Cut jokes from standards, practice 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 about how you played the censorship game.

Featuring dropout regulars Ally Beardsley, Lou Wilson and Jeremy Culhane (who was part of this year’s “Saturday Night Live” freshman class), the episode titled “Don’t Wake Standards & Practices” asked contestants to make their most salacious attempts to break copyright infringement, profanity and other things lawyers hate in order to cross the life-size game board toward the finish line. But the fine line we had to walk was to stay within the bounds of decency, which kept the giant “Standards & Practices” figure from coming to life and sending them back to the beginning.

“I like it because it’s so elegant in its simplicity, in terms of game mechanics, and yet it’s something we’ve never done before,” said Sam Reich, Game Changer host and Dropout CEO. Variety. “It’s a combination of the fact that in some ways it’s a very typical ‘Game Changer’ game, in 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 fun game to start with.”

Culhane ultimately won and took control of the episode, which Reich says he only used at the end to create his championship montage — and a bit where he went a little too far by referencing “SNL.”

See below for that and more Variety‘s interview with Reich about the Season 8 premiere of ‘Game Changer’ and what will happen in later episodes of this season.

First, and most importantly, are you concerned that the amount of time you go after Disney IP in this episode will jeopardize Dropout President Vic Michaelis’ efforts to stream “Avengers: Endgame” on Dropout?

My God, you know, this is a mathematically impressive amount of stuff to put together, Jenny. This proves once again that you have the strongest overlap between reporter and fan. Look, Vic made my life as quote-unquote president a little harder, so it’s all I could do to return the favor.

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

You know, a remarkably small portion of this episode actually ended up on the cutting room floor. Instead of singing the opening lyrics of “Closing Time,” Ally initially went so hardcore again that they were going to come right back out singing a song called “Mickey Mouse With Big Breasts,” and then said, “No, no, no, I don’t want to do that.” I pulled it all the way back and said, “I want to play this game a little smarter.” And sending Ally back to the beginning for the second time isn’t much fun, so we’ll let them try again.

But interestingly enough, in consultation with our legal team, both before the episode and afterwards, there was a huge amount that we were able to show as part of the episode because we were talking about what was and wasn’t legally allowed. The kind of rule of parody and satire has to do with commentary, and the fact that we were making legal commentary made it more permissible.

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

How much editing power did Jeremy ultimately get for winning?

I told Jeremy he could watch the episode in advance if he wanted, and he said he didn’t, and all he wanted was the power to edit that last little snippet of the episode, which was completely his idea at the time. I was like, “Jeremy, you have approval to edit this episode.” He said, “You know what I want to do,” and described it to us in detail. And afterwards we just made it a reality.

Did you have any trouble at any point editing Jeremy by saying – and I’m paraphrasing here – “Eff this, I’m on ‘SN-‘” and then cutting that before the “L”?

Okay, there might have been another version of that, which was more explicit, where Jeremy was afraid he was going to get in trouble, and that might have been his second version where he couldn’t resist doing it again. But I think we jumped through a lot of hoops there with Jeremy to make sure he didn’t get in trouble. We want everyone to be successful both inside and outside of Dropout, and to only poke the bear as much as the bear is comfortable being poked.

There is an interesting fourth “Game Changer” player who comes from the streets in this episode: Phil. I need more details. Does anyone have contact with this man? Did he end up signing a release? Does he know he’s in this episode?

All good questions, Jenny. I’ll give you an honest answer to that question, which is: I recently tried to reach Phil via email, and I got a response. I don’t know if we can reach this man somehow.

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

He definitely signed a release after that. I have more information about him than just his phone number. For example, I could show up at his house, but legally – speaking of legally – that’s probably not in our best interests.

I’m very curious about what’s to come this season. Can you at least tease what the next episode will be and who will be in it?

Yes, I can. That’s possible, because I think I’ve already screwed this up in another context. So I’m giving you even more than 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) and that’s the only Game Samer this entire season. I couldn’t resist. I liked it too much the first time. The second time I liked it too much. God knows what I’ll do next season. And for our third episode of the season, I’ll even give you the title: it’s called “Night Shift.”

Do you plan on calling back Brennan Lee Mulligan after getting Game Changer-ed yourself in these new episodes last season? Will there be some resentments on screen and how far did you go with 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 many ways, as far as Brennan and me specifically, while I will say I take more than one opportunity to terrorize him this season, we are largely putting our meta-swords to rest. There may be other players who should be even angrier with me after this season. But no one is ever safe and, as I learned last season, I certainly am not.

Are you saying that so that when Brennan reads this interview, he will be less likely to believe that something is going to happen?

You know, Brennan could stoop to the point of involving you in our antics, Jenny. I would never do that, especially since Brennan already did that.

Congratulations on the huge response to the “Game Changer” board game Kickstarter! Currently, $4.3 million has been pledged – so much higher than your goal of $40,000 for the launch of “Game Changer: Home Edition.” What does that mean for the development of the game?

Of course. 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 releasing on the same day gave us our biggest bump since Day 1.

It’s all very humiliating. Clearly, these aren’t just slush funds. We now need to go out and make exponentially more copies of the game. There are now about 20,000 backers, 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, but that the success of the campaign allows us to change course and invest more in the game. So what I was hoping this would rationalize is that next year we’ll release another three games to add to “Game Changer: Home Edition”. And I think so.

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.