{"id":681580,"date":"2026-05-20T09:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/681580\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:20:15","slug":"game-changer-season-8-premiere-making-of-its-giant-lawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/681580\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Changer Season 8 Premiere \u2014 Making Of Its Giant Lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

With seven seasons under its belt and an eighth getting underway, the premise of Dropout\u2019s \u201cGame Changer\u201d<\/a> \u2014 the game show where the game changes every show \u2014 is starting to become more of a threat to its own creative team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By this point, host Sam Reich<\/a> has subjected the Dropout stable of comedians to everything from improvised musicals and murder mysteries to elaborate comedy twists on \u201cSurvivor,\u201d \u201cThe Bachelor,\u201d \u201cThe Circle<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cWho Wants To Be a Millionaire.\u201d According to the show\u2019s production designer and co-executive producer Chloe Badner, \u201cGame Changer<\/a>\u201d only used its standard rainbow loop-de-loop podiums once in Season 8.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"'The<\/a> \"Outlander\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Those podiums are nowhere to be found in the premiere episode, \u201cDon\u2019t Wake Standards & Practices,\u201d a to-scale twist on \u201cDon\u2019t Wake Daddy\u201d wherein Ally Beardsley, Jeremy Culhane, and Lou Wilson complete challenges across a human-sized game board \u2014 which, of course, loop-de-loops twice \u2014 while trying not to \u201cwake\u201d a giant fabricated lawyer. The spaces they\u2019re allowed to move are based on points awarded by popular legal content creators Iya Baclagan, Alexis Noel, and Devin Stone, but they can \u201cbust\u201d on too much potential legal trouble. Then, the giant lawyer puppet slams upright, sending the contestant back to the start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always one set piece that gives us a run for our money, and Inertia (that\u2019s her name!) was this season\u2019s,\u201d Badner told IndieWire. \u201cThe head had to be big enough that it was formidable, but light enough that it could be rigged to lift from a hinge. She needed to look concerned, but not overly freaked out. She needed to be weird enough to be striking, but also kinda cute.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ProductionProduction designer Chloe Badner on the set of \u2018Game Changer\u2019Kate Elliott\/Dropout<\/p>\n

Getting Inertia there was all about balance \u2014 both in terms of physical balance, but also the game-y aesthetic design and match to the colors of the \u201cGame Changer\u201d set, and even the expression on her face. The design required the production team to bring a broad range of understandings, everything from electromagnetism, solenoid latches, lever arm weight multiplication, spring hinges, DMX triggers, foam fabrication, and sculpture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the mechanical workings of the puppet required a lot of technical problem-solving from the show\u2019s production, grip, and electric teams, the art itself benefited from the fact that the \u201cGame Changer\u201d aesthetic is so distinct that it can kind of port into any design and travel anywhere. \u201cMapping our aesthetic onto sets and props of different themes is one of my favorite parts of the job. What would a \u2018Game Changer\u2019 courtroom look like? A \u2018Game Changer\u2019 game board? A \u2018Game Changer\u2019 study? The Standards and Practices podiums had to match our visual language and work within the game mechanic. So they\u2019re a teal arch with retro colors inside, and they have a reflected mirror image of the front panel on the back, which lets the lawyers see where their arrow is pointing,\u201d Badner said.<\/p>\n

The aesthetic is going to go a lot of different places across Season 8, too, including two episodes in the round and the finale, which Badner wouldn\u2019t dare spoil but is proud of the wonderful collaboration between the production design, camera, and lighting teams. \u201cWorking on \u2018Game Changer\u2019 is a true gift to my ADHD, because we\u2019re constantly navigating novelty. The things we\u2019re pulling off are so unique to each episode that it\u2019s safe to say we\u2019ve never done them before. I mean, has anyone ever built a giant puppet that pops up remotely at the crossing of an ill-defined social boundary?\u201d Badner said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a giant puzzle we all get to solve. It\u2019s the best.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"'Game\u2018Game Changer\u2019 Screenshot\/Dropout<\/p>\n

It took up to the eleventh hour to get Inertia prepped and ready for the episode, a tug-of-war \u2014 not of potential liabilities and defamatory statements as the contestants competed to come up with on the day, but of weight redistribution and adding last-minute pulleys to get the head to snap up correctly. \u201cIt was one of those, \u2018Are we gonna have to fake this?\u2019 moments. Proud to say that she did fire correctly! Ally\u2019s reaction is my favorite,\u201d Badner said.<\/p>\n

While Season 8 has to keep expanding in new directions (with many different kinds of new podiums), Badner is proud they\u2019ve also brought the show back to its core conceit of the players having no idea what\u2019s going on and having to figure it out as they progress. \u201cSam and I are both taken with the Fringe theater scene and the philosophy of clown. In the writers\u2019 room, that tends to be my contribution to the concepts \u2014 how can we make this physically possible, and how can we clown it up?\u201d Badner said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing I love more than very smart people, very invested, in very stupid things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGame Changer\u201d is streaming on Dropout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With seven seasons under its belt and an eighth getting underway, the premise of Dropout\u2019s \u201cGame Changer\u201d \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,24029,250132,32473,348],"class_list":["post-681580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-game-changer","tag-sam-reich","tag-top-of-the-line","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}