Cut Jokes From Standards, Practices Episode

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 8 premiere of Dropout‘s “Game Changer,” titled “Don’t Wake Standards & Practices.”

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

Featuring Dropout regulars Ally Beardsley, Lou Wilson and Jeremy Culhane (who was part of “Saturday Night Live’s” freshman class this year), the episode titled “Don’t Wake Standards & Practices” asked the contestants to give their most salacious attempts at breaking copyright infringement, profanity rules and other things lawyers hate in order to move along the life-sized game board toward the finish line. But the fine line to walk was staying within the bounds of propriety that kept the giant “Standards & Practices” figure from springing to life and sending them back to the start.

“I like it because it is so elegant in its simplicity, in terms of game mechanic, and yet is something we’ve never done before,” “Game Changer” host and Dropout CEO Sam Reich told Variety. “It’s a combination of it being in some ways a very typical ‘Game Changer’ game, in the sense that it’s three contestants, all of whom are hilarious on our usual stage, and yet it also breaks the mold in some interesting ways, so it felt like a nice one to start with.”

Culhane ultimately won and got editing power over the episode, which Reich says he only used to create his champion montage at the end — and one bit where he went a little too far referencing “SNL.”

See below for that and more from Variety‘s interview with Reich about the “Game Changer” Season 8 premiere and what’s to come in later episodes this season.

First, and most importantly, are you concerned that the number of times you go after Disney IP in this episode will jeopardize Dropout president Vic Michaelis’s efforts to get “Avengers: Endgame” streaming on Dropout?

My God, you know that’s like a mathematically impressive amount of things to tie together, Jenny. Once again, proving that you have the strongest overlap between reporter and fan. Look, Vic has made my life altogether a little more difficult as quote-unquote president, so it’s all I could do to return the favor.

Was there anything that broke standards and practices so much that it didn’t make it into the episode about breaking standards and practices?

You know, a remarkably little of this episode actually hit the cutting room floor. Ally, rather than singing the opening lyrics to “Closing Time,” at first went again so hardcore that they were going to bust out immediately again by singing a song called “Mickey Mouse With Big Tits,” and then was like “No, no, no, I don’t want to do that.” Like, pulled it all the way back, was like, “I want to play this game a little bit more smartly.” And sending Ally back to the beginning immediately for a second time is not that fun, so let’s let them have a do over.

But interestingly, consulting with our legal team, both before the episode and then after the fact, there was a huge amount we were able to get away with showing as part of the episode because we were talking about what was legally allowed and not allowed. The sort of rule of parody and satire has to do with commentary, and the fact that we were making legal commentary made it more allowable.

One way of looking at this is we’re setting ourselves up for a paradox, because if it’s too legally spicy, you actually can’t show it at all, and here, particularly with the Mickey Mouse animation, I was sure that it would be the case, and in fact it wasn’t. It’s all in there in Technicolor now.

How much editing power did Jeremy get in the end for winning?

I told Jeremy he was allowed to watch the episode in advance if he wanted to, and he said he didn’t, and all he wanted is edit authority over that last little snippet of the episode, which was entirely his idea in the moment. I was like, “Jeremy, you have edit approval over this episode.” He’s like, “You know what I want to do,” and described it to us in detail. And we just turned it into reality after the fact.

Did you have editing issues with Jeremy at one point saying — and I’m paraphrasing here — “Eff this, I’m on ‘SN-” and then cutting that before the “L”?

Okay, there may have been another version of that, that was more explicit, that Jeremy was concerned would get him into trouble, and that might have been his second take, where he couldn’t resist doing it a little bit again. But I believe we did jump through the necessary hoops there with Jeremy to make sure that he wasn’t getting into trouble. We want everyone to be successful in and outside of Dropout, and to only poke the bear so much as the bear’s comfortable being poked.

There is an interesting fourth “Game Changer” player that comes into this episode off the street: Phil. I need more details. Is someone in contact with this man? Did he eventually sign a release? Does he know he’s in this episode?

All great questions, Jenny. I will give you an honest answer to that question, which is, I tried to reach out to Phil pretty recently over email, and I got a bounce back. I don’t know that we have any way of reaching this man.

Do you think you’ll find him when this airs?

He definitely signed a release after. I have more information on him than just his phone number. Like, I could go show up at his house, I suppose, but legally — speaking of legally — that’s probably not in our best interest.

Very excited for what’s to come this season. Can you tease at the very least what the next episode will be and who will be on it?

Yes, I can. I can, because I think I’ve spoiled this already in other context. So, I’ll give you even more than what you asked for. The second episode of our season is “Roulette Two.” So it’s “Roulette” — or better known as “Spin That Wheel,” even though that’s not what it’s called — which is the one Game Samer this entire season. I couldn’t resist. I had too much fun the first time. I had too much fun the second time. Lord knows what I’ll do next season. And our third episode up of the season, I’ll even give you the title: it’s called “Night Shift.”

After getting “Game Changer”-ed yourself last season, are you planning callbacks to Brennan Lee Mulligan’s turning of the tables on you in these new episodes? Will there be certain grudges that play out on screen and how far have you taken that this season?

You know, Jenny, I’m quick to forgive. Is there more to Brennan and my rivalry? Absolutely, without a doubt. But in a lot of ways, as far as Brennan and I are specifically concerned, while I will say I take more than one opportunity to terrorize him this season, this is us laying our meta swords mostly at rest. There may be some other players who should arguably be madder at me after this season is over. But no one is ever safe and, as I learned last season, least of all me.

Are you saying that so that if Brennan reads this interview, he will become less likely to believe something is coming?

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

Congratulations on the immense response to the “Game Changer” board game Kickstarter! Currently at $4.3 million pledged — that is so much higher than your $40,000 goal for the “Game Changer: Home Edition” launch. What does that mean for the game’s development?

Yeah, for sure. And still going. Yesterday [May 14] was our second-biggest day. So that’s weird for Kickstarter. But the culmination of the Smosh video and the “Parlor Room” episode coming out in the same day gave us our biggest bump since Day 1.

It’s all very humbling. Obviously, this isn’t just like slush funds. We have to now go out and make exponentially more copies of the game. There are like 20,000 backers now, so 20,000 copies of the game is a lot. I think the most exciting news here isn’t even the success of the campaign, it’s that the success of the campaign allows us to turn around and invest more in the game. So what I was hoping this would rationalize is us coming out with another three games to add to “Game Changer: Home Edition” next year. And I think it does.

Do you already know which games those would be?

I think at least one, and it goes round and round.

This interview has been edited and condensed.