Born from College Humor, Dropout is a comedy streaming platform that’s got a bevy of wildly funny shows in its library, including Crowd Control, Dirty Laundry, Make Some Noise, and Smartypants. However, the three pillars of the groundbreaking TV studio are Dimension 20, Game Changer, and Very Important People.
As Dropout is growing out of what CEO and Game Changer host Sam Reich calls their “awkward teenage years,” these three very different shows are making the biggest strides in popularity and pop culture moments.
In separate interviews with Reich, Dimension 20 creator Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Very Important People host Vic Michaelis, Mashable uncovered the scrappy beginnings and defining moments of these shows, as Dropout approaches its next steps.
Dimension 20: An unexpected hit
Brennan Lee Mulligan is the creator and game master on the set of “Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho!”
Credit: Kate Elliott / Dropout TV
One of the first show’s Dropout debuted on its launch day in Sept. 2018, Dimension 20 debuted in a media landscape that Mulligan says was geared toward short attention spans. Yet the former College Humor writer/performer pitched a long-format unscripted show featuring hours-long episodes of comedians playing variants of Dungeons & Dragons. This roll of the dice was a critical success for Dropout.
Hosted by Mulligan as Game Master, Dimension 20′s first season, Fantasy High, used D&D mechanics and a setting inspired by John Hughes’ teen comedies. The “intrepid heroes” (as the show’s core stars would come to be known) created characters that combined the fantasy games’ classes and races with teen movie archetypes. Thus was born an angst-ridden Tiefling bard with daddy issues, a nerdy half-orc barbarian, an arrogant half-elf jock, and a posh high elf wizard, whose greatest foe is her mean girl older sister.
Defying conventional wisdom in the contemporary media landscape, Dropout subscribers flocked to the show, which battles Game Changer for the most-watched series on the platform. Since the first episode of Dimension 20 aired in 2018, it has expanded into 28 seasons, featuring a wide array of comedians, as well as drag queens (Dungeons and Drag Queens), and professional wrestlers (Titan Takedown).
Mulligan and his party have also taken their show on the road, performing in venues like the Austin Convention Center (Fantasy High LIVE at RTX), the Hollywood Bowl (Battle at the Bowl), and a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden (Gauntlet at the Garden).
Asked about D20‘s popularity, Mulligan said the idea of a “silver bullet” or “unique vision” guaranteeing success is “malarkey.” He concluded, “Everything good in life comes from usually a thousand or a million invisible contributions of people providing care and thoughtfulness. And I think that is very true of Dimension 20. Dimension 20, if it has a secret sauce, it’s that we work with lots of great people who try really hard.”
Game Changer: A meta game show about game shows
Sam Reich hosts “Game Changer” on Dropout.
Credit: Kate Elliott / Dropout TV
Where Mulligan reigns at Dimension 20, Reich is the playful tyrant of Game Changer, where every week the game itself is a surprise to the competing comedians.
Sometimes it’s a puzzle based around a prop, like a lie detector or a giant foam mouth. Perhaps it’ll be a parody of an existing show, like Survivor, The Bachelor, Traitors, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, or Shark Tank. Some concepts prove so successful that they get spun off into shows of their own, like Make Some Noise, Dirty Laundry, and Crowd Control.
Season 7 dug into more meta humor, with episodes like “Fool’s Gold.” Here, Reich challenged a panel of three comedians to bid on pitches for social media videos, Shark Tank style. The goal was to see whose videos would accrue the most views in one month. Beyond being a funny concept for the episode that lent to a swath of Dropout comedians taking their silliness to streets and chiropractic offices, the episode was also a brilliant marketing strategy, considering that — according to Reich — 75-90% of new subscribers come through social media marketing. Still, there was hesitancy from the Game Changer team aorund making “Fool’s Gold.”
Mashable Trend Report
“I remember there being debate in the writers’ room initially,” Reich shared, “We’re just like, can we really do this episode? It almost seems like it boils the marketing mechanism of Dropout down to a cynical, comedic version of itself. Which is like, if you turn marketing Dropout into a game, this is that game. It’s like, can you go the most viral on these platforms? On the other hand, when some of the pitches started coming in, we were just like, this stuff is too good. It’s gold, if you will. We gotta roll the dice on this.”
