Funny / After Midnight

• January 18th. 2024: Just the whole episode has this offbeat, chaotic energy, with James Davis being the Only Sane Man of the panel.
  • Actor Max Greenfield being completely, hopelessly out-of-place on this show, but still trying to contribute, put the comedy in Cringe Comedy for quite a few people. There's a segment where Taylor shows upbeat, positive TikToks and tasks the comedians to "Kill The Vibe" (i.e. make an unnecessarily harsh comment to bring the mood down). Max's response to one is so awkward and off-topic that he actually kills the vibe in the whole studio, which becomes hilarious on a completely different level.
  • The TikTok of a woman's extensive security system, with at least nine different security measures in place. The last shot is the woman being filmed getting into her bed, and Taylor responds:
    Taylor: One question, who is recording that video?? Victoria, the murderer is inside the house right now and he knows all your best angles!
  • All of Robby Hoffman's weird, rambling answers are great television. Especially the game where Taylor shows pictures of objects (like a fried egg and a rusty sink) that look like they have faces, and panelists have to tell us what these objects are thinking. The last one is an oddly face-looking cardboard box in a puddle with a stained "mouth." Robby Hoffman hesitantly buzzes in with quite possibly one of the most depraved sentences ever uttered on network television:
    Robby Hoffman: Look. Long story short, I'm low on money, and for a little extra you can fuck my eyes, too.
    [James Davis promptly walks off stage in horror]
• January 24, 2024: The Trigger Warning segment where the producers changed the sound of the buzzer to a loud, whooping siren without telling the panelists. Beeeeeooooooooowwwp!!!
  Guy Branum: It's not a machine doing that; they just have a sea lion and a stick!
  Taylor: [after she finally stops laughing] We're a new show; we don't have the budget!
  • During the elimination round, Marcella Arguello's impression of Beyoncé brings the house down.
• February 1, 2024: The Add To Cart segment, where two contestants have to decipher whether or not the third made a bizarre purchase online or not, based on how they discuss it. It would already be hilarious enough that Thomas Lennon was given a bathroom sign with a skeleton holding toilet paper saying "Your butt napkins, my lord." He didn't buy it. But then Kel Mitchell (yes, of Good Burger fame) is assigned a pair of plastic hands you stick on your wall to hold your remote, or phones. He bought them. It's just so strange to look at them, and then Melissa Villaseñor pipes in with this:
  Melissa Villaseñor,: Have you ever, y'know... has there ever been a time you feel like, maybe the hands can make me feel... [audience FLIPS OUT as they realize what she's talking about]
  Kel Mitchell: Ma'am, you are nasty!
  Taylor: [confused] Wait, how do you give handjobs??
  • Kel Mitchell was generally tons of fun all episode, but one sticks out: in the elimination round, Taylor shows panelists a photo of an egg that got millions of likes, and they have to guess whether it was under or over 18 million. Kel's answer? "Over, easy." Thomas Lennon applauds him for that one.
• February 6, 2024: Practically every word out of Bianca Del Rio's mouth. Or whenever Reggie Watts grinds proceedings to a halt with Anti-Humor. He's like if Max Greenfield was intentionally awkward.
  • Bianca's already hitting it out of the park in the Talk Show Portion. Taylor looks rightfully honored to be insulted by the Don Rickles of drag.
    Taylor: Bianca. What would you change about me? Be honest, but flattering.
    Bianca: [initially confused] ...be honest, but flattering — listen. I am known to be cruel and nasty, but this is not the place for me to do this. [Taylor has an ear-to-ear grin knowing what's coming] It really isn't! And I would never mention or discuss your mental abilities or disabilities. [Taylor's already giggling uncontrollably] I'm not gonna go there! I'm not gonna do this to you because that's what you- change your hair. I'm not gonna do it! [Taylor is KILLING herself laughing] ...And the shoes.
  • The first Would? segment. It's a blurred image of a person or thing, a panelist has to say they "would" (in a carnal sense), and then when the image is revealed, they have to explain their reasoning. The whole segment belongs here, but especially Bianca, who says she would, and it turns out to be the old lady who dropped the jewel in the water in Titanic. Bianca's reasoning?
    Bianca: I'm glad you told me it was someone else because I thought it was a mirror. [entire room is already cracking up] A friend of mine once told me that the advantage of someone to this age is that diarrhea is a water-based lubricant. [audience EXPLODES while the other panelists have to turn away from the camera in shock]
  • Reggie Watts lets you know right off the bat what kind of show he's gonna have. In the Group Chat segment, Taylor shows clips of people using the Apple Vision Pro, and they "look so cool and normal." Taylor asks panelists where they would use the Apple Vision Pro.
    Wendi McLendon-Covey: Whenever I have to hear someone talking about their fantasy football league.
    Bianca Del Rio: While having sex. I'm gonna be alone anyway, what does it matter?
    Reggie Watts: I would use it... inside of a building... [entire room starts laughing uncontrollably at the non-joke, except Bianca who looks utterly dumbfounded]
• February 9, 2024: Nico Santos, Billy Eichner and walking dad-joke Pete Holmes might have been the best panel the show had seen yet, with fantastic chemistry and constant riffing the entire show.
  • Taylor introduces Pete by promoting his upcoming show in the smaller town of Oxnard, California, and Pete can't help but laugh at how pathetic that makes him sound. The result is a Running Gag about performing in Oxnard. Here is that runner in supercut form.
  • A clip of Paul Giamatti discussing how Cher is constantly calling him (yes, really) leads to the panel doing Cher impressions. Nico's is fantastically over-the-top, but Billy — who's already on shaky ground after momentarily forgetting Pete's name — does one that's So Bad, It's Good:
    Billy-as-Cher: HEY PETE HOOOOLMES!!! [already cracking himself up at how bad his impression is]
    Pete: Cher?!?
    Billy-as-Cher: IT'S CHER!! [takes a second to compose himself] I'M COMING TO SEE YOU IN OXNARD!!! [Pete wanders off-stage dying laughing]
  • Pete can't do Cher so he does Paul Giamatti answering the voicemail ("DAH!!! DAH!!!") and Taylor points out that his Paul Giamatti sounds a lot like his Bill Burr. So Pete keeps riffing on that for a moment until Billy — sounding legit offended — interrupts:
    Billy: You can do Bill Burr, but you can't do Cher?!?
  • During a round where videos are shown of something bad happening to someone, panelists are tasked to find a bright side to this catastrophe. One video is just some kid chugging an entire bottle of maple syrup, and before we even get to the panel, it comes back:
    Taylor: This is how they kill time in Oxnard.
• February 26, 2024: Marc Maron brings the crowd back after Brendan Hunt reveals My Parents Are Dead.
  Marc: I wanna just say that both my parents are still alive, and it's not great. Uh...
  Brendan: Thank you. Thank you.
  Marc: You got out, man; you got out.
  • And then the Call-Back that only the likes of Marc Maron could get away with:
    [after a girl in a TikTok video gets hit by a car]
    Taylor: [her fingers on her earpiece] Jack wants me to tell everyone she's not dead. Just so everybody knows.
    Marc: [gestures to Brendan] His- his parents are dead.
    [crowd AWWWs, Taylor doubles over laughing]
    Brendan: But... thanks to my good friend Marc, I feel a lot better about it than I used to!
    Marc: And oddly, they both slammed into a car doing a TikTok video.
    Brendan: [after struggling hard to not die laughing] Separately! They're divorced! [Marc cackles]
    Taylor: This is great, cuz now we can't edit it out!
• March 4, 2024: Monet X Change is in last place, and in the elimination round, panelists see a video depicting bangers & mash made with Pringles(!), and have to come up with names for this particular dish. Monet panics and starts spamming the buzzer, and it becomes increasingly apparent that Monet is just buzzing in without even having an answer and just spits out whatever dumb idea comes to mind. Here they are, in order:
  "The national dish of Iowa."
  "A weapon of ass destruction."
  "White fragility."
  "Uh... uh uh uh... Inedible Arrangement!"
  "Sphincter destroyer!"
  "[giggles nervously] ...two... dicks in gravy." [Adam Ray bursts out laughing]
  Taylor: [wheeze-laughing] THAT WAS AMAZING! You are just buzzing before you had an answer! [Monet shrugs in defeat]
  Adam Ray: That was the best thing that happened today! You were searching so hard! "Two dicks in gravy!"
  • As an aside, Monet wins the episode, in a Darkhorse Victory over a dominant performance from Adam Ray.
• March 5, 2024: The greatest elimination ever. Taylor makes Kurt Braunohler call someone he cares about to tell them he lost. Kurt defaults to calling his wife, and when he tells her, she puts his daughter on the phone, and Kurt has to tell her "the lady running this game made me lose." To Kurt's horror, his daughter gets legitimately upset, and he tries telling her in vain that it's just a joke and everything's fine. Meanwhile, poor Taylor looks absolutely mortified watching all this going down.
  Kurt: [after hanging up] Well, that didn't go well! It went worse than I anticipated!
  Taylor: [still in shock] ...We're never doing that again.
  • Funny Background Event: Esther Povinsky's wide-eyed face at Taylor just screams what have you done?!
• March 11, 2024, with the Sklar brothers. The elimination round, What The Heck Are They Doing That For?, sees Taylor show panelists a video of people doing something needlessly dangerous or harmful, and they have to explain, well, what they're doing that for. The last video is a race of people riding ostriches(?). Jason Sklar stops to point out that there's a little kid on the railing watching this, so Randy Sklar starts impersonating that kid with No Indoor Voice ("DADDEH, CAN I STAND BY THE RAIL?!?"). Taylor finds this voice hysterical, so Randy (plus Jason) just keep riffing on that kid more and more until Taylor looks like she's in physical pain from laughing. And then when Taylor introduces FTW, she remembers the kid by the rail and starts squeak-laughing all over again. It's a beautifully human moment from Taylor.
  Taylor: Okay. Whoo, that's the hardest I've laughed in a while. It's so nice as a comedian to laugh, because you think you're dead inside.
  • Rob Haze's Running Gag of randomly stopping to make cheesy poses, just to get into the video thumbnail. It actually worked!
• March 12, 2024: Practically everything Flula Borg does, but especially his habit of attempting to buzz in even in games where it's completely pointless.
  • Taylor introduces Whole & Oats, a game where panelists are given a celebrity and they have to guess if they like whole milk or oat milk. That's it. Taylor just immediately says what everyone's thinking:
    Taylor: Did I mention that this show is, at its core, very stupid?
  • The Hulk is one of the "celebrities," and when it's revealed that the answer is whole milk, panelist Chris Grace interrupts:
    Chris: Can I just raise a point of contention? Um, in the multiverse written by Peter David...
    Taylor: [immediately Face Palms] Oh, here we fucking go...
    Chris: ...the Incredible Hulk actually drank oat milk in The Incredible Hulk #171 & #172, when he was the grey Hulk, so... [audience groans] I'll see myself out!
• March 13, 2024: The entire Egg On My Face segment.
  • They actually made a round out of a silly post from the After Midnight subreddit, which Taylor "did not know existed and definitely won't be going on later." It's about a little rectangle in the set design just kind of hanging out awkwardly in a ceiling fixture. Taylor asks panelists to tell that rectangle to get down:
    Caroline Rhea: Dear Reddit user: you're missing the point of the show.
    Matt Rogers: Well, if that rectangle won't come down here, I guess I'll have to eat this chocolate cake all by myseeeeeelf...
    James Davis: Square Rectangle Quadarious Jr... [audience already cracks up] ...if you don't get your butt down there right now, I'mma call your daddy.
    [Caroline is in hysterics]
    James Davis: ...he has a full name!
    Matt Rogers: His Christian name!
    James Davis: His full, Christian, government name!
• March 14, 2024: The Guess Whom segment. Highlights include:
  • Jordan Temple's clue for a Garbage Disposal: "You put your enemies down here..."
    Reggie Conquest: HELL!
  • Jordan's clue for Cher: "I don't know, this lady's like a witch..."
    Paul: [after Jordan's round is over] ...been in the business for most of her life, "uh, she's a witch..."
  • Paul F. Tompkins' clue for the Letter Q: "I look like a "O" but then KABOOM!"
• April 15, 2024: Taylor shows a video of an elderly lady who shows off an urn she bought herself to put her remains in, because — and this is a direct quote — "I yearn for the urn." The whole studio busts up laughing at that incredible line, especially Taylor, who struggles hard to get this response out:
  Taylor: Fun fact — if you tell your therapist that, they have to call somebody!
• April 16, 2024: One of the funniest Talk Show Portions ever, which starts out typically pointless, until Morgan Murphy stops the proceedings just to give away a desk she brought in her truck. (As revealed on Twitter/X, that's not just a bit.) Taylor's way into the idea of just giving away furniture right there on the show, but doesn't have a truck, leading to Marcella Arguello making the show's very first reference to Taylor's bisexuality, in true Marcella Arguello fashion:
  Marcella Arguello: I gotta push back against this — how you half-gay and ain't got no friends with trucks, bitch?! [Taylor keels over laughing]
  Felipe Esparza: That's like me not knowing a gardener! [everyone keels over laughing]
  • And that's before they all start shit-talking people with Priuses.
• April 19, 2024: Most of the time "Understood the Assignment" has been played, the panelists have refused to guess words so the cluegiver doesn't get points. However, as Aaron Jackson is trying to get Jon Lovett and Josh Sharp to guess the word bitch, they make one of the most valid excuses for doing so:
  Josh: I will not defy my morals... I respect women and I will not do what you're asking of me! I'm sorry for him, Taylor! [End-of-round buzzer]
  Jon: I have a term for a woman - Doctor!
• April 22, 2024: The round of Hashtag Wars where Caitlin Reilly can't seem to buzz in and it drives her insane. Pete Holmes and Gillian Jacobs have No Sympathy whatsoever:
  Gillian: Sorry, being a nepo baby doesn't help you in this round! [Caitlin fumes]
• April 23, 2024: Drew Carey does the episode right after seeing Phish at The Sphere in Las Vegas. He proceeds to straight-up hijack the Talk Show Portion to tell the audience this NSFW description of what it's like to see Phish live. Practically the entire rest of the show is just recovering from this rant. Taylor's knowingly-shallow attempt to get it edited out is a perfect Taylor Tomlinson moment.
  Taylor: That was so great. And we can definitely use all of it. Absolutely we can. And I don’t want you guys to take my next sentence as any indication that we can’t use it. [Beat] Oh, you’d like to pass? That’s OK. Thomas–
  [Drew and especially Thomas Lennon crack up laughing]
  Taylor: Thomas, what would you replace Arbor Day with?
  [Drew collapses on the floor, dying laughing]
  Thomas: I don’t think there’s any universe where we’re still doing bits after that. [entire studio falls apart]

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