{"id":434566,"date":"2026-05-19T06:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434566\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T06:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:22:11","slug":"dropout-ceo-sam-reich-explains-the-paradox-of-game-changers-s8-premiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434566\/","title":{"rendered":"Dropout CEO Sam Reich explains the ‘paradox’ of Game Changer’s s8 premiere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since 2019, Dropout.tv<\/a>\u2019s flagship series has been Game Changer<\/a>, a comedy game show with a new premise and mechanic nearly every episode. Some of those mechanics are inspired by other game shows or reality competitions \u2014 Game Changer has done fairly straightforward riffs on The Bachelor and Survivor \u2014 while others are wholly original.<\/p>\n

Season 8<\/a>, which launched on May 18, kicks off with a bang: The episode \u201cDon\u2019t Wake Standards & Practices,\u201d a riff on the old board game Don\u2019t Wake Daddy<\/a>, invites contestants Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, and Jeremy Culhane to push the limits of what they can say and do without getting Dropout fined or sued. That includes everything from violating Disney, McDonald\u2019s, and Nike copyrights to sexually harassing each other at work. Polygon spoke to Dropout CEO and Game Changer writer, producer, and host Sam Reich<\/a> about the episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cast these episodes with a lot of love, and Jeremy and Ally and Lou are three very trustworthy people who I know are going to be able to walk that line judiciously and find stuff that’s very funny and creative to do, not merely edgy,\u201d Reich told Polygon. \u201cAlso \u2014 I couldn’t believe this was true \u2014 our own legal team looked at the episode after the fact. Their POV was that because we were commenting on legality itself, we could get away with even the most risqu\u00e9 things we wanted to do in that episode.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dropout
\n Sam Reich on the set of Game ChangerPhoto: Kate Elliott\/Dropout<\/p>\n

Reich says the part of Dropout\u2019s legal review that \u201cfloors me to this day\u201d is that the company lawyers approved an animated sequence Beardsley narrated in response to the prompt \u201cPropose a visual effect to go here.\u201d The short cartoon clip features a version of Mickey Mouse with pierced nipples and dangling, swaying udders; the Death Star from various Star Wars movies; and the use of Nike and McDonald\u2019s corporate logos and slogans.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven as you’re watching, I feel like you’re aware of the paradox of it,\u201d Reich says.<\/p>\n

The episode is judged by three guest lawyers: Iya Baclagan, Alexis Noel, and Devin Stone (aka YouTube\u2019s LegalEagle<\/a>). They deem Ally\u2019s cartoon to be too provocative, and give the comedian a \u201cbust\u201d rating, sending them back to the starting space on the episode\u2019s giant game board.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re like, well, wait a second \u2014 Ally’s busting for this reason, and yet I’m allowed to watch it?\u201d Reich says. \u201cAnd our legal team says \u2018[this is] OK!\u2019 What say you, Disney and McDonald’s? I guess we’ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

An odd element in the episode is that the judges are only introduced briefly by name (and pronouns, and social-media accounts, per usual Dropout practices). Nothing is said about who they are or where they work, which may give the impression that they\u2019re actual Dropout legal staff, though Dropout viewers may wonder why the company\u2019s lawyers are so attractive and TV-ready. Reich says they were actually guests brought in by Dropout casting.<\/p>\n

\"Dropout
\n Sam Reich on the set of Game ChangerPhoto: Kate Elliott\/Dropout<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are three actual lawyers, the most recognizable of whom would be Devin,\u201d Reich says. \u201cThe other two \u2014 who did such a stellar job, by the way, with limited on-camera experience, are lawyers who were found by our very talented casting director, Jazzy [Collins]. One of whom I believe is a corporate attorney, and another of whom is actually in standards and practices as a job. So between the three of them, they actually really run the gamut in terms of specialty, which is why they don’t always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes they do, but I thought some of the more interesting moments of the episode were when they didn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Longtime Game Changer fans will notice that the show\u2019s previous seasons gradually built up in complexity, cost, and ambition. It all led up to the blowout season 7 finale, \u201cSamalamadingdong,\u201d which references more than a dozen past episodes, as the Dropout cast \u201cforces\u201d Reich to become the contestant in a highly referential game. It\u2019s a series high point \u2014 but it left the open question of how Dropout\u2019s producers could possibly follow that up in season 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of topping ourselves gets a little bit problematic at a certain point,\u201d Reich says. \u201cIf with every episode of Game Changer, we’re trying to make it somehow bigger, or more out of the box than the one that came before it\u2026 I’ve said this before: A twist every episode is no twist at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The philosophy of the show, which extends into season 8, is that Game Changer needs to set a baseline, which every episode can meet or build off.<\/p>\n

\"A
\n Sam Reich on the set of Game ChangerPhoto: Kate Elliott\/Dropout<\/p>\n

\u201cThis season, we did two things kind of deliberately,\u201d Reich says. \u201cEvery season is a little bit of a response to the season that came before it, in some way. It\u2019s not in any way a criticism of the show up until the point \u2014 it\u2019s just what excites us the most creatively to do in one season versus the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reich says season 7 \u201cfelt very performance-artsy at times,\u201d and cites the \u201cWho Wants to Be a Millionaire\u201d-inspired episode (\u201cWho Wants to Be Jacob Wysocki?\u201d<\/a>) as having \u201cno game \u2014 it was pure performance art.\u201d Coming out of that, he and the producers wanted to steer the show back toward its game-show origins.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to create a season that felt very gamey, really playable, meaning that our players could compete with each other, that there were real levers that they could pull and tug,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd second, that kind of reset a bit of the baseline for the show. Not that this season doesn’t have some very outside-the-box moments. Episode 5 of this season might be our favorite episode of all time. It’s certainly up there, and it is pretty out there. That’s an episode called \u2018Count the Rice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Reich says, season 8 will be about \u201cright-sizing\u201d the show. \u201cIn some ways,\u201d he says, \u201cit’s a season that’s like, let’s decide anew what Game Changer even means, and see if we can stick to that with some discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

New episodes of Game Changer air on Dropout.tv<\/a> on alternate Mondays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since 2019, Dropout.tv\u2019s flagship series has been Game Changer, a comedy game show with a new premise and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-434566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}