‘Game Changer’ Comes Full ‘The Circle’ in Season 6 Finale
Lots of people started watching “The Circle” during the COVID lockdown. But only Sam Reich and the team at Dropout have been able to fully create their own parody version, one that is even a little bit truer to the spirit of the idea. For the “Game Changer” Season 6 two-part finale, “The Ratfish,” the team rented out a hotel floor’s worth of rooms and tricked them out to reflect the vibes of seven Dropout cast members playing a guessing game of sorts.
Each came up with a fake persona and, in order to win a billboard for whatever they wanted to promote on Hollywood Boulevard, were given a goal: Interact with each other via chat to correctly guess which persona is being played by which cast member without being ID’d themselves — but of course they were not told that the eighth player Among Us (or them) wasn’t a “Game Changer” veteran at all, but Eric Wareheim of “Tim & Eric” fame.
It’s an idea that host and executive producer Reich, executive producer Paul Robalino, and the rest of the “Game Changer” brain trust have had in their back pocket since well before the show’s joyously expansive sixth season. Robalino initially pitched a “The Circle” variant that involved cast members stuck in sound booths lined up on the show’s main stage, which was ruled out. “Sometimes when we have an idea that we really like, we just have to save it for some point in the future when we can actually make it, because we want it to be the best version of the idea,” Robalino told IndieWire on an episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast.
“‘The Circle’ is a show where people enter not knowing each other at all. We thought, ‘Well, it’s really interesting if they all know each other, and then the question is who is behind what avatar?’” Reich told IndieWire. “In our version, everyone is catfishing, everyone is playing a different character, and we really loved the idea of playing a mastermind game with our cast’s identities because they all know each other so well.”
But even when “Game Changer” had the resources to realize the comedy catfishing game of its dreams, it still was a lot of work to execute. “I think it’s the most cameras we’ve ever had on an episode of ‘Game Changer,’” Reich said — and this is a show that has employed 20 cameras of all types for single episodes, from static robo-cams to handheld cameras (and accompanying operators and PAs) designated to follow players as they race around the studio space.
But a huge challenge for this finale was shouldered by the show’s indefatigable art team, led by production designer Chloe Badner. They, of course, had also been toying with ideas for a “The Circle” variant and were able to create environments much more bespoke than the minimum-viable Dropout orange throw pillow on a couch. While Grant O’Brien got a very sleek, vaguely art deco layout for his fake symbologist Jackson Alberta, PhD, Rekha Shankar got a frilly and pink, sweets-themed space for her persona of Adjustable Side Table, Walnut; meanwhile, Brennan Lee Mulligan was placed in a D&D wizard’s tower, fit for the Game Master of “Dimension 20” if not necessarily for his “Ratfish” persona, Bug With a Big Ass.
But Badner and her team only had a couple of weeks’ notice for who the players were going to be and didn’t lock a location until a week before shooting. “We designed more rooms than we needed, and some of them got cut as we narrowed in on who would actually be there. We also had a generic comedy-themed room in our back pocket in case someone dropped out and we had to pivot,” Badner told IndieWire.
But there was only so much the team could prep in advance. From an art perspective, hotels are not super convenient places to shoot. The tiny hallways limit or create extra labor to move furniture and big props, back access is challenging, and there is always that hotel paranoia of needing to be clean and quiet during the shoot. There are also unexpected challenges. For instance, Badner planned on creating custom wallpapers for each room that they could cut to size on the one flat wall each hotel room would surely have.
“This proved not to be the case, of course, since the hotel we landed on had all sorts of permanent fixtures on the walls,” Badner said. “We had to pivot just days before shooting to bringing in piecemeal flats and assembling them inside the rooms. So each room technically has its own little three-walled set built on site!”
They also had to get a truck full of props and eight couches into the rooms — Badner said that set decorator Day Hernandez showed up to the hotel with “a measuring tape, a wish, and a prayer. Grant’s massive green couch almost didn’t fit in the elevator. We had to send it up by itself.”
But the care and attention that Badner and the art team put into the spaces doesn’t just help set the mood for each room in the finale but is full of little gifts to fans, too. Each room featured one or more over-the-top photos of Reich in room-specific poses, which Badner said were made with love for the fans who love to scrutinize every episode.
“The photo shoot was just a few of us in the infamous green room with a box of silly props having a grand old time. It was a highlight of the season for me because it exemplified the best parts of designing for Dropout,” Badner said. “We’re all very committed to being silly — we all take the lack of seriousness very seriously. I felt lucky on that day to be in the green room giving our CEO directions like, ‘OK, now make a baby boo-boo face! Growl like a vampire! More enthusiasm in the mustache twirl!’”
A serious approach to silliness runs throughout this season of “Game Changer,” but especially in the show’s “Ratfish” two-parter. “In a lot of ways, this episode harkened back to our first season in terms of what a creative challenge it was. Season 1 was filmed in a tiny office space with 8-foot ceilings. We carried the arch up the stairs because we couldn’t fit it in the elevator! Why didn’t I design a smaller arch? It’s just not my style — also Grant is very tall,” Badner said. “It’s been said that creativity thrives under constraints, and we definitely embrace that.”
As for what challenges the “Game Changer” team will embrace next, they’re still trying to cook up ideas for Season 7. But the success of its reality show parodies — “Survivor,” “The Bachelor,” and now “The Circle” — keeps paving the way for the series to create send-ups that can finally be the best versions of themselves.
“It might be the last season of ‘Game Changer,’ but… one day we will do ‘American Ninja Warrior,’” Reich said.
