"And welcome to TryHards! The show where I'm gonna make my friends...Try hard! note
We're gonna try
But it's gonna be hard
We're gonna try
'Cause we're the TryHards!
But it's gonna be hard
We're gonna try
'Cause we're the TryHards!
TryHards is a comedy web series by Thomas "TomSka" Ridgewell along with his co-hosts Elliot Gough
and Eddie "Eddache" Bowley, started in 2021 and released on the TomSka & Friends channel.
In each episode, the hosts have a week to complete a creative challenge, and viewers watch along with the three as they film their respective attempts in secret from one another before presenting their (usually chaotic) results. Thus far, it has run for 2 seasons, each consisting of 5 episodes, totaling 10 in total.
On October 17th, 2023, it was announced that Elliot Gough would be leaving TomSka & Friends in search of greater career opportunities. While the leave was amicable, it leaves the future of the series as currently unknown. A bonus 11th episode (intended for the 2nd season but delayed as a result of Tom's anxiety at the time) would later release on October 31st that same year, which ended with Elliot's official leave from the show and channel, and as of now acts as an unofficial Grand Finale.
Tropes present in TryHards:
- The Ace: Elliot in the initial episodes certainly comes off way, whereas Tom and Eddie don't sucessfully complete every challenge, on multiple occasions Elliot has completed the challenge multiple times.
- In the first episode, Elliot writes at least five songs that the viewers can see, though he only presents one of them at the end.
- In the third episode, he completes five separate trick shots, some of them twice, whereas Tom only gets one of his three different setups, and Eddie doesn't manage his single idea.
- In the fourth episode, Tom and Eddie's follower counts at the end of the challenge are in the single digits, Elliot reaches over 7000!
- The first episode of season 2 sees Elliot's film win the contest, which is extra impressive as he was sick with COVID-19 for part of it.
- Averted with the third challenge of Season 2, as Elliot lasted the least amount of time in his garden due to suffering a mental breakdown after 12 hours.
- Always Second Best: While Tom has yet to be the worst performing Tryhard, he has only won one out of the seven episodes as of 2022.
- As of Episode 3 of Season 2, he has won a second time.
- Episode 4 of Season 2 adds a third win for him.
- Baby See, Baby Do: When Eddie explains what he has planned for Making The Best Trickshot Ever!, his infant son Rik repeats after him and mimicks him, Eddie even pauses to let him finish his sentences.
- Rik does the same thing in Last One To Leave Their Garden Wins.
- Blatant Lies: Officially each challenge lasts "a week," but the hosts rarely bother to hide the fact that they're really stretching the definition.Eddie: It has been definitely one whole week!
Tom Shut up!
Elliot: Seven days! We got seven days to work on this!
Eddie: Not a day longer! - Bootstrapped Theme: The theme music for the series as a whole is composed by Elliot during episode one.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: A lot of the episodes open like this.
- From the opening of Can we turn £100 into £100,000?.
Tom: Did you get spit on my art?
Elliot: Ah, WHOOPS!
Eddie: Can I bet on children?- From the opening of How To Get Internet Famous In One Week
- Brick Joke: Off hand comments tend to bite contestants in the ass later on
- At the start of the episode Battle Bots on a Budget (don't try this at home), Tom mentions that he needs to design his robot so that it can't be defeated by being flipped on its back, three guesses as to how Tom ends up losing!
- Elliot mentions suffering from Long Covid in his practice VLOG and it ends up costing him dearly as he's unable to taste how terrible his food safe spray on coloring is.
- At the start of the episode Battle Bots on a Budget (don't try this at home)
- Coin-Targeting Trickshot: In "Making the Best Trickshot Ever!" Tom attempts to do a trickshot with one of his airsoft guns and some chocolate coins at first. Not only does he quickly realize how difficult to pull off it actually is, but that his airsoft guns are in a bad state of disrepair and keep misfiring, forcing him to try something else.
- Complexity Addiction: Eddie's challenge attempt in Trick Shot Showdown, for reasons best known to himself involves constructing an elaborate Rube Goldberg Device to activate when he lands his own trick shot.