Game Changer’s “Fool’s Gold” led to viral victories.
Dragon Master Katie Marovitch stars in “Dimension 20: On a Bus” Season 2.
Credit: Kate Elliott / Dropout
Chief among this “gold” was Katie Marovitch’s daffy parody of Dimension 20, “Dimension 20: On a Bus,” and Michaelis’s pitch for a video in which Mulligan claims he’s leaving Dropout to become a cobbler shoes for American Girl Dolls. In a previous Mashable interview for Say More, Michaelis said of their pitch that the secret to internet virality is: “You take the thing people love most and the thing they fear most.”
The “Brennan resigns” video was released as the episode aired on Dropout. Meaning those who didn’t watch Game Changer live could mistake it for sincere. And Mulligan says many did.
“I had family members texting me, asking if everything was OK,” he explained, adding, “There were meetings that were held on an emergency basis in parts of the world and the entertainment industry based on people believing that that video was real.”
Reich revealed there was a lot of debate about when to release the social clips. “How do we market this episode? One way to do it is to release all these clips in advance of the episode airing, and then the episode becomes the punchline,” He recounted. “Another way to do it is exactly how we did it [releasing the clips as they played in the episode]. And the third way to do it is to abide by our usual marketing tactics, which is we release the episode, and then we release the clips in the two weeks that follow that episode.”
Breaking from their own marketing convention, they went with the drop during the episode, hoping for the biggest impact. And Reich said, “The social response was explosive.” With over 3 million views on TikTok,Mulligan’s mock resignation became such a big hit online that it inspired a Google Easter egg. As for Marovitch’s spin of Dimension 20, her spoof became the series highest rated episode on IMDb, despite not being an actual episode of the series.
Reflecting on the success of these two videos in particular, Reich reflected, “I wasn’t sure that the pieces that were like us loving the smell of ourselves would do so well. When, in fact, the opposite occurred. Dropout fans rallied so hard around the ones that were meta that [their attention] had this, amplifying effect, where then other people wanted in on the joke.”
Reich continued, “And to run this all the way through until now, this all ends up resulting in D20 On a Bus [Season 2] for April Fool’s Day, where we did a full hour-long one-shot campaign. And that episode of D20 is disturbingly close to being the best-performing episode of Dimension 20 of all time. We all looked at it like, have we gone too far here?”
Very Important People and the path to the Emmys
Vic Michaelis plays Vic Michaelis in “Very Important People.”
Credit: Kate Elliott / Dropout TV
Now in its third season, Very Important People is not just one of Dropout’s most popular shows but also a series that could help the streamer garner much-deserved Emmy attention.
In separate interviews, both Reich and Michaelis noted that much discussion was had around what episodes to submit to the Emmy’s nominating committees. Ultimately, Dropout submitted for 11 Emmy categories, across both shows, including Michaelis in the lead comedy actress category.
Looking back on their path at Dropout, Michaelis marveled that they’d “done maybe four things on the platform tops” when Reich reached out about casting them as the host on a revamp of Hello, My Name Is. This shorts series had Pat Cassels interview Dropout regular Josh Ruben, as he’d take on different characters, depending on the costume provided. Very Important People expanded on the idea with more drastic makeovers, a broader range of comedians, and Michaelis’s unique brand of humor.
As an executive producer on the show, Michaelis has some hand in casting their co-stars, including those they knew from the LA improv scene, like Lisa Gilroy, Zac Oyama, and Jacob Wysocki. Very Important People has also welcomed more storied comedians, like Paul F. Tompkins and Saturday Night Live alum Bobby Moynihan.
Whether playing opposite old friends or their comedy idols, Michaelis — in a desperate-to-impress version of themselves — is tasked each episode with setting her scene partner up for success. “I feel like I know your voice,” they said of this process, and now I get to sit in front of you and lay up the things that I find funniest about you as a comedian. It’s the best job in the world.”
How to watch: Dimension 20, Game Changer, and Very Important People are now streaming on Dropout.
