If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when advertising works. But the truth is, we all know it does. Companies wouldn’t spend money playing the same commercial 187 times per episode of The Bachelor if they didn’t have statistical evidence that doing so increases sales. So all we can do, as viewers, is suck it up, move on with our lives, and remember to be on the lookout for the all-new PB&J Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups the next time we’re at the store.

On occasion, though, advertising can hit you from somewhere totally unexpected and really do a number on you, and that’s the reason I’m now a subscriber to Dropout TV.

It started on Facebook Reels where, in-between videos of people making hard candy or trying to identify LEGO kits from two or three pieces that viewers still had, I started to get these clips from what appeared to be a game show. But it wasn’t a normal game show – the rules seemed kind of absurd, and they didn’t always make sense. In fact, it didn’t seem like the players were even playing the same game from one clip to another. Then I finally realized that was the whole point. The show in question is called Game Changer, and the gimmick is that the game is different in every episode, and the players have no idea what they’re going to be playing until the game begins. It’s actually a great hook for a show, and as I watched more and more, I WANTED to watch more and more. 

Eventually, this led me to check out the source, Dropout TV, a streaming service that’s actually been around since 2018, but that I hadn’t heard about until these reels started coming across my screen. A spinoff of what used to be the College Humor website, Dropout specializes in unscripted comedy series, although it does have a few animated shows and stand-up comedy specials as well, and as a service that has been more or less consistently putting out content that isn’t available anywhere else for seven years now, there’s a cornucopia of comedy waiting there for me to watch. I’ve barely even scratched the surface so far, but I’ve become so quickly engrossed with their stuff that I wanted to talk about some of my favorites. 

First up is the aforementioned Game Changer. Hosted by Dropout owner Sam Reich, Game Changer is a different game every time, and the contestants have to figure out what the game is AS THEY PLAY. The contestants, by the way, are usually comedians and comedy writers employed by Dropout, and so you see the same faces come back over and over. It’s not long before you get a feel for their personalities and begin to pick your favorites. The first episode had Sam asking the players personal questions, followed by a light flashing either red or green to indicate if they were telling the truth or lying. The twist – which was revealed early to the audience but not to the players – is that their respective significant others were backstage controlling the lights. As the players lost their mind trying to figure out how the “light” could know certain things, the camera would cut backstage to show their girlfriends laughing hysterically. 

And that’s just the first episode. As I said, each episode is totally different. There’s one where the players have to hastily assemble bizarre orders from a conveyer belt, another where they have to guess what food to feed a giant mouth. My favorite episode so far, though, was the season two finale, “Yes or No.” In this one the three players are simply asked “Yes or no?” by Sam, over and over again, with points awarded seemingly at random. The method of asking the question grows more elaborate and hilarious as the game goes on, but it always boils down to “Yes or no?” As the frustration mounts on the players and they – and the audience – sloooowly come to realize what the ACTUAL rule of that episode’s game is, the whole thing builds to one of the most monumentally epic improvised comedic monologues I’ve ever seen. It’s a thing of beauty.

That’s just the one show, though. There are plenty more to choose from. Make Some Noise is a spinoff of one of the more popular Game Changer episodes, featuring the comedians improvising lines, reactions, and even entire sketches based on goofy prompts. (Fans of Whose Line is it Anyway? will enjoy this one.) I’ve also grown fond of Smartypants, in which the cast prepares seemingly-academic college-style lectures on such ridiculous topics as cryptids, hot dogs, the month of February, and the importance of assigning a “Food Captain” to your friend group. Um, Actually is another game show in which the contestants are given “facts” with an error in them, then have to ring in and do what people on the internet love to do more than anything: correct each other.

Are you into cooking shows? You need to check out Gastronauts. This time the comedians aren’t the contestants, but the judges. Real chefs compete to comply with their outrageous prompts to invent a meal, such as making something that can be eaten from a horse’s feed bag or creating the HEAVIEST (but still tastiest) dish. And although I haven’t quite gotten there yet, there’s an entire subcategory of the site called Dimension 20, several shows that revolve – in one way or another – around the obsession certain members of the Dropout family have with Dungeons and Dragons.

The shows are usually quick. Without adhering to a broadcast TV schedule, I’ve seen episodes as short as 16 minutes, although they usually clock in around 20-25. The longest I’ve seen so far was the 63-minute season premiere of the current Game Changer season – an epic episode because Sam gave the contestants a set of 15 tasks, then gave them a YEAR to accomplish them all on their own. Their presentations on how they accomplished the tasks were hilarious and, occasionally, oddly heartwarming. I think one of the things that makes these shows enjoyable is that you get a real sense that the people involved LIKE playing together and are actually having FUN in front of the camera, and there’s always room for more fun in the world. 

Like I said, you see a lot of the same faces over and over again, making it easy to become devoted to the players. In fact, virtually everybody who is a regular appears on multiple shows, and people who host one show become contestants on the others. But there are guests as well: Wayne Brady and Ben Schwartz have both shown up on Make Some Noise, and the pandemic-era episodes of Game Changer featured surprise appearances by people as diverse as Tony Hawk and Giancarlo Esposito. There’s also Josh Ruben, one of the regulars, but whom I had already begun to follow not as a comedian, but as the writer/director of some of my favorite recent horror-comedy hybrid films, such as this year’s movie Heart Eyes, the recent Werewolves Within, and the excellent Scare Me, in which he also stars. 

It should be noted that this is NOT a service to watch with your kids. Although the comedy is usually good-natured and there hasn’t been anything I’ve come across that I’ve found particularly offensive, they lapse into blue humor frequently and have absolutely no filter when it comes to dropping language that you most certainly would not say in front of your grandmother. But if you’re okay with that sort of thing and you’re looking for some quick, crazy stuff that will make you laugh, it’s worth checking out.

And hell, you don’t even have to become a subscriber to get a taste. There are tons of clips on the Facebook and TikTok pages for Dropout TV and the individual pages of the assorted shows. It took two or three months of me watching those clips before I finally decided to take the plunge and subscribe to the service, but I’m glad I did. There’s not enough humor in the world, and it’s great to find a new source with so much to choose from.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Shoot, he didn’t even get around to Very Important People. Ah well, next time.