They’ve got Jonathan Mangum, Sean Masterson, and Heather Anne Campbell as “new” performers. (If your last point of reference is Whose Line)
Don’t forget Jeff Davis too. Not counting my crush on Heather…he’s my favorite. I like Mangum too cuz he’s so physical.
I still crack up every episode. It’s too short though and they don’t play enough games, but the ones they play are good. Anyone else notice that Drew isn’t really all that good/funny compared to the others?
Jeff Davis was on Whose Line a few times, though. 8 times only, but still.
Just wanted to come back to say that I’ve grown to like this show a lot more than I first did. Perhaps it’s because they’ve gotten away from the song heavy stuff in more recent episodes. There’s a lot of new stuff that’s good. I enjoy the “positions” game, the two-headed expert game, the thing where they ask couples about their first date and then enact it…
I’m surprised that Colin doesn’t seem to contribute as fully to this as he used to. I thought he was one of the strongest elements of Whose Line, but he seems somewhat mediocre in this one.
I also wish they would bring back the world’s worst step and those rapid fire games, though.
Jeff Davis was on Whose Line. I didn’t forget him; he didn’t qualify for the list of answers to the question asked.
My sole complaint is still the camera stuff. It seems to have gotten worse. Not only do they move all over the stage, but they they even cut between two people sitting side by side. This works at a concert where they take breaks between songs, but they don’t take a break between acts here. It’s too much.
It’s making me too dizzy. I try to do it audio only, but too much depends on the visuals to do that. It’s a pity, as I’m really enjoying seeing the old eps on YouTube.
Really now? Thanks for the info both…I did not know that, well probably had just forgotten.
I am curious as to the make-up of the show and why certain people appear and certain people don’t. Is this their jobs? are they freelancing of sorts with this? The question about why Colin isn’t on it more made me think of this since I don’t know what else he really has going on.
I’ve been watching the episodes on the GSN website.
The ABC shows used a lot of games where quick yocks were relatively easy. Naturally a network show needs more dependable laughs and players who can produce them. But those players have limitations that show up in this series. Even Greg Proops and Chip Esten are out of their element a bit. But Jeff Davis is really shining.
The “lethal injection rap” at the end of ep 21 with Jeff, Chip and Jonathan was really well done.
I hate the forward/backward game. Inevitably, there’s too much repetition. It may be good as an exercise for the players, but it’s boring.
I’ve been watching the show in 5-episode blocks. It seems they use the same 5-7 games over and over again. Can’t they come up with new improv games or scenes to try? Also, what WLIIA games/scenes haven’t they tried? Is Hoedown off-limits?
Supposedly, the guys hated hoedowns, so I doubt that they’ll do that one again.
I would like to see them do “Scenes From A Hat,” though.
They avoid the old games that required writing - Scenes from a Hat, Dating Game, Host of a Party and World’s Worst, for instance - or props - like Props, Dating Service Video.
And yes, some of them (Ryan in particular) HATE Hoedown.
I saw Jeff, Chip, Greg, and Ryan live, and someone in the audience shouted ‘Hoedown!’ as a request, and Ryan grabbed his crotch and said “Here’s your hoedown!” I laughed.
Call me naive but what do you mean by “writing”?
If you mean literal writing (such as characters and ideas and such) then it still doesn’t make a whole lotta sense since they still have the sentence game. Why can’t they have the audience write down celebrities or the scenes from a hat before hand like they do the phrases? Or did I miss your point?
I mean the original Whose Line show, in addition to audience-written bits, had writers. How do you think they came up with the identities for Dating Game and Party Quirks? (I knew the name of that game was somewhere in my head..)
The Sentence game involves a substantially lower level of prep than Scenes from a Hat.
It seems to me that they should still be able to do World’s Worst and Scenes From a Hat. I wish that they would.
I don’t think they can in this format. These episodes are excerpts from a 90 minute live show. So, assuming the papers for idea solicitations are handed out when the show starts, they have 83 minutes (assuming that playing the game takes 6-7 minutes) for the audience to write suggestions, for the suggestions to be unobtrusively collected, for someone backstage to vet the suggestions, and get them back out to the performers. At some point, they have to take out the clunkers.
With Whose Line, they had a studio audience that they could bring in in advance, warm up with a stand-up comedian, et cetera - and basically kill time while suggestions were being written. Or they could even have the audience write things down, and then use them in the next week’s taping block.
Nah… it doesn’t take all that long for that. I was in a college improv troupe. we did 30 minute shows, and played “write stuff down” games all the time. Granted, we aren’t as good as these pros, but we weren’t too shabby. No need to take out “clunkers” that’s part of the charm of improv, turning clunkers into gold. and world’s worst can be done easily with a standard audience suggestion. no need to write stuff down.
Some thing people write down are just so nonsensical as to be useless. There’re a couple of times that they’ve really had bad input in sentences that were noticeable, and in that game, non-sequiturs are basically the entire charm! The bottom line is I don’t think they could do Scenes From a Hat in this format and maintain the kind of quality they want. The fact that they’re NOT doing Scenes From a Hat suggests that there’s a reason, and I can’t think of any other.
No, gonzoron is right. It doesn’t have to take very long, and as he said, “World’s Worst” can easily be done without writing stuff down on paper. That’s how it’s always been done when I’ve seen other improv acts do their thing.
As for “Scenes From a Hat,” one can always take suggestions from the audience, filter them out afterwards, and then use the better suggestions during the next show. In fact, I once read that this is precisely how “Whose Line…” used to operate.
Except that the filming schedule for this version is different..
Look, I tried to offer you a plausible explanation for why they’re not doing some of the games. You don’t think it’s plausible, that’s fine. The fact is, they’re not doing Scenes From a Hat for a reason. Maybe they just don’t like it. However, I can see potential problems in the turnaround time that would not have applied to Whose Line.