Website / Watcher

Not a cult.^* All Hail The Watcher.

Watcher is a company formed by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej of BuzzFeed Unsolved, and Steven Lim from Buzzfeed Worth It. They do three videos a week: a talk show called Watcher Weekly, one new episode of a season of shows, and an advice podcast called Here's What You Do.

The Shows:

• Puppet History, where a fuzzy blue puppet called The Professor challenges Ryan and a guest to learn about history, with the prize being a trophy of jelly beans. Spiritual Successor to Ruining History, Shane's other show on Buzzfeed.
• Watcher Weekly, where the three boys (usually) sit and chat.
• Homemade, where Steven will judge a restaurant-made dish of a nostalgic food, and then obviously a homemade version.
• Spooky Small Talk, where Ryan will interview a guest in a haunted house.
• The Quarantine Games, where they play Tales From The Yawning Portal. Shane is the DM and Ryan, Steven and Katie Leblanc all have their own characters.
• Tourist Trapped, where Ryan and Shane will explore a city and take each other to see tourist attractions and hidden gems.
• Making Watcher, a behind the scenes look at making the company.
• Hidden Narratives, a podcast where Steven will talk to Asian American people about the Coronavirus (and the racism that goes along with it) has affected them.
• Top 5 Beatdown, where Ryan and Shane rank their top five chips/fast food places/etc with an expert in the field.
• Here's What You Do, an advice podcast where the three guys (Steven - an optimist, Ryan - a pessimist, Shane - a nihilist, though as he explains he fits more The Anti-Nihilist) take a question each and give advice.
• Grocery Run, where Steven will foot the bill for a guest's groceries and they cook him a meal.
• Weird Wonderful World, where Shane and Ryan will go visit a quirky place.
• Are You Scared?, where Ryan reads Shane spooky stories from the internet.
• Too Many Spirits, where Ryan and Shane read ghost stories while getting progressively more drunk.
• Dish Granted, where Steven is given 24 hours to create a dish for the guest of the episode based on their request. He has no budgetary limit, but must prepare the food himself.
• Worth A Shot, where professional bartender Ricky Wang has to make cocktails using mystery ingredients.
• Ghost Files, a ghost-hunting show starring Ryan and Shane. Spiritual Successor to BuzzFeed Unsolved Supernatural.
• Trying History's Wildest Beauty Trends, where Selorm and guests explore and discuss historical beauty and fashion trends.
• Survival Mode, where Ryan and Shane play various horror video games.
• Mystery Files, spiritual successor to Buzzfeed Unsolved True Crime and the non-ghost hunt episodes of Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural featuring Ryan and Shane looking into various mysteries both criminal and paranormal, some solved and some not.

The Tropes:

• Academic Athlete: Both Steven and Ryan are very into sports and also have done really well academically, Ryan in film and Steven in engineering.
• Alter-Ego Acting: Ryan and Shane have a Running Gag that they’re actually actors called Brian Cramblish and Brad Pistachio playing friendly ghost hunters Ryan and Shane. Steven got in on it in WW 26, and Ryan looked so proud.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Shane explains his "nihilist" viewpoint in that he was thinks nothing matters in the grand scheme of things, but he was raised with a positive outlook and thinks people are essentially good. Death is inevitable but do your best.
• Audience Participation: Ghost Files allows viewers to submit any paranormal evidence they have on a particular location Ryan and Shane are visiting. In addition, in Debriefs, the duo acknowledge potential evidence that the viewers might see but they didn't during filming and editing and answer any questions viewers might have a lá Buzz Feed Unsolved.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Ryan mentions in the first Watcher Weekly that he and Shane have a jokey friendship where they’re not always genuine with each other, but that after the stress of filming Spooky Small Talk, Shane asked him if he was okay and did he need anything. The Puppet History patreon commentary for Affair Of The Necklace has them talk about basically the same thing happening in reverse, with Shane stressed and thanking Ryan for cooperating.
• Big Eater: Maia and Alex ask Steven if he has a fast metabolism for Worth It and he replies that he feels awful after shooting, and essentially runs it off. Ryan and Shane too, as on their patreon commentary for Tourist Trapped, agree incorporating salads on their taco/giant hot dog outings would probably make them feel better.
• The Cameo: Ricky Goldsworth definitely isn’t an Unsolved only thing, as much as Shane would like it to be.
• Caption Humor: Watcher Weekly, edited by Lauren, has tons of little caption jokes, either about the guys or after they say anything.
• Captain Obvious: Ryan and Shane tease Steven lightly for stating the obvious things like “your hand is on my shoulder”, and he explains later in the third HWYD that it’s a way for him to process.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: According to Spooky Small Talk, apparently both Shane (who responds to “a lot of girls liked you in high school” with “they should have told me”) and Ryan are oblivious to if someone has a crush on them.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Played for laughs, but Ryan and Shane always look so proud when Steven joins in their nasty boy bit.
• Crazy-Prepared: Dating In A Pandemic has Steven praise Ryan’s thinking of the worst case scenario because it’s helped them survive in a pandemic.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • On the race karts, once he gets used to them, Tyler spends most of the time roasting Ryan and Shane, who are both in full brat mode.
  • David and Melissa from the Shakespeare episode also get a few fond digs in there, especially when Shane and Ryan are attempting Hamlet.
• Discredited Meme: Even Ryan’s got in on the fun of watching Shane’s BFU-SPN unflappable persona crumbling with the flustered PSAs, admitting shit he’s scared of and the whole bit about wanting to be small.
• Double Standard: When asked about hate comments, and the three say they don’t get a whole lot, but tend to laugh it off when it happens, Steven acknowledges they’re partly lucky because they’re not women on the internet.
• Epic Fail: Neither of the ghoul boys do particularly well at bowling, but Shane does so bad that a lot of people assumed he was failing on purpose. Regardless, it gets him on a rollercoaster that actually scares him.
• Evil Laugh: Ryan can do an excellent(also cursed) witch’s cackle, which might have been the only thing in the first Are You Scared to creep Shane out.
• Everyone Has Standards: Both sides in the Mystic Museum with the ouija board and dousing rods (that everyone noticed were being moved by humans), as Ryan didn’t believe, and obviously Shane didn’t either, but still wanted to be respectful.
• Extreme Doormat: All three have talked about their people-pleasing non-confrontational habits. Shane in particular apparently stews when people aren’t like him (I.e assume disinterest and think he should just shut up) and can’t read the room for when others are disinterested.
• Family of Choice: Ryan, Steven and Shane are pretty open about platonically loving the other two (behind the scenes crew as well) and declaring previous shitty situations worth it because eventually they made Watcher.
