Total Forgiveness Review/Essay
"Ally is a sweet nice person who is not gonna hurt me"- Grant O'Brien
I strongly believe that all good comedy should have a strong vein of tragedy running through it. Comedy and Tragedy are the two oldest types of human stories (not sure if that is true but it sounds deep and pretentious so i am keeping it in). Dropout's work I feel is either excellent at this or terrible at this, and is one of the reasons improvisational comedy fascinates me so much (coming from a TTRPG background).
Whether it is The guests on Very Important People with Vic Michaelis (and Vic themselves most of the time) who are presenting their often very broken and lonely selves to the world (all while Vic's life is slowly falling apart) in a show as absurdist as it is beautiful and funny, or the performers in Make Some Noise creating a hilariously sad snippet of a character's life, I find that the best comedy is always simultaneously a bit depressing. It might be a symptom of growing up British, and watching Peep Show, Getting On and bits of The Office in my formative years (not to mention David Firth, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared and so many others) but I find comedy with a tragic core deeply compelling.
What astounds me about Total Forgiveness is the fact that it is able to use its format and platform in such an interesting way. The show knows that you know these two people from all of their comedy work in the past, it knows that you know their co-workers because you are likely a Dropout (well, back then it was College humour) nerd and many of those watching will likely have parasocial relationships with these people (and that ends up being correct if you go and read about the responses to the show afterwards).
You, as the viewer, have expectations about their characters, about their decisions and actions and what will come of the show. The format seems very familiar to begin with - being in the same tradition as the great american reality-exploitation shows where the financially needy compete for money for the viewer's enjoyment - but soon collapses, and gets more abstract the longer you go on.
The show is pitched (and it is pitched in front of your eyes in the first episode) as a way to highlight the horrific student loan situation in the US, but this seems initially all but a farce to get the company to pay off Ally and Grant's student loans. For the first few episodes, it does seem like the veneer of documentary is an excuse to do stupid things for money - they will have a segment here or there discussing student loans before changing over to something else. You forget, sometimes, that they really do need this money.
What really elevates the show are the last few episodes. The challenges get ever so slightly more cruel as the show goes on - Ally being made to day drink for a whole week, all the terrible things Grant is made to do (which I will refrain from mentioning here) - and there seems to be a very real split happening between the two friends we have been rooting for so far, as they each desperately try to make the other forfeit the challenge. What really makes this special, and makes it so much more complex than most other shows of its kind is the fact that both Ally and Grant are the producers of the show - they can shoot down ideas they don't think they want to do, they realy have much of the power in the series and yet they still choose to do these. Grant goes into the entire show as someone playing a game - not cheating, not trying to find any loopholes, just playing and trying his best. Ally on the other hand, sees it as more of a competition, both making harder challenges, but also really throwing themselves into doing challenges which literally everyon else tells them not to do. Neither of these people are wrong for what they are doing, but it is what they do and it means that they end up in vastly different financial situations by the end of the show.
As someone who loves House Of Leaves, I adore when the form and medium of a piece of art becomes the way the metaphors are presented, and for Total Forgiveness, the very act of making it in itself is what gives is message so much weight - made somehow ever the more real because it is made by the people I most closely associate with funny internet improv shows (where neither money nor the rest of the real world can intrude) and however much we can be aware of it, there are inevitably some expectations going in, which the makers are acutely aware of.
I would not recommend this as an introduction to Dropout at all. It is something to be watched once you have a sense for the cast and what they do now, because this is probably now a relic from the past of Dropout, and the past of the internet. It is, however, a masterpiece (however accidental) and very effective at what it tried to achieve.
As well as its message on debt, I am slowly but surely being convinced to pay a monthly fee to watch people do improv on the internet (and apparently write an essay on the show on letterboxd), which, however outrageous that sounds to you, somehow makes sense to me now.
Now off to watch Kingpin Katie! (though more realistically I need to finish Very Important People Season 3)