Game Changer Ends Season 8 With 90-Minute Talent Contest
Game Changer has closed its eighth season with its longest episode and largest cast yet.
The finale, titled “Last Talent Standing,” is now streaming on Dropout. It stages a talent-show competition with 23 contestants, according to Variety.
Running at just under 90 minutes, it is the longest episode of the Dropout series to date. Host Sam Reich, who is also Dropout’s chief executive and an executive producer on the show, runs the contest.
Game Changer is Dropout’s panel game show, meaning guest comedians play a different game each week. Dropout describes the format as a new, surprise premise every episode. Season 8 was announced for a May 18 launch.
Kumail Nanjiani, Maria Bamford and Gianmarco Soresi guest-star at the top of the judging panel. Eliminated players do not leave. After a Squid Game-style elimination twist, they join the judges to help pick the winner.
The prize is deliberately silly. The winner receives between $3,000 and $5,000 in Chili’s gift cards. The episode was not sponsored by the restaurant chain.
Reich told Variety the finished cut stays extraordinarily close to what happened in the room. No performance was lifted out completely. He said he prefers to release one long episode rather than split an instalment into two parts.
Not everything made it in. Player Katie Marovitch gave an answer about how she would like to fake die upon elimination. It was cut for being deemed too dark for Dropout’s standards.
What makes this stand out is scale. Twenty-three acts in one go is a lot to film, edit and judge. Keeping it in a single sitting gives viewers one very long night of auditions, eliminations and comebacks.