• Fanboy: The whole premise of Weird Wonderful World is Shane taking Ryan to places that he thinks are weird and wonderful, but he especially loves the Independent Shakespeare Company, to the point that he tears up a little while telling them that.
• Food Porn: Homemade has plenty of gorgeous shots of food being prepared, both in a restaurant and at home.
• Foreshadowing:
  • To build up to Are You Scared, Ryan acted strangely in instagram stories, Watcher Weekly and the Patreon livestream, and said it was setting clues to the episodes, like listening against the wall is “the man in the wall”.
  • All the pop culture references that Steve made and none of the others got lead to his backstory reveal of having Steven Spielberg as his dad who abandoned him.
• Freudian Trio: Over on Here’s What You Do, Ryan is the ID, who admits to overthinking emotionally, Shane as the Superego because he deals by shoving emotions down, and Steven as the ego, who still has a lot of anxiety but tries to deal with it in a healthy way.
• Friendship Moment: Ryan and Shane’s “I love you man, I love you too” at the end of Spooky Small Talk, Shane telling Steven he radiates love for people in the DnD, Steven and Ryan hugging in Watcher Weekly, etc.
• Fun with Subtitles: The Watcher sound effect is always captioned different, like “but soft, what ping through yonder video dings?”, or “applauding tourists approach, a synchronized snap of cameras”.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Shane and Ryan swear plenty, but Steven makes an effort to keep his language a PG rating.
• Graceful Loser:
  • Shane acts pouty when losing to Ryan in Go Karts and according to the commentary, some of the crew did actually ask if he was okay. He explains that he was more worried about the episode and while genuinely doesn’t like beefing it, doesn’t care about losing/competing.
  • Steven turns a roast from Ryan about basketball into the fact that he likes losing so there’s room to get better.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Shane and Ryan are especially crackheady in Weird Wonderful World (the moustaches help), and get so into their bits with each other that you can see some owners looking just a little confused.
• Imaginary Enemy: In "Are You Scared Yet?" the boy gains one when moving into the new house.
• Jump Scare: The premise of Spooky Small Talk is that Ryan takes his guests/friends through a haunted house and asks them questions while the horror actors do their jobs. To nobody’s surprise, when it was Shane’s episode he only barely jumped once.
• Laughing Mad: During the build up to “Are You Scared” where Ryan was acting weird/like he was being haunted, the Watcher twitter posted a clip of a Patreon livestream where Ryan’s camera is just a doll hanging upside down, and Ryan offscreen suddenly jump scares a hysterical cackle. Shane doesn’t like it.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Apparently very drunk on bourbon, Shane shared that he texted Ryan that he should get into cigars so he can be called Ryan Cigara, and Ryan knew him well enough to glean immediately that he was blasted.
• Lampshade Hanging: The fifth Watcher Weekly has a little Ricky Goldsworth in creeper mode, and Shane teases that they should leave that over on the Unsolved channel.
• Large Ham:
  • Steven as Stephanos milks his injury scenes (of which there are a few) for all he’s worth.
  • Both Shane and Ryan manage to be hyper and hammy even in narration sometimes, like in Tourist Trapped’s beginning where they sound like they’ve had a lot of sugar.
• Minority Show Ghetto: Discussed in-universe by Steven and Philip Wang in Grocery Run, who talk about the latter’s production company getting comments like “I’m not Asian so I shouldn’t watch this”.
• Mood Dissonance: Spooky Small Talk is all about Ryan asking serious questions to his guests/friends (like Zach’s autoimmune disease, or Shane developing Nerves of Steel thanks to being in customer service) while the haunted house actors try to scare them.
• Mood Whiplash: Here’s What You Do can go from five minutes talking about poop to genuinely talking about friendship breakups and knowing when to walk away.
• Mundanger: The episode "Are You Scared of Being Home Alone?". No supernatural twist, just a story about a random home invader (possibly hopped up on drugs) looking to hurt or even kill the narrator just for fun, a fate said narrator only just narrowly avoids by finding a good hiding spot. The worst part? It really happened.

• Not So Above It All: Steven is deemed the less crazy one but every so often he’ll come out with something that’ll disgust the other guys, like in the first episode of Here’s What You Do when he admits he's pissed in a friend’s shoes.
• Only Sane Man: Steven often says he’s the most normal one out of the three, and as he can be plenty weird himself, tells you all you need to know about Ryan and Shane.
• Overly Long Gag: Ryan’s admitted to knowing when a bit is done, and pushing even harder cos there might be more humor at the end of it. Shane likes to take the baton and run with it, and Steven likes to leave him hanging.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Steven doesn’t watch a lot of film/TV, and Shane and Ryan love their long tangents about movies. He gets his own back in a WW+ where he talks to Brittney about k-dramas.
• Porn Stache: Ryan and Shane intentionally have “creepy” moustaches in season one of Weird Wonderful World to make their already weird twosome energy even weirder.
• Precision F-Strike: Steven wants to save swearing for statements he thinks really needs it, so when he calls Trump a fucking nightmare, it makes Ryan shudder cos he’s so not used to Steven swearing.
• Primal Fear: Tumblr on an answer time asked them what they were scared of, and it went from Shane’s more memey fears of heroin and avocados and Ryan saying he’s scared of everything, to more existential like Steven (and the other two agree) being scared of hurting people, and all three of them admitting they’re afraid of making anyone angry.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Grocery Run has Steven trying to guilt Philip Wang into trying durian with big sad eyes and saying he has lots of fans in Malaysia.
• Racial Face Blindness: #15 has Ryan and Steven snarking on a comment from a while back not being able to tell them apart.
• Retool: The premise of the first two seasons of Are You Scared? was that some of the stories being read were true and Ryan and Shane had to guess whether each story in a given episode was real. The intention was clearly to make some stories even scarier by revealing that they really happened, but instead, it usually made the story seem depressing and insensitive to the real human suffering involved. As a result, this format was abandoned in favor of Ryan simply reading short fiction and creepypastas while he and Shane goof about them.
• Running Gag: Quite a few, along with some returning from BuzzFeed Unsolved:
  • Shane's obsession with how weird the concept of cousins is.
  • Steven having an Unknown Rival relationship with Ricky the bartender.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • Shane calls Worth It “like Unsolved but with five times more views”. Ryan turns it into an affectionate Roast and says “five times more views but one fifth of the quality”.
  • As much as he and Shane tease Steven for all the fancy food he eats on Worth It, Ryan can roast himself for being a Big Eater, calling himself a human pig.
• Serious Business: The whole point of Top Five is to act really serious and competitive about things (like food) that don’t really matter.
• Sincerity Mode: Here’s What You Do has plenty of funny and chaotic energy like their other shows, but all three of them also share personal stuff and actual advice (even if it’s just admitting they can’t help), to the point where Shane at the end of third podcast asks for dumb questions as a breather.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Out of the four episodes included in Ryan’s Spooky Small Talk trailer, Shane’s doesn’t appear at all.
• Shown Their Work: Spooky Small Talk is mostly interviewing Ryan’s friends, and if it’s people he already knows well (like girlfriend Mari or best friend Shane), he’ll still do a ton of research and ask family/high school friends so he can tailor the interviews better.
• Shout-Out:
  • Ryan ends up being a bit of a speed demon at go-karts, and screams “what a lovely day!” at one point.
  • Ryan references the Hot Daga in the DnD with another wakey wakey Painful Rhyme. In his defense he had a fair bit of Chardonnay.
• So Proud of You:
  • At the end of his Spooky Small Talk, Zach tells Ryan that he and the Try Guys are proud of him for starting a new channel.
  • Shane has a big smile of relief when he manages to appreciate the Shakespeare company without getting too flustered, and Ryan says he’s proud of him.
• Small Reference Pools: The guys are around thirty, and the fandom ranges from 10 years old to 50, and one of Katie’s notes for them is that they keep making references their twenty year old fans don’t get.
• Spiritual Successor: Steven calls Homemade the more mature grown up version of Worth It.
  • Are You Scared?, at least in its pre-retool seasons, carried the spirit of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. post-retool, it instead acts as an internet horror story version of Tales from the Crypt or Are You Afraid of the Dark?.
• Stylistic Suck: Ryan intentionally made his living room a mess for Top Five Beatdown, and had a laugh about premiering after Steven’s gorgeous looking Homemade.
• Swapped Roles:
  • Gleefully to SPN-Unsolved in Tourist Trapped, as on the roller-coaster Ryan is delighted and Shane’s the one who looks like he’d rather die.
  • In general, Watcher Weekly 30 has Ryan and Shane talk about their roles in Unsolved be straight man and comedy respectively, while in Weird and Wonderful, Ryan’s the goofier one and Shane’s the one taking it more seriously.
  • Also in Go Karts and Roller Derby, where Ryan being the jock that he is does pretty well and enjoys himself, while gangly and definitely not into sports Shane looks terrified.
• Take That!: The tourist bus in Tourist Trapped passes The Laugh Factory (where Michael Richards spewed racist slurs) and the boys have a snarky giggle about “that’s where Kramer died”.
• Team Dad: So often Steven will act like the tired dad to Shane and Ryan’s five year old energy, especially when they go off on tangents in HWYD. If they use the age filter to make themselves look like babies he’ll go along with it.
• Tears of Joy: In the first Homemade, Melody cries after tasting the dumplings, because both it’d been a long day and it reminded her of her grandma.
• Token White: Shane is the only white man with Mexican Japanese Ryan and Malaysian Chinese American Steven, and is more than happy to self-deprecate about it.
• Toilet Humor: These guys (mostly Ryan and Shane, but Steven will join in too) will talk at any point about bodily functions, like whether eating over fifteen oreos will make your shit smell like them.
• Troll: Steven takes great joy in watching a jetlagged Ryan try to do the bits he usually would with Shane around, not taking part and so Ryan ends up looking even more unhinged than normal.
• Unsatisfiable Customer: Shane’s had a few horror stories from working in customer service, and his advice is to keep being cheerful so they get really pissed and storm off.
• Verbal Tic: Mostly Shane and Ryan, though Steven started doing it too, add an Austin Powers-like “baby!” at the end of sentences a lot.
• Victory Gloating: Ryan wins the go kart race against Shane, and relishes the opportunity to rub it in his face.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Shane and Steven were awkward alone at first, but eventually all possible combos of the three mix roasting with wholesome friendship.

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