My Brother, My Brother And Me: MBMBaM: The TV Show: The Commentary Track: The Second Episode

January 29, 2018 11:29 AM

To celebrate the launch of My Brother, My Brother and Me on iTunes and Google Play in the U.S. The McElroy Brothers are so proud to present a commentary track for the 2nd episode, "Resumes and Jamiroquai's Dad." They'll also be joined by showrunner and director J.D. Amato. It's fun! Catch it!

If you haven't listened yet, it includes a sync-up point so you can hit play at the same time as them.

posted by bleep (11 comments total)

I loved listening to this. I wish they would or could release