Now that Splitsider wrote about it, I should tell you what happened on last night’s show. But that first means I should tell you how we build characters at TCGS:

Basically, we come up with something loose for a character. A real barebones idea to improvise around. Then we find an actor who we think can fit the bill.

I had the idea of having a character who was another MNN guy that hated me. (This is because the best ideas are rooted in reality and I do get crazy emails sometimes.) And I asked my friend Brett Davis if he wanted to play that idea out. Brett got to the studio around nine last night and me and him and Dru and JD started brainstorming the best way to do it.

We were pitching Brett jokes and he at one point quietly went “How real do you want me to go?” And we told him to follow his gut.

Brett is really fantastic. For years he’s pulled off characters of all different types on radio shows and in films and all kinds of places. And the last year in particular, he’s been lighting it up around New York City. He hosts the Macauley Culkin Show and always goes big and never half asses it. I love watching the guy. He gets into characters and he goes big with them. I’ve wanted to get him on #TCGS for a long time.

And what you saw on last night’s show is what happens when one of the most committed comedians I’ve ever seen plays it as real as possible. That’s really all we were going for - not to deceive or sadden or anything else - just to execute what we thought was a funny idea while handing it off to one of my favorite comedians in NYC right now.

On top of that, both Shannon and Murf were late to the show last night and had no idea it was happening. This made their reactions very raw and real. Emma also didn’t know, which is why if you watch the footage you can see her literally run over getting ready to punch Brett.

We never meant to “fool” anyone. This was just a bit in our minds. But it turned into a bit where an actor new to our show committed so hard and nailed it so much that everyone didn’t know what to believe.

This also underlines how dumb our show usually is. Most of our characters are like “Peg Leg Pegasus” or whatever and it’s just some guy we know from UCB laughing while he limps around with a horn on his head. Brett decided to go in a different direction and really dive into the character (and to recruit a friend of his to throw water on) and the results were different than anything we’ve seen out of #TCGS in years.

I have seen online that some of our fans are pissed at us and feel like we tricked them. We weren’t setting out to trick. We were setting out to put on a good comedy show. So I don’t really feel like I should apologize, so much as I should say that I am even more in awe of the comedic abilities of Mr. Brett Davis now than I was heading into last night. He nailed it to the point that people were writing essays and debating the meaning of community. That’s good comedy.

We never anticipated it, but I’m really glad it happened.

Now that you know it was in fact a bit, I invite you to watch it again and see how hilarious Brett is from start to finish.

Thanks for being a part of this show.

Sincerely,

Geth