Kangaroo Court
Season 8
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Brennan Lee Mulligan, Vic Michaelis, and Aabria Iyengar return for a rematch in a courtroom spin on various social deception games, with an improv storytelling twist.
Photo: Kate Elliott
Most of us will never have the chance to compete on Survivor, The Traitors, or other spectacle-driven reality competitions built around deception and social manipulation. But plenty of us have played the home equivalent: hidden-role games like Mafia, Werewolf, Secret Hitler, Coup, and so on. If you haven’t tried one of these games, you should, for purely educational reasons. It’s often humbling or alarming to find out which of your friends can comfortably, convincingly lie to your face, and whether you have any knack for deducing the truth.
Game Changer’s “Kangaroo Court” setup seems like a version of those games designed specifically to mess with improv comedians. This game preserves the difficulty of coming up with an elaborate, consistent false narrative on the spot, and the challenge of adapting that narrative on the fly when other players present convincing (and sometimes fake) counter-evidence. But figuring out how to do all that while being funny at the same time? That’s what makes this episode a pro-level battle of wits.
The contestants: Brennan Lee Mulligan, Vic Michaelis, Aabria Iyengar
The game: Players get points either by beating each other at a straightforward task or by making a case for their victory to a jury of fellow Dropout comedians, who didn’t witness the task. Players can lie about anything while presenting their case, from who won to the actual rules of the competition they just completed.
The inspiration: This feels like a courtroom spin on various social deception games, with an improv storytelling twist.
The game starts with a 60-second contest to disrobe mannequins decked out in layered bras. Vic takes the lead, removing 16 bras to Aabria’s eight and Brennan’s four. (Weird how each player manages exactly half as many bras as the next highest scorer.) Once the scores are in, host Sam Reich brings out bailiff “Paul Robailiffo” — the latest silly alter ego of producer Paul Robalino, who should definitely keep this identity gag going as long as possible.
Paul declares the court to be in session, “the questionable Sam Reich presiding, in a wig from Party City.” (Apparently Party City is back after shutting down in 2024. The things you learn from Dropout throwaway gags!) Jury members Carolyn Page, Alexis Rhiannon, Geoff Ross, Rashawn Nadine Scott, Alex Song-Xia, Mike Trapp, and Tao Yang enter, and the players each get one minute to claim they won the bra challenge. To be clear, there were no ambiguities in that task, which was a straight numbers game. The players aren’t trying to establish reasonable doubt, argue shades of meaning about “winning,” or convince the jury to ratify alternate victory conditions. Brennan and Aabria are just meant to straight-up lie to the jurors, claim they won, and get the jury to choose one of them as presenting the most convincing case.
Brennan, though, throws the first wrench into the works by instead trying to establish his credibility. “I didn’t remove the most bras,” he says. “And there are eight other challenges. So we’re going to call it here. Thank you very much.” “I don’t want him for my lawyer,” Trapp jokes in response.
Aabria, by contrast, leans on personality and connection, clasping hands with the jurors and complimenting them before calmly lying about the rules of the bra contest and her victory. And Vic, true to familiar game-breaking form (see, for instance, Game Changer’s “One Year Later”), ousts Sam from the judge’s bench, claims the judge role, and promises to make the jury’s wishes come true if they ratify Vic’s win. Told to pick the most trustworthy player, Trapp cracks, “I see Brennan, who immediately gave up; Aabria, who immediately argued for a technicality; Vic, who immediately tried to bribe us. So I would say, on the issue of trustworthiness, there’s not a lot of great options!”
Aabria, Brennan, and Vic’s strategies throughout this game reminded me so much of their respective gambits in “Outvoted” (Game Changer season seven, episode 10), where they campaigned to become honorary president of Dropout, with the electorate consisting of Game Changer’s first live studio audience. As with that episode, Brennan goes for comedic sincerity, sees it’s a losing ploy, and falls back on meta-commentary and a shifting, gag-based, anything-goes strategy. Aabria blends charismatic honesty and confession. (At one point during this episode, she reveals she’s eight weeks pregnant!) Vic examines the game’s boundaries and repeatedly crosses them, while mostly failing to keep a straight face.
The tasks from there are:
One player stands in a box of “ouchie Legos” (a very odd phrase), while the others stand in boxes of “plush carpet.” Weirdly, the players are all asked to convince the jury that they’re standing on Legos. Wouldn’t pretending not to be in pain be harder?
Sam reads off a series of words, and the players buzz in to identify which one doesn’t belong. Every round, both losing players have to put stickers on their faces. Then they each try to convince the jury that they won. Vic makes some baffling choices here, buzzing in twice on the first word in the series without hearing the rest, and getting eliminated from multiple rounds five seconds in.
Players try to blow the biggest bubble with bubble gum, while giant wooden puzzle pieces are brought out for them to use as a red herring in their jury arguments. Vic wins the bubble challenge, but Brennan makes the best play of the game: While Vic and Aabria both scheme with the puzzle pieces, Brennan quietly pockets the glass bowls the gum came in, and presents them to the jury as physical evidence of the gum challenge.
Given three minutes, an easel, and fingerpaint, the players compete to create the most surprising art. Brennan paints “Sam is in the Epstein files” with a smiley face. Vic smears their feet, nose, lips, ears, and navel with paint, and imprints them on the canvas, which gets my “surprising” vote. Aabria executes a self-portrait of herself behind her rainbow Game Changer podium, with the smudgy words “I’m trying my best.” When the jurors interpret that as “I’m trimming my bush,” they vote it as most surprising.
