By Melinda Kern
Elm Staff Writer
Coming from completely different worlds of entertainment, ABC’s police procedural “The Rookie” and Dropout’s improv comedy show “Game Changer” crossed over on season 8 episode 9 of “The Rookie,” which aired on March 2.
The episode features the relationship drama and high stress situations common to any episode of “The Rookie” with one of the episode’s plot lines featuring police officers Nolan (Nathan Fillion), and Celina (Lisseth Chavez) investigating an equipment robbery at the Dropout studio.
The real Dropout is an independent streaming service that features the show “Game Changer” alongside other unscripted, scripted, and game shows such as “Dimension 20,” a popular tabletop role-play game show, and “Gastronauts,” a comedy cooking show. Formerly owned and operated by the Company CollegeHumor, Dropout has come into great success in the past few years.
According to Polygon, “Game Changer is one of the earliest shows produced for Dropout, back when that was just the name of CollegeHumor’s streaming service… As the title ‘Game Changer’ implies, the game…changes each episode, and the players have no idea what the rules are before the episode begins.”
Various cast and crew of Dropout’s show play character versions of themselves in the “Rookie” episode including host and owner of Dropout Sam Reich along with Vic Michaelis, Jacob Wysocki, Zac Oyama, and Anna Garcia. They all make Nolan and Celina’s job of trying to gather clues about the robbery very difficult as they devolve into various improv bits and impressions instead of focusing on finding the robber.
The why Dropout and ABC decided to bring together such different shows and audiences with this crossover is unclear. The independent streaming company and conglomerate of Disney seem diametrically opposed to one another both structurally and culturally. Dropout promotes itself as a politically progressive streaming service, whereas “The Rookie” and other police procedural shows are built on maintaining a conservative status quo, through a technique commonly called “copaganda.”
In an interview with the New York Civil Liberties Union, Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps, says that “having narrowed our conception of threat and made us more and more afraid, [copaganda] tells us that the solution to all of our fears is more and more investment in the punishment bureaucracy.”
Copaganda frequently depicts a narrow conception of only violent crime, which in the real world are statistically unlikely to happen to most people. The perpetrators of these crimes are frequently portrayed as strangers and those from marginalized communities. Further, most police procedurals portray state-sanctioned violence as the only way to maintain order.
According to Indie Wire, “[Dropout positions] itself as ethically transparent, diligently pro-artist, and structurally opposed to traditional Hollywood incentives. In theory, the company is not designed for revenue maximization, instead prioritizing employee profit-sharing and sustainable growth.”
This significant difference between these shows and companies calls into question the values of Dropout. Reich was asked by Variety what he thought about the Dropout fan divide between excitement about the crossover and disappointment at Dropout promoting copaganda.
“[The] opportunity to expose Dropout to a big audience – one that’s probably not already familiar with us – felt too good to pass up. We owe everything to our fans, who are super passionate and hold us to a high standard, so it’s perhaps inevitable that we upset folks sometimes,” Reich said in an interview with Variety.
Yet, the version of Dropout and “Game Changer” that is introduced to fans of “The Rookie” presents the host and improv artists as the foolish butt of the joke and distraction for the cops Nolan and Celina rather than a show “The Rookie” viewers may actually want to watch.
This crossover does present Dropout to a larger audience, but whether the publicity was worth the backlash from their current audience remains unclear. The shows come from such different worlds that the slim overlap between intended audiences likely will not bring new viewers to the still growing streaming service or convert Dropout fans into loyal “Rookie” watchers.
“The Rookie” will continue with its eighth season and currently there are no plans for a crossover the other way around with characters of “The Rookie” participating in a “Game Changer” episode.
Photo Caption: Improv comedy show “Game Changer” and police procedural “The Rookie” recently shared an unprecedented crossover episode.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons