Greetings, Challenge-keteers! One down, nine to go. The theme of this second contestant-eliminating challenge: content. Initially, host Matt Besser is skeptical of a challenge so broad, comparing it to a “song” challenge on American Idol, but then he boils it -- and possibly most of The Earwolf Challenge -- down to its quintessence:
“You gotta be more than just your best guest.”
This aphorism will come to have more and more significance as the week progresses, culminating in some actual reality-show-style drama! Or as close as we’re likely to get with the Challenge. As the Sklars say, “Let’s get into it.”
Episode 3.1: Coaching Sessions
This episode is pretty uneventful, by and large. I’m getting a sense we can probably expect this every Monday going forward. There’s a lot of the contestants basically asking Besser, “What should we do with our 2 minutes?” and Besser more or less giving them the ol’ Ben Kenobi: “You must do what you feel is right, of course.” No surprises here.
The challenge itself -- a 2-minute chunk showcasing your podcast -- pretty clearly favors some formats over others. For example, Totally Laime will surely have no problem delivering by carving out two minutes from a past interview. And Left Handed Radio can offer up a two-minute sketch. But it’s a lot harder to encapsulate, say, the oft-meandering Complete Guide to Everything with a mere 2-minute sample or for a show as varied in content as The F Plus to find 2 minutes that gives the listener a true idea of what they do. However, that, as the saying goes, is life.
When presented with the question of what makes their podcast stand out from all the rest, most of the contestants sound like they’re at a loss. In a way, this just pretty much a continuation of the previous week’s challenge, which also tasked the contestants with summing up their shows briefly and succinctly. The pitches run the gamut from Totally Laime’s catchy “Asking the most important people the least-important questions” to The Little Dum Dum Club’s offer to provide surrogate idiots in the form of Tommy and Karl.
Television Zombies clearly loses some points with Besser (and me) when they insist, every man-jack of them, that Falling Skies is better than The Walking Dead. Likewise, when Besser asks Left Handed Radio for another example of a sketch-oriented podcast, they offer up Superego. They then suggest they’re funnier because “we’re longer so we have more jokes.” Left Handed Radio’s one of my picks to win this thing, but that rationale doesn’t really hold.
Episode 3.2: The Challenge
Paul F. Tompkins
Jesse ThornPreviously, I offered up the first two guest judges, Jason Sklar and Jimmy Pardo, set a high standard for future guest-judge casting. Who else could follow them but Jesse Thorn and Paul F. Tompkins? Jesse’s a godfather of podcasting. Specifically, he’s the godfather with the Pillsbury Dough-Boy laugh and commedia dell’arte training and Founder of Maximum Fun. Thorn’s brought us quality programming such as Jordan, Jesse Go! and Judge John Hodgman, and was among the first wave of podcasters starting way back in 2004. Tompkins may not have the same level of podcast experience or ubiquity, but he does appear on an awful lot of podcasts (including on two of the contestant shows). Over the past year, his Pod F. Tompkast has become required monthly listening for comedy nerds. Plus, it was voted Rolling Stone’s "Podcast of the Moment" that one time.
Thorn and Tompkins are full of great, practical advice for the contestants, breaking it down to the podcasting nuts and bolts. They drop science about mic placement, tape syncing, Garage Band’s default settings and more. It’s becoming increasingly clear: no matter who wins this reality show, it’ll serve as a master class in podcasting when it’s all over. Especially since, as Tompkins insightfully points out, in the absence of a way to reliably monetize podcasting, The Earwolf Challenge contestants can only be judged by art, as opposed to marketability. It’s So You Think You Can Dance, not American Idol…if that helps.
My favorite entries more or less align with the judges. So, that’s convenient. Totally Laime continues to defy my early classification of it as just another sitting-around-and-talking podcast. I mean, it may still be that, but Totally Laime’s submission is an engaging 2 minutes with Paul Rust. Underdogs, The Little Dum-Dum Club and The Bob and Dan Cast, charm the pants off the judges, Aussie-style and Seattle-style, respectively. Left Handed Radio’s 2 minutes of sketch is indeed funny, especially “Salad Horse,” but I wish the “Cash Taxi” bit had ended right after the car crash instead of going through the motions with the whole question-answering thing. It just keeps going without progressing or getting any funnier. Longer does not necessarily equal better. Your words have come back to haunt you, Left Handed Radio! I also laughed at the performance on The F Plus’ clip, but agree the recording quality is a pretty big problem.
In fact, the judges have a lot to say about the necessity of decent audio quality. But in terms of material they reserve their harshest comments for Ham Radio. Brett’s 2 minutes take a shot at hack comedians, and the judges do not like that at all. Besser contends making fun of hack comics is itself hack. At the end of the episode, it doesn’t look good for Ham Radio.
Episode 3.3: The Judgement
Sure enough, come Wednesday Ham Radio’s in the bottom three, along with The Complete Guide to Everything and Television Zombies. It’s good to hear Tompkins admit he’d be hard-pressed to find 2 minutes from his own show that would truly give a good idea of what you might hear in a typical episode. Again, The Challenge definitely favors some formats over others. And that’s pretty much how The Complete Guide to Everything bites the dust.
Before the elimination happens, there’s that aforementioned drama! During the critique, Besser labels Ham Radio’s clip a “bad song choice” and tells Brett “You have no right” to mock other comics.” Brett defends himself, in part, by saying he doesn’t have the luxury of “falling back” on a guest. This doesn’t sit well with the judges. So much so, that in the middle of the eliminations, the judges make time for a second round of criticism. This time it’s not so much about his submission, but his willingness and ability to work with others. Besser doesn’t like the amount of “push back” he was feeling from Brett, and both Thorn and Tompkins point out the only thing a famous guest does is get people listening. It doesn’t automatically make the show good. You gotta be better than your best guest.
Meanwhile, Tim and Tom from The Complete Guide To Everything wait patiently to be told to clean up their workstation and go home. I’ll be listening to your take on Bigfoot, guys.
Friday, February 17, 2012 at 3:30PM 
Picking a favorite epsidoe this week in comedy podcast land was a simple one. Sure, I felt a tad uninspired going for the big gun of Conan O'Brien visiting Chris Hardwick, Jonah Ray and Matt Mira for an episode of The Nerdist. But I'm not sure there's any denying that O'Brien is a comedy icon of our times and receiving a long dose of the man in a less filtered format such as a podcast is always a treat. AT least that's what I'm going with for this week's submission to the Jesse Fox Splitsider "Week In Comedy" podcast round-up. My thoughts on the episode from Splitsider:
