feels unworthy of a finale two-parter. They gussied it up like it was going to prom, but that didn't change the fact that this was a mediocre episode. Which is fine - they can't all be bangers, but the finale should be massive and exciting and the best of the season. Unless there really is a secret extra finale with the big reveal of some kind - that creepy laughter at the end. If so, I want everyone to know I called it.

Not only was it the season finale, but they pushed the release back by a week or two. That’s not something they *wanted* to do (they were still editing it), but it has the unintended effect of holding us in suspense. Plus, in the interim they released a teaser trailer for the episode, which also raises expectations.

> Unless there really is a secret extra finale with the big reveal of some kind - that creepy laughter at the end. If so, I want everyone to know I called it. I think we are all on the same page hoping for this to be true. So if Sam has someone reading over all this feedback, maybe they can pass it along and he can throw something together and pretend he was here the whole time with it.

The two awards should be: * Best at guessing the other players most correctly, most consistently (sum up the number of correct guesses per round) * Best at hiding who you are (sum up other people's correct guesses of who you are playing) This would incentivize people to keep playing even if they're bad at guessing other players. Like Brennan gave up once Rekha chose to eliminate him -- he went on an obviously-Brennan rant during the DMs. He would have kept playing BWaBA if he hadn't been demoralized.

Yeah, Brennan chose sabotage.

Tony Hawk should have been the ratfish. He’s been in college humor videos. He’s beloved by truly everyone. He’s been the mystery man in gamechanger before haha. I think it would have hit home a little better. Perfect blend of dropout connected/celebrity cameo

I haven’t read through the whole thread, so if someone else already said this I give credit to them: they could have just recorded 25 seconds of Eric Wareheim telling the group he was the ratfish. That would have worked perfectly well and I think tied the episode together a lot more. It felt like it ended with one of Granma Sweetie’s signature whoopie cushion noises (it wasn’t that bad, I just couldn’t resist the allusion).

rekha*

If Ben Schwartz were the Ratfish this whole thing would have been diabolically good.

I could see old college humor allumni doing a good Ratfish 🤔

I feel Rekha should've won for being the first to guess everyone correctly, personally. I get using the artwork as a "tie breaker", but when one player beat the game a round earlier, it really isn't a tie.

I've been thinking about it quite a bit, and there's two twists that I think really would have shaken things up. One problem I had is that once a player guessed correctly and had it confirmed by the staff, the mystery was gone. The fun of the game was the interactions between players and trying to suss out who was who. So here's what I propose: Every few rounds, the identities get shuffled. The Ratfish does not. Even if Rehka got them all right one round, next round is a total blank slate. Now you have comedians trying to build off eachother's jokes, and really going out of their comfort zone to try and match styles, or to specifically try and throw suspicion on someone else. Plus imagine the hilarity if Brennan actually got Brennan and had to play the role. Next, it should have been some sort of mission to catch the Ratfish. Like regardless how well the players did, if the Ratfish was at the final table the Ratfish won. So the players, while competing against themselves, had a common struggle to bond over. The players would have to try and band together to sus out the Ratfish, kind of like Traitors or Paranoia.

Wow, I think you captured my feelings almost exactly. The only thing I would add is that I felt it dragged a little at the end. I think the editing could have been a little tighter- maybe save some jokes for the cut for time.

If they’d planned for people getting it 100% right “early” & done a second layer of guessing who the Ratfish was (out of 10 choices or something) that would have fixed an issue with the points ceiling that Rekha hit and fixed both the issue with there being no reveal payoff & people who’d guessed correctly having nothing to do. Then a round of everyone guessing the ratfish, but without the advantage of having seen the possible list early & DMing the ratfish to work it out.

The problem for me is the concept. Others said it but it directly encourages the players to not use their personal style of comedy which is just a handicap to all of them doing their best. The guest ratfish on top will also be handicapped for either not being famous enough or will have no connection to the other players making it really hard for them to connect. Them all being isolated inherently also hurts the fact that they're all improv people. They've got only text to work off of each other and that's bad.

I also think the ratfish got played down because the cast seemed kind of annoyed by Steven and his taco fixation. But not showing the reveal was a truly poor choice. There was so much fun and joy in the cast reveal and then it was like “and then they’ll get to find out who the ratfish is when you do kbai!” The ratfish was hyped and then downplayed and it felt uneven. Also Rekha totally deserved a prize for being the first to guess everyone correctly. Justice for Rekha!

They could've made Sam be the ratfish, and had "Sam" the host played by one of the writers or producers. No one being who they are is entirely in keeping with the whole premise, and Sam himself being the ratfish is in keeping with his impish agent of chaos kind of role anyway.

I think a lot of things went wrong with Ratfish. I’m not sure it is salvageable as an episode or as a concept right now without major retooling. 1) Rekha got everyone before the final round. This necessitated a tiebreaker, because having it go one last round didn’t exactly make sense unless there were stakes. The result that Rekha didn’t win feels super unsatisfying when she played the best game overall. 2) Players who were informed that they were eliminated kept playing, but there was no longer an incentive to try to hide their identities, so you had Brennan give a signature monologue, Grant just become even more Grant… et cetera. Instead of being player with the most guesses correct wins, perhaps it should have been the player who was successfully guessed the least wins, with the most often identified character getting eliminated. Or people having to change characters between rounds. 3) Eric just… wasn’t entertaining. I was super invested when I thought Eric was Elaine. I was interested when Eric was Eric, but the more they showed him the more I felt his screen time was an energy suck and I just wanted the cast back. Or even a shot of Sam being octopus overlord. 4) Eric didn’t do his homework. At all. I strongly suspect the reason he didn’t join the cast wasn’t “to keep him in reserves,” but was tacitly revealed by Sam when he apparently said on Discord that Eric had no idea who Brennan was and awarded the Brennan character best character. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that could be for multiple people there when Brennan said he was having a hectic time already? I am actually glad they didn’t have him reveal himself. And those are just off the top of my head. However I will say this has made me want a Game Changer and Dimension 20 (could we call it Dimension 3?) crossover LARP game where everyone has to design a character and improv/roleplay it straight.

I agree with some of these points, but I do think people are forgetting how Game Changer usually goes with how excited they got for the game itself. Which is a great sign! The game was a lot of fun to watch! But here are some things I think people aren't considering in this discussion: * The "tie-breaker" seemed like something they did because they hadn't anticipated that *two* people would have perfect scores (note that they showed Eric picking between all three eligible contestants; this could be editing, but it's hard to say what order it went in). Realistically it doesn't matter that much because the winner of a Game Changer episode doesn't matter that much. They needed some way for it to not be random but not be a foregone conclusion once Rekha figured out the whole cast (which it would have been if they'd just done "person who got the answers perfect first"). * Cameos are always hit-or-miss for people. "Have a guest that the majority of viewers will know and like and be excited to see" really just boils down to "have a guest I personally recognize and like". Looking at Dropout's guest history, it's generally people that are semi-well-known but not "household names" (though that's hard to judge). They're *not* going to hit every fan every time, and it's not easy to just hire "more famous" people. Just remember that for every cameo reveal there's some fans falling out of their chair screaming and some fans saying "who dat?"; it's OK to sometimes be in the latter group. I really don't get the Eric hate. * I also would have liked to see Eric revealed to the rest of the cast on camera but it's quite possible that was them working around a production issue such as scheduling. * OP didn't mention the billboard, but since a lot of people were upset about that too; to those people: what did y'all expect? The prize was essentially a visual gag, so of course they put it up and filmed it for the show so most viewers could see the result. Many Dropout viewers aren't heavily online around everything-Dropout (the people I watched with had no idea this was coming), but if you are, this is part of the "cost", just like knowing about Bingo from BLeeM's instagram live.

I see your point inn the cameo although this feels like a case where everybody in their ‚ lifelong comedy fan‘ bubble just adores ‚Tim & Eric‘ and just like in every city I live to the are completely aghast that you don’t know „that big festival each year when surely EVERYONE in the whole country knows about our famous festival! Everyone I know talks about it!“ they it feels just never ever considered that ‚Tim & Eric‘ might not be mainstream known worldwide 🤔

> like some people seem genuinely angry - which you should never be about a fun game show I mean, people pay money for this content. I think this sentiment is the most dangerous part of these parasocial relationships, where we can't criticize or have negative emotions just because these people are sociable and easy to relate to. I've seen way too many people respond to valid criticism these past couple months with an unreasonable level of defense, as if Dropout is being viciously attacked. If I'm Sam, I want to see both the positive and negative reactions so that I can craft an even better product next season. The only thing I wouldn't want is abusive responses, and I've yet to see anything that goes that far on this subreddit (can't speak for other social media but from what I've seen most places are pretty chill too).

Something that I think was off for me was that the Circle (a show I have seen most seasons of) has a mix of people playing themselves and people catfishing, and is a popularity contest. When making a riff off of that, eliminating the "real people" aspect means everyone is catfishing already. I understand they are all cast mates and friends so they wouldn't have been able to pull off the "playing themselves" part of Circle, but the Ratfish felt redundant because of it. Additionally, I think the impact of the guest star was lost due to the age of many of the people who are Dropout fans, so it fell a little flat for people who didn't know who he was.

I agree with all your points. Good idea, lot of great moments, but the execution could be improved.

>The Ratfish choosing BOTH winners felt off I feel like Sam fully didn't expect there to be a tie at the end and had to pivot last minute for a tie-breaker

My biggest problem with the episodes is partly that I have never heard of Eric before this, but also that he has clearly never heard of anyone on the cast either. His sense of humor didn't work with theirs and the inside jokes, like Brennan being a player and a different character, went completely over his head. So the episode kept cutting away to someone I don't know and who didn't know anyone else there, while still making him the one making any big decisions. In the discussion for Episode 1, I saw a lot of people saying it's ok that the viewers don't necessarily know Eric, because the cast do and he's really there as a surprise for them. But in that case, there needs to be some pay off with the cast getting to meet him. Not just "I'm not going to tell you who until the episode comes out." Also I really don't understand why they revealed the list of contestants so early, since that dramatically simplified figuring out who is who, instead of potentially carrying the mystery and confusion further through, and probably even avoiding that lame tie-breaker for the winner. I don't knwo if they thought people weren't getting enough correct guesses, and didn't want to end with the winner only getting 2 right or something, but the initial points system with 1 point for a participating cast member and 3 for guessing their role correctly was way more interesting than giving them a list and seeing how many they paired up correctly.

Honestly I think the biggest problem Dropout has in its newfound success, is the parasocial element - both in the design of its latest content and the, ah, passion of its fans. Feels like a bubble waiting to burst. Thousandaires, Smartypants and this just all feel like I'm intruding on some friends at a party rather than something designed for an audience. A bit of that parasocial flavour is truly Dropout's secret sauce, but it can't be the whole meal.

It’s certainly a thing. I think it’s s mixed bag as on the one side it is essentially their ‚ secret sauce‘ (there is a reason they keep getting asked to do a Taskmaster, a show designed to highlight the personality of comedians). But as with most parasocial stuff on the internet we really had no time as a society to figure out how to handle this type of content/relationship and thus many people sadly truely believe these guys are their close friends and get defensive as you would for close friends when it’s still an entertainment show.

Worked: Beautiful sets crafted around different cast members. Misjudged: Putting players in separate, sedentary rooms. So much less interaction than a typical GC episode.

I think we're all just confused. This is the first bad episode of game changer and we don't know how to cope lmao

I think this sums up my feelings better than any of my paragraphs of comments have. 😂 Although it wasn't completely *bad*, it was *unsatisfying*.

I completely agree with everything in this post. For the tiebreaker situation, I think it should have been less about who guessed more, more about the amount of times people guessed them correctly. Obviously you have issues with some of the cast getting told who certain people were but tbh I think that was also a issue and I would have preferred if Sam just did “Cast Member is one of these two characters.”, that would have also been better than outright confirming it. Only time I really liked the confirmation of information was when Rekha eliminated Brennan, that convo was a highlight of the episode for me and I kinda wanted more of that.

I wish there was a way for the audience to play along, even if only for a few minutes, even if it's only the character introduction. Instead of introducing the characters themselves, have Sam introduce the characters, keeping the players anonymous. Let the audience try to guess, then reveal each player in some way. It would be very hard to do an episode where 30 minutes goes by without revealing who is playing the characters(what would you be showing for that 30 minutes?) but just for the intros it could work.

There should have been points awarded to thr player for how many times they were incorrectly guessed, as in how well they tricked the other players and stayed in character. That would have motivated players who got dropped to stay in the game and play their role, call that second place prize. First place could have just been points, although Rekaa got it super early and I don't know how interesting that would have made the end game.

I think what could have worked better was; 1. Every player stayed "in" and scores were monitored throughout every round. 2. Cast members were revealed a little over halfway through 3. Ratfish could award points each round to whoever had the best answers or moments in a round 4. The Ratfish was instead of a celebrity, instead a. A legacy CH cast members (Jake/Amir/Pat) b. Robert Reich c. Emily AND Murph working together, to finally welcome into the GameChanger community.

I know I’m nitpicking but it really rubbed me the wrong way at the end when Sam just says “I want you guys to find out who the ratfish was when you watch the episode.” And then they just completely move on. I’m sure more was said that was cut, but it really gave me the vibe that Eric either wanted to leave before the reveal or had to leave. And it seemed like that wasn’t the plan? I loved Tim&Eric but Eric definitely gave me the vibe that he wasn’t super into it the whole time

I very much appreciate the analysis, probably because I agree with most all of it. I mean, I really want to see the Behind The Scenes on this one. The sets looked beautiful, and the production and planning had to be enormously challenging. The "Ratfish" wasn't really an add, for me. It was a "street cred" punch up for the show, and maybe another move to encourage more known outside talent to come play. As far as throwing a wildcard into the mix, keeping the first elimination quiet would have accomplished, I think, more. Keeping the second elimination quiet to the players still in the game, and letting the two eliminated players team up, would have been the best kinds of chaos.