“Game Changer,” on Dropout, is in many ways the hip, scrappy heir to “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” Each episode features three comedians, and the host, Sam Reich, feeds them various prompts. The nature and purpose of the prompts vary; one episode might require a strange physical challenges, and another the impromptu creation of an impassioned Civil War-era love letter.
In its seventh season, which premiered earlier this month, “Game Changer” is also landing closer than ever before to “Taskmaster,” and in the best ways. The season premiere, “One Year Later,” gave the comedians Jacob Wysocki, Vic Michaelis and Lou Wilson — already among the show’s all-stars — a year to complete a list of oddball challenges. Who can get this cardboard cutout to the most remote location? Who can perform the best magic trick? Who can find the coolest free item from Craigslist? Most episodes of the show are about 30 minutes, but this one clocks in at over an hour.
The season’s second episode, “You-lympics,” also toys with a longer time frame. Contestants jump as high as they can, hold a cat for as long as the cat will tolerate and eat as much grated Parmesan as possible while wearing a cone-of-shame pet collar — and then they return a week later to try to top themselves. And then an hour after that, they try one more time.
As with “Taskmaster,” there is a loopy, discursive interpretation to just about everything, and festive rules-lawyering abounds. The most consistent feature across all seasons is a radiating sense of mutual adoration among participants. Wilson even got a custom watch to aver his friendship with Wysocki and Michaelis.
Starting with Season 5, “Game Changer” also includes behind-the-scenes companion episodes — true manna for the nerdy, if ever there were. (I did, in fact, wonder who created the elaborate diorama of a rock n’ roll bar for insects.) Segments like these used to be common place as DVD featurettes but are pitifully rare on streaming. Netflix could have bloopers if they wanted to! That’s part of the appeal of a smaller, independent, somewhat niche streamer like Dropout, the sense that it is more attuned to and has more fun with the wants of its subscribers.
Margaret Lyons is a television critic at The Times, and writes the TV parts of the Watching newsletter.
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