- Crack Defeat: Despite being the best-prepared for the camping challenge, Elliot only lasted 12 hours in Last One To Leave Their Garden Wins due to suffering a mental breakdown and going back into his house, handing the victory over to Tom with 60 hours, and Eddie becoming the runner-up with 36 hours. Elliot continued the challenge anyway to provide footage, while also doing some gardening.
- Creepy Monotone: To disguise his voice, Elliot's persona in the episode How To Get Internet Famous In One Week uses a speech to text voice that reads out facts about bananas, followed by thinly veiled threats.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- In Turning Depression Into A Board Game, unlike Tom and Eddie, Elliot didn't playtest his own game, which was supposed to be a simpler version of Pokémon, so when the trio played it proper, they got a lot of ties. Elliot ended up admitting he failed to make Pokémon cards a better game.
- Tom's first VLOG in Making An Award Winning Film IN A WEEK has him question why he thought it was a good idea to go up against his writer and editor in a contest that plays to their strengths.
- In Making The BEST Cosplay EVER, Tom decides to cosplay as the Ever Given cargo ship that got stuck in the Suez canal in March 2021. Problem is, it would be a somewhat large costume, and he was making it inside his house, and realized he wasn't sure if he could fit it through his frontdoor.
- Eddie planned to eat bacon in Last One To Leave Their Garden Wins by using a stove he had in his garden. Unfortunately he didn't learn how to properly start a fire beforehand, and so couldn't get his bacons cooked, forcing him to rely on canned beans for meals and shortening his stay.
- Do Not Try This at Home: The boys say this at the start of We Made Terrible Fighting Robots before beginning the challenge, with Eddie specifically mentioning that they are professional idiots.
- Epic Fail: In Can we turn £100 into £100,000?, Tom, Elliot and Eddie were challenged to make a profit out of £100, Eddie went for gambling, in the end he lost all the money he was given, and to add salt to the injury, one of his bets had him guessing the name of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle' next child as Charlotte, not only was it already the name of one of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge's children, thus unlikely to be Harry and Meghan's chosen name for their future child, but he also wouldn't have had the results for weeks and couldn't cancel his bet.
- Excuse Plot: Invoked by Eddie's board game in Turning Depression Into A Board GameEddie: May I introduce you to Grandparadox! It's a game about going back in time and killing your own grandfather!
Tom: Why are we killing him?
Eddie: That's a very good question. - Flawless Victory:
- Elliot ended up with 7,523 followers on TikTok at the end of How To Get Internet Famous In One Week, whereas Tom and Eddie, who respectively went to Twitter and Twitch, didn't even get to the double digits. Granted, it was easier to get more traction on TikTok than the two other platforms.
- Eddie won all three board games the trio came up with in Turning Depression Into A Board Game.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: After Tom Scott joins the calling sesssion in the intro of Last One To Leave Their Garden Wins, he basically gets kicked out almost immediately.
- Gilligan Cut: At the beginning of the episode "Can we turn £100 into £100,000? (probably not tbh)", Elliot and Eddie discuss their views on gambling independently of one another.Elliot: There's also gambling, which I just do not want to be a part of as it just doesn't sit well with me morally. Throughout my life I know people who've been destroyed by gambling addiction.
Eddie: ...so I've joined this gambling website! - Improbable Aiming Skills:
- Subverted, though good with a gun, Tom definitely can't hit a coin in midair with a BB Gun.
- Downplayed with Elliot's multiple successes and Tom's actual success, Elliot's shots are done at sensible ranges, and though Tom did manage to throw a coin through a cardboard tube from about eleven feet away, it's also stated that it took him hours of non-stop attempts just to do it once.
- Instant Expert: Despite supposedly having never attempted any woodworking before, Tom surprises even himself at the quality of the miniture gallows he crafts for the episode How To Get Internet Famous In One Week.
- Kid Sidekick: Eddie's young son, Rik. Whenever arts and crafts are involved for the challenges, Eddie brings in Rik for a bit of help, but mostly as a child-parent activity.
- Lethal Joke Character: The winner of the boys' unbranded robot war in episode six ends up being Eddie's robot, Buzzkill, that uses a dustpan as its primary weapon, it barely damages the other robots but a skilful/accidental maneuver from Eddie allows him to use the dustpan's scoop to flip over Tom's robot outright, whilst avoiding getting flipped over himself.
- Loophole Abuse: As part of Last One To Leave Their Garden Wins, they weren't allowed to take their mobile phones. So Elliot took his laptop out with him to play City Skylines in the tent.
- Manipulative Editing: Played for Laughs, in the episode Trick Shot Showdown, with Tom and Eddie not having usable footage of a successful trick shot, they independently decide to edit together some obviously staged footage.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Tom and Eddie when Elliot reveals that his fighting robot has a drilldo. (Dildo attached to a power drill)
- Done by Tom and Eddie when Elliot reveals that he had a mental breakdown during Last One To Leave Their Garden Wins.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Eddie's persona during How To Get Internet Famous In One Week is to pretend to be a newbie streamer who doesn't know how to turn off his VTuber avatar.
- Only Sane Man: Charlie & Nat, Tom and Elliot's respective partners. Nat had to stop Elliot from going too far with the Bananananaman comments and Charlie stopped Tom from buying an and using a blowtorch with his fighting robot.
- Pyrrhic Victory: In the video Last One To Leave Their Garden Wins, Tom spends 60 hours suffering outside in an attempt to last nearly as long as Elliot - only for Elliot to reveal to he had a bad anxiety attack and went inside after only 12 hours.Tom: Are you fucking kidding me? I only went to 60 hours 'cos I thought you made it to like 80!
- Technician Versus Performer: Elliot is The Ace in the first four challenges where he can rely on creative skills such as song and joke writing, but seems to struggle later on when technical skills are involved, such as designing a mechanically balanced board game or modifying a remote-controlled car.
- Rule of Funny: A common thread with Eddie's challenge attempts, his priorities appear to be with the funniest possible outcome in mind rather than what will actually allow him to clear the challenge, Eddie will happily dash his chance at victory from the outset if he thinks it will net more laughs, such as spending his full £100 budget on various bets.
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Serendipity Writes the Plot: The format of the series wherein the hosts film themselves in their separate homes came about due to the COVID-19 Pandemic preventing them from filming in any shared spaces. After lockdown had finished they do the final presentations/challenges in the same room but keep the seperate filimg for their settup and practice. - Sexy Whatever Outfit: For the cosplay challenge, Elliot goes as Sexy Pirate Eggman.
- Strange Minds Think Alike:
- In Turning Memes Into Music, Tom and Elliot both come up with extremely similar songs about their dogs, though Elliot's final submission ends up being something else.
- In Making The Best Trickshot Ever!, both Tom and Eddie decide to independently edit together some footage to make it look like they successfully made a trickshot.Tom: The important thing is that Eddie and I didn't have the same joke.
- In Secret Cosplay at Comic Con, both Tom and Elliot originally wanted to base their cosplay on Dr. Eggman before Tom had to change plans due to time constraints.
- In Baking the Tallest Cake, Elliot and Eddie choose to make their tall cakes from smaller cakes acting as bricks rather than the traditonal layer cake.
- Simple, yet Awesome: A common thread with Elliot's challenge attempts, he will come up with multiple simple ideas per episode, which allows him to rack up challenge wins fairly easily.
- Sore Loser: Invoked in Making An Award Winning Film IN A WEEK. After Elliot won the challenge, Tom and Eddie recorded themselves clapping for Elliot, and acting like they were pretending to be begrudgingly taking their loss.
- Take That!: Two in "Baking the Tallest Cake"
- Tom: Welcome to Try Hards, the show where we all love our wives. note
- Less subtly, during his practice, Elliot wears an apron that says "Fuck the Tories".
- Writing Around Trademarks: In Baking the Tallest Cake, the lads dance around calling the challenge a "bake off" with Tom promising their challenge will be legally distinct.