I’m not sure why Brennan didn’t walk away with this one. His entire Game Changer identity is “trying my best,” to the point where that was a running gag in Game Changer’s season six episode “Second Place” and season seven’s “You-lympics” and “Samalamadingdong.” I think he could have convincingly claimed Aabria’s painting by bringing up that connection, but he decided to bail on the argument rather than associate himself with a “trimming my bush” painting.
Players are given a “makeshift dunk tank” where they compete to use the fewest wiffle balls to hit a bell. When they hit it, in a mashup of a carnival dunk tank and a tar-and-feathers punishment, they get pudding-flavored blue slime and fluffy white feathers dumped on their heads. Vic fails to hit the bell so many times that they just start throwing handfuls of balls, ending with a score of “24-ish” throws. Aabria hits hers in just five balls. Brennan passes entirely, refusing the ball-throw and the dunk, though he does accept a slimy, feathery group hug from Aabria and Vic.
Sam adds a particular curveball here: The players get the prompt “Dunk yourself” on the wall display, but by the time the jury files in, it reads “Don’t get dunked.” So Brennan, as the only player not covered in slime and feathers, immediately looks like the winner.
Presenters Ash and Nico set up a table of “hot dog remnants,” designed to look like the players have just completed a hot-dog-eating contest. Sam brings in court stenographer Kevi Roldan, last seen in “One and Done” (Game Changer season seven, episode six), to record what the players say while not actually eating any hot dogs. Vic verbally creates a whole imaginary narrative (“Brennan, put me down and stop cheating! Ouch! Now Aabria’s eating all the hot dogs! Brennan, you’re taking hot dogs off my plate, stop!”) while Aabria pretends to clear her entire plate, and Brennan stays silent, but grabs and chews a dog.
The players go into the jury trial with one rule: They aren’t allowed to admit there was no hot-dog-eating contest. Vic promptly breaks that rule, losing three points, while Brennan presents a handful of chewed hot dogs to “prove” Vic is lying about there being no contest. Then he spikes the chewed meat on the ground, which is already smeared with slime and feathers. Gross.
Each player gets a box containing a bizarre item they supposedly brought Sam as a gift in response to a prompt, which they each have to recount to the jury to explain how they won. Vic claims the prompt was “a handmade gift,” so they brought in vegetarian chili. Aabria, given an iPod only containing “Mambo No. 5,” claims the prompt was to represent who Sam was in the year 2000. Brennan gets a Photoshopped image of Sam in a speedboat, overlaid with the words “Power Boat ‘Em,” and claims the prompt was to provide a display prop for Sam’s office.
Overall, the jurors do far better than most players in social deduction games. They successfully determine that Aabria is standing on the Legos, acknowledge Brennan’s word-series-game victory, and identify Aabria as the creator of the best/bush painting. (Even though Aabria put Vic’s name on her own work, possibly trying to throw the jury off because she thought Vic’s foot-painting would win the “surprising” vote.) The jurors mostly determine the truth except when there is no truth, as with the nonexistent hot-dog contest or gift competition.
While Brennan sums up the whole game early on as “a top-to-bottom panic attack,” sincerity and honesty work pretty well for him. He does dutifully tell the jury he won various competitions he actually lost, but he puts all his enthusiasm and focus into defending his real wins. The jury clearly picks up on that, only awarding him the points he actually deserves. Brennan doesn’t win the game, but he does come away with his integrity, and without being completely covered in slime, paint, or feathers.
“Big Lie” political theory aside, Vic’s problem is that their lies are mostly too big to be convincing, and only have the benefit of being funnier than the other players’ gambits. Their wild alt-reality hot-dog narrative, or their claim that the dunk-tank contest was actually a Dunkin’ Donuts promotion, are both big swings that the jury doesn’t buy.
Aabria walks the best line here, keeping her lies small, manageable, and heavily mixed with the truth, and getting the jury on her side most consistently. It’s like she’s presenting a carefully curated model of how players can successfully win deception games — or how criminals can successfully win jury trials. Would-be Survivor contestants, Secret Hitler players, and scofflaws take note: Humility, a sense of humor, and keeping the lies moderate and manageable will win out every time.
The winners: Aabria Iyengar
The prize: A paper shredder, to “destroy all the evidence you want.”
Prize rating: 3/5. Another joke prize that also has a practical, real-world use.
• The intros this time around are pretty basic, with Brennan’s referencing his win on “You-Lympics,” Vic’s referencing their Dropout show Very Important People, and Aabria’s referencing her actual-play show Worlds Beyond Number.
• This episode features a fun way of randomizing various events: a version of drawing straws that uses varying-length telescoping stick mics like the one Sam collapses and pockets at the beginning of Game Changer episodes.
• Vic demanding their bare feet be blurred during and after the fingerpainting challenge and afterward is another “You-Lympics” callback: In that episode, Katie Marovitch takes off her shoes and socks to crab-walk faster, but requests a blur effect “so no freaks masturbate to my feet.” Apparently the Game Changer editors have that blur effect ready and waiting in the post-production toolset now. Sorry, freaks!
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