Best comedy of 2024: Make Some Noise
EAT! SOME! SHRIMP!
I’ve been flirting with a concept over the last few years which I’m calling my “everything show”. It’s TV or a podcast or even a YouTube series that isn’t just enjoyable, but becomes a weird foundational pillar in my life and begins to prop up my dribbling and broken psyche.
In 2024, my everything show was very clearly and definitively Dropout’s Make Some Noise, which began as a nice little improv treat and became a kind of constant whispering dialogue in the background of my house, like ghosts in the wall committed to some funny bits, or voices in my head doing very niche impersonations. My texts with several of my friends have gone from discussions about the events of our lives and our emotional wellbeing and the health of mutual friends, to random 3am quotes like “give me your teeth”, with no further context.
It’s the show I watch before dates to help put me in a performative and witty mood (gotta fool them into believing i’m fun for as long as possible), it’s the show I watch when I’m in a good mood and about to hang with friends or go to a party, and yet it’s also the show I watch when I’m feeling like shit to make myself feel better. It’s the show I watch before I do improv, and then it’s also the show I watched when I quit my improv team because of my needy dog and began to go loopy from lack of attention. From depressive to manic, my everything show is always there for me. Due to the structure, you can just kinda always watch random episodes on repeat - it’s rare that I’ve ever thought “Oh no i watched this one too recently”.
Make Some Noise is essentially a short-form improv game show, where three players are given prompts which they have to perform, either by themselves or in combinations with the group. The prompts are part of the genius of the show, as they are inherently funny themselves, but always leave room to expand the gag - and could be anything from dialogue heavy concepts like “two sea captains competing for who loves the sea more” to physical prompts like “spilling an entire lunch tray one item at a time”. The decision of where to take it - high concept, horny and blue, absurd and nonsensical - is entirely up to the performer.
While it’s a short-form improv format, which relies on the quick game style prompts, it never feels shallow to me like some examples of that genre can be. The majority of the performers have come through more long-form style training, and are often able to ground the prompts into the kind of character or narrative foundation from long-form that elevate it above “gag only” stuff. That said, every contestant is really funny, so some of the gag only stuff is just really good too.
Originally a popular segment of the flagship Dropout show, Gamechanger, Make Some Noise has since been spun off into its own three season show, hosted by Sam Reich, and each season beginning and ending with the original cast, the “Noise Boys”, Zac Oyama, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Josh Ruben. They are also producers of the show, so their humour is pretty obviously fundamental to it. If you’re looking for a place to start, I’d recommend going through all their episodes, even starting at Gamechanger if you can be bothered.
The Noise Boy episodes are great examples of the brilliance of the format - each of the players has a distinctive flavour to their comedy, and while they’re hilarious on their own, mixing them together gives us moments of brilliance. For example, Josh Ruben, whose work I’d previously not been exposed to is an accomplished physical comedian and impersonator, able to do wild sounds and mimicry, like his famous “1000 Batmans”, which is almost impossible to describe. Brennan is ridiculously funny at improvised monologues and huge conceptual swings, while Zac is a master of restraint and deadpan comedy. One of my favourite scenes ever is where Brennan is improvising a long monologue as Zac’s lawyer, and asks rhetorically “is my client a perfect man?” and Zac pipes up at the perfect moment with “No, I killed him yeah”.
As Zac says at one point: “sometimes it’s not about doing a bunch of stuff, sometimes it’s about not doing a bunch of stuff. And then sometimes, points reflecting, no it’s not.”
There’s also a scene where the prompt was “a sommelier who has never tasted wine before” where he ends it with “but it was cool hanging”, which has weirdly become part of my lexicon.
The interplay between each performer is beautiful - and in the regular format of the show, we’re constantly given different setups of different people, with all sorts of wildly differing energies. It becomes exciting when you recognise different performers, and wonder how they’ll react and combust with new combinations.
There’s literally nobody who I’ve ever disliked, and my list of absolute favourites has begun to spiral into an unmanageable length - I get very excited whenever there’s a Jiavani, Jacob Wysocki, Lisa Gilroy, Anna Garcia or Izzy Rowlands episode just to begin to name a few, as well as the original Noise Boys. It’s definitely some of the fun to almost Fantasy Football different combos of them.
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One of my absolute favourite guests is Vic Michaelis, who also hosts the Dropout show Very Important People. Their style of humour is utterly ridiculous and surprising, but also so poised and accomplished. It’s this kind of confident commitment to the bit that gets me every time. Cassandraaaaaaaaaa.
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Make Some Noise doesn’t just rely on the same style of prompts - in fact every so often they’ll also have episodes devoted entirely to musical improv performers or impressionists - and will often have mini games with different conceits. It’s in one of these, where the performers get to quickly dress up in costume prompts and create a character from them, where Vic managed to create probably my favourite Make Some Noise moment, and definitely the hardest I’ve laughed. While everyone else came up with lots of different, funny, characters, Vic just kept putting two fish on their hands and being the character “Edward Fishhands”. Then, after promising to “take it seriously”, came out dressed as “just a normal lady, regular hands”.
Kills me. The final instalment in the gag, which I won’t spoil, is perfect. GRANTED.
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I think the longevity of the show comes from a simple, repeatable premise that can’t get tired soon, and the ever-changing roster of new performers (including more high profile special guests like Ben Schwartz and Paul F Tompkins), plus the fact that people WANT to see their old favourites back.
As a long time member of the cult, it’s really cool seeing more improv on screen, and especially stuff that I think is completely enjoyable for those poor souls who haven’t devoted their lives to the pyramid scheme. It does feel unnatural - improv is a shameful secret that should live in the dark corners of our souls, not out in the public like this. But I’m glad it’s cool now.
I hope we get 10,000 more seasons, personally.
Patrick Lenton is an writer and author, and editor of Nonsense Newsletter. His new book ‘In Spite of You’ is coming out in 2025.
The timing of 'yeah, I killed him' is so good that it gets me everytime, even though I know it's coming.