for inspiration is other game shows.
- "Bachelor" is a super guilty pleasure of mine (laughs).
And I really thought this was one of the funniest ideas
anyone has ever pitched.
- "The Bachelor" is one of the most popular franchises
in the world of reality competition there is,
and who better to do that with than Grant O'Brien?
- I think that we ultimately did a good job
balancing the creative of the show,
and making it a good experience for Grant.
- We've done a number of different episodes
of various different shows at Dropout
that involved pranking Grant.
- Oh, oh!
God damn it!
Holy shit! - Oh my God!
- Sam, I would've been trying harder at this game
if I'd known I was trying to impress someone the whole time.
- Tonight we're starting off with a new segment
called True Facts about Grant
that are not jokes, they're just true, actual facts
about this gangly asshole.
- Initially, the game mechanic was on the meaner side.
We're like, are we mocking Grant?
Are we like...
Are we actually trying to find him love?
- The original idea here,
which was something I think we called Deal Breaker,
was the notion that we would do a reverse dating show
in which the contestants are eliminated based on learning,
they eliminate themselves
based on things they learn about Grant.
And finally, I felt that was too mean-spirited.
We like watching people
have a bad time on reality television.
I'm not convinced we like to watch people
have a bad time on "Game Changer."
It would be far more fun simply to put Grant,
and create moments that were
legitimately heartfelt and interesting,
and be more about the nature of human connection.
- We were all rooting for Grant in this,
instead of rooting against him or laughing at him.
We wanted him to make a connection with somebody.
And I'm really happy that we took it in that direction
because it just was more fun.
- Ultimately, when we changed the mechanic
to be super wholesome,
that's when I think the show became a gem.
- I shot emails and text messages to some friends of Grant's
to ask what kind of folks that they think he would be into.
Nick Kocher told me that Grant dates
the kind of people who you could imagine
as the lead in musicals.
Ally wrote me back one word, "twinks."
Not incredibly helpful.
Grant loves banter, he loves people to spar with.
He loves good conversation.
He's this odd sort of mix
of very modern and very old fashioned.
We had to reach sort of outside
our usual casting infrastructure for this.
Lallouz/Geller Casting.
And Emily has been a part of many actual dating shows,
including "Are You the One" on MTV.
With her help, was able to find
10 great candidates for Grant.
Men as well as women, right.
Like we wanted to sort of honor the fact that Grant is bi,
which like you normally don't see in dating shows.
You don't normally have men, women,
and non-binary folks competing for one person's affections.
- Early on we even talked about
bringing a full-on jacuzzi
into our parking lot so that Grant could sit in a jacuzzi
and have multiple one-on-one dates
with his prospective romantic partners.
- Yeah, originally it was supposed to be in the parking lot.
We're like, let's just slide over the dumpster,
we'll put a hot tub there.
We're literally trying to copy "The Bachelorette."
And we looked at "The Bachelor" production designer's
Instagram and tried to copy her style,
but she gets like $10,000 per set probably.
So instead of the luxurious bachelor vibe of a hot tub
we got a blow-up kiddie pool from Target,
has like leaves floating in it.
- We're gonna make it a boring, bougie,
like gaudy living room kind of set,
with a fake fireplace and a fur rug.
But we're gonna do it "Game Changer" style,
make sure we're incorporating the colors.
The couch is hot red.
- The big difference between us doing a "Survivor" tribute
and us doing a "Bachelor" tribute is I love "Survivor,"
and I don't love "The Bachelor."
Immediately the question was,
how do we improve upon the source material?
And I think we did that in a number of ways.
I think we did that with the contestants
we brought to the table.
I think we did that with vibes.
I think we did it by not painting our bachelor
as some sort of superhuman, but showing him off
in all of his pluses and minuses, which we all have.
I think we did it by offering prizes
to the contestants as they were leaving.
- Oh my God, you weren't lying.
These are good gifts.
- That's what I'm saying.
- I think the wildest part
of that episode was the ending.
- Grant was having a really hard time
as that episode wore on.
I think his decisions felt more arbitrary.
And by the time he had whittled it down to two men,
it was very clear to me
that he didn't wanna choose between them.
When Grant approached me about offering the prize
to both of them, I loved it.
It felt different to me.
It felt inclusive, it felt progressive.
- No one saw that coming.
And I think that is what made for a really excellent show.
At the end of the day, when Grant couldn't decide,
I'll never forget, there was a moment we actually
paused the show and Sam pulled us aside.
The look on people's faces
was one of surprise and a little bit of shock.
- The gamble was that either Reese or Abel
would be too offended by both being selected,
that they wouldn't be into it.
And then that would've created its own energy,
its own other vibe of an ending.
But that didn't happen.
And luckily we got our poly-fairytale ending.
It immediately begs the question,
is this something that we're gonna do in future seasons?
Are we going to take on other reality competition shows,
and do our own full-day two part version of them?
I'm reluctant to fall into patterns,
but I can immediately think of others I'd wanna do. (laughs)