(Feedback) What worked and what was misjudged in 'The Ratfish'

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 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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Spoiler 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

rekha*

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

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.

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.

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 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.