Cutting jokes from the norm, practice episodes

Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for Dropout’s Game Changer season 8 premiere, “Don’t Wake Standards & Practices.”

In the eighth season premiere of Dropout’s ever-evolving game show Game Changer, it wasn’t (mostly) about whether you won or lost, it was about how you played the censorship game.

The episode, titled “Don’t Wake Standards & Practices,” starring Dropout regulars Allie Beardsley, Lou Wilson and Jeremy Culhane (who was part of this year’s “Saturday Night Live” freshman class), required contestants to make their most despicable attempts to break copyright infringement, profanity rules, and other things lawyers hate in order to progress along a life-size game board toward a goal. But the fine line was to stay within reasonable bounds to prevent the giant picture of “standards and practice” from reviving and sending us back to square one.

“I like it because it’s very elegant in its simplicity in terms of game mechanics, but it’s something we’ve never done before,” “Game Changers” host and Dropout CEO Sam Reich told Variety. “It’s a combination of being a very typical ‘Game Changer’ game in some ways, with three contestants and everyone being hilarious in their usual stages, but also unconventional in some interesting ways, so it felt like a good game to start with.”

In the end, Culhane won out and got editing rights to the episode, which Reich says he only used to create a montage of the champions at the end, which included too many SNL references.

See below for more from Variety’s interview with Reich about the “Game Changers” Season 8 premiere and what’s coming up in episodes later this season.

First, and most importantly, are you worried that the number of Disney IP pursuits in this episode will jeopardize Dropout president Vic Michaelis’ commitment to streaming Avengers: Endgame on Dropout?

Wow, you know this ties a huge amount of things together mathematically, Jenny. Once again you have proven that you have the strongest overlap between reporters and fans. Look, Vic made my life a little bit harder as president, so the least I can do is give back.

Was there something that broke standards and conventions so much that you couldn’t put it in an episode that broke standards and conventions?

As you know, surprisingly little of this episode actually made it to the cutting room floor. At first, instead of singing the opening lyrics of “Closing Time,” Ally sings the song “Mickey Mouse with Big Tits,” and then immediately goes so hardcore that she explodes again, and then she’s like, “No, no, I don’t want to do that.” I pulled to the back and was like, “I want to play this game a little smarter.” And it’s not that fun to put Allie right back to the beginning again, so let’s just let her do it all over again.

But interestingly, in consulting with our legal team both before and after the episode, we were talking about what was legally allowed and what wasn’t, so there was a huge amount that could have been avoided by showing it as part of the episode. A kind of rule for parody and satire has to do with commentary, and the fact that we’re doing legal commentary makes it more acceptable.

One way to look at this is that we are setting up a paradox. Because if it’s too legal, you can’t really show it at all. Here, especially with the Mickey Mouse animation, I was sure that would be the case, but it wasn’t. Technicolor has it all.

How much editing power did Jeremy have in the end to win?

I told Jeremy he could watch the episode in advance if he wanted to, but he said no, all he wanted was editorial control over the last little snippet of the episode, which was completely his idea at the time. I was like, “Jeremy, you have editorial approval for this episode.” He was like, “You know what I want to do,” and he explained it to us in detail. And they just realized it after the fact.

Was there an editing issue where at one point Jeremy says, “This is, I’m in ‘SN-‘” and they cut it before the “L”?

Well, there may have been another, more obvious version where Jeremy was concerned about getting into trouble. And it may have been his second take that he couldn’t help but redo a little bit. But we believe we went through the necessary hardships with Jeremy to keep him out of trouble. We want everyone to be successful both inside and outside of Dropout, and to only poke bears as far as they are comfortable being poked.

There’s an interesting fourth off-the-road “game changer” player in this episode. That’s Phil. More details needed. Is someone in touch with this man? Did he sign his release after all? Does he know he’s in this episode?

Great question, Jenny. Answer that question honestly. I mean, just recently I tried to contact Phil via email and it bounced back. I don’t know if there is a way to contact this guy.

Do you think you’ll be able to find him when this airs?

After that, he definitely signed a release. I have more information about him than his phone number. For example, I think we could go to his house to hang out, but legally speaking that’s probably not in our best interest.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how this season unfolds. Can you at least tell us what the next episode will be and who will be in it?

Yes, you can. I think I’ve already messed this up in a different context, so you can do that. So I will give you more than what you asked for. The second episode of the season is “Roulette 2.” So it’s “Roulette” or better known as “Spin That Wheel”, although that’s not its name. This is the only game summer this entire season. I couldn’t resist. It was my first time and I had so much fun. The second time was also fun. Lord knows what I’ll do next season. And the third episode of this season, I’ll give you the title, too. Its name is “Night Shift”.

After being a “game changer” herself last season, is Brennan Lee Mulligan planning to turn the tables in the new episodes? Is there some kind of grudge playing out on screen, and how far has this season taken it?

You know, Jenny, I’m quick to forgive. Is there more to the rivalry between Brennan and me than that? Definitely, definitely. But in many ways, especially as far as Brennan and I are concerned, I’d say we’ve had plenty of opportunities to threaten him this season, but this is where we pretty much rest the sword of the meta. There may definitely be other players who should be more angry with me once this season is over. But no one is safe. As I learned last season, it’s the safest for me.

Is Brennan saying that so that if he reads this interview, it will be hard to believe that something will happen?

You know, Brennan might stoop to the level of involving you in our antics, Jenny. I would never do that, because Brennan already did that.

Congratulations on the great response to the “Game Changer” board game Kickstarter! Current pledges are $4.3 million. This far exceeds the $40,000 launch goal for Game Changer: Home Edition. What does that mean for game development?

Yeah, sure. And it’s still going on. Yesterday (May 14th) was the second most important day for us. I mean, that’s weird for Kickstarter. But the “Parlor Room” episode, released on the same day as the culmination of the Smosh videos, gave us the biggest buzz since the first day.

It’s all very humbling. Obviously, this isn’t just some kind of slush fund. We now have to go out and increase copies of the game exponentially. We currently have around 20,000 backers, so 20,000 copies of the game is a significant amount. I think the most exciting news here is not even the success of the campaign, but that the success of the campaign allowed us to pivot and invest more in the game. So my hope for this to make sense is to add three more games to Game Changer: Home Edition next year. And I think it will.

Do you already know which game it will be?

Think of at least one thing and go around in circles.

This interview has been edited and condensed.