Web Video / The Park Bench

Matt: "Hi, I'm Matt!

Tom: "And I'm Tom!"

Matt: "And this is the Park Bench!"

So what are we talking about today Tom?

The Park Bench was an online Vlog Series produced by The Technical Difficulties members Matt Gray and Tom Scott that ran from 18th November 2015 - 30th October 2018.

The vlog series was essentially Matt and Tom riffing off of each other, explaining certain behind-the-scenes aspects of Tom's mainline videos, and just revealing life experiences and opinions on certain topics.

The Park Bench stopped being uploaded in 2018, with Tom explaining in the comments that the series had gotten boring, and both Matt and Tom were simply busy with other projects.

You can watch the series via this playlist. Do note that the videos are Out of Order. There is also a "Best Of" Compilation playlist, which can be found here.

Note: Since the show often acts as a supplementary video series to main Tom Scott videos, Spoilers Off is in full effect here. You Have Been Warned!

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Tropes:

• Bavarian Fire Drill: Matt, Tom and Tim in a video talking about Eurovision, and how they managed to get Front Row Seats to Eurovision 2016 by turning out six hours earlier to the show and were mistaken for super fans instead of regular ticket holders. When the queue started moving, they were funnelled into the front of the auditorium with the other super fans, and since the tech crew never bothered to check their tickets of anyone who arrived super early, they all got front row seats of the action, and even appeared on TV!
• *Bleep*-dammit!: "Why We Bleep Some Swearing" goes into why Matt and Tom's swearing rules are inconsistent between their videos and other Youtube stars. Usually, they stick to OFCOM's guidelines for swearing, but will not censor swears if it's sufficiently funny, or if the swear is part of informative context.
• Broken Record:
  • The times variations Tom says "This image◊, from this video" in "The Park Bench Public Apology".
  • In "Tales of the Arctic 1", Matt lampshades his tendency to start videos and sentences with "So..." and "Now..." that he noticed while editing the videos for the channel, and Tom has also admitted to cutting those phrases from videos where Matt uses them.
• Call-Back: "Rejects from Tom's Ideas Board: The Early Years" has Matt mention that their idea of "Freddie Printoff" could've been done "the other day", referring to their livestream on shredding comments.
• The Cameo: Multiple Youtube personalities have been on the bench; Jay Foreman and Matt Parker to name a few. In "Tales of the Arctic", Tom reveals to Matt that he was sleeping with Chris Hadfield the astronaut!
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Matt in the "Tales of the Arctic" miniseries. Every time Tom does something unbelievable on his trip, Matt replies with an F-bomb.
• Cool Shades: "50 Shades of Matt Gray" has quite a few scrolling of Matt wearing sunglasses, some odd ones too, while he talks about the prank Tom setup for him to do it.
• Crossover: "Hovercraft Adventures, Behind The Scenes" is a crossover with an episode of Citation Needed; more specifically the bonus footage for The Sark Football Team And Hovercraft Enthusiasm episode. The videos goes on to explain how Tom made it happen and the Techdif's experiences with riding a hovercraft.
• Easter Egg: Many are pointed out in "A VFX Breakdown, Obscure References, and Ducklings", a complimentary video on for why Youtube Algorithm will always be a mystery video. Among the references includes the Youtube tags from the 2005-era Youtube site having two stanza's of "We Didn't start the Fire", but with suggestive references, the transition of Tom from live action to animated is based on an obscure music video featuring Elton John for The Road to El Dorado, and many other references.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Matt and Tom mention this was precisely what they were going for in the behind the scenes of "How we made the Fireworks Video"; setting all the fireworks off at once by adding a timing error.
• Forced Perspective: This video sheds some light on how camera Field of View works, as well as how to trick viewers into being closer to an object that they actually are.
• Grail in the Garbage: Matt and Tom trying to find hidden gems or weird things when reading out what people have bought with their Amazon affiliate link is the subject of three videos (linked in the above playlist).
• Guest Star:
  • When Tom goes off to the Antarctic cruise, Matt asks Jay Foreman to come onto the bench instead.
  • With fellow The Technical Difficulties stars Gary and Chris in this video.
  • This video about travel optimisations (I.E, cheap tickets for flights and when to go on holiday) has Chelsea Dickenson, someone who is, in their own words, "obsessed with getting a good deal" when they visit travel booking sites.
• Jump Cut: Lampshaded with the "Filmed in Jump-cut-o-vision" segments.
• Hilarious Outtakes: Usually flubbed lines or odd bits get left in as The Stinger for the end of the video.
• LOL, 69: This trope, as well as 420, Blaze It are mentioned in "You Successfully Stalked Us, Please Don't Do It Again"
• Old Shame: In-Universe. In this video on discussing the "Breaking The News" video, Matt and Tom don't regret doing it, but both would be embarrassed by doing it in the present day now that Matt has a job as a broadcast engineer.
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: The video "We Toured The Restricted Parts of Heathrow Airport" has Tom mention that the footage used was sent to Heathrow Airports' security division to make sure nothing sensitive was recorded on camera, and they obliged by blurring out parts the public isn't allowed to see.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: The "People bought weird things with our Amazon Affiliate Link" playlist is all about singling out weird items people have purchased on Amazon.
• Serious Business: Many annoyances (most of them very petty) laid out in "Controversial Opinions":
  • Tom hates Lettuce, something which Matt partially agrees with.
  • Matt thinks that toilet roll should face the person, not the wall when placed on its holder, something Tom doesn't agree with, on the basis that kids and cats will bat at it, and placing facing the wall avoids that.
  • The pronunciation of "Neither" Matt opts for [Nye-thur], while Tom goes for [Knee-therr].
  • London information boards having motivational quotes, instead of actual useful safety information; both Matt and Tom agree that doing this a waste of time.
  • Matt asserts that ringtones are pointless, and that they only continue to exist because pockets on clothes aren't equally available for all genders, meaning handbags have to be used.
  • Manual gearboxes should be replaced with automatic gearboxes in anything other than the developing world.
  • Matt claims that Mayonnaise is the only acceptable chip condiment, Tom disagrees that Vinegar is the superior option.
  • Matt exclaims that Baked beans are fine cold, to which to says Get Out! in response.
• Shout-Out:
  • To The Matrix Reloaded when Tom points out that they're doing a sequel to their original affiliate link video in "People Bought More Weird Things With Our Amazon Affiliate Link".
  • The "Filmed in Jump-cut-o-vision" text is stylised in the same way as the Gerry Anderson "Filmed in Supermarionation" text seen at the start of Thunderbirds and the like.
  • To Sean Bean in this episode when talking on experimenting on formats, and it leads to a tangent on Sean Bean "being Sean Bean", which Tom attributes to being paid a lot.
  • Tom once pranked Matt at the height of Fifty Shades of Grey popularity the into making a Tumblr called "50 shades of Matt Gray"...which Matt did.
  • Matt directly shouts out Alfred Hitchcock in "You Successfully Stalked Us, Please Don't Do It Again" after Pigeons swarm where Matt and Tom are sitting.
• Stating the Simple Solution: In "14 Minutes, 47 Questions", one of the questions sent in asks why Tom used separate keys for every single flag on his emoji keyboard instead of using the characters which make up the flags. Tom's reaction clearly shows he hadn't considered this approach.
  Tom: I could've saved like three keyboards! Oh, come on!
• Stuff Blowing Up: The final video, where Tom blows up a park bench to say farewell to the series.
• Pungeon Master:
  • "Five Minutes in Matt's Mind", which is a look into the many puns Matt makes while free-associating words in his head, many of which are used as the prizes in Citation Needed.
  • The "Ideas Board" videos also tend to follow this pattern for Tom too, with puns of Cheryl Vole (on singer Cheryl Cole) and Freddie Printoff (pun on Freddie Flintoff, a cricketer) appearing.

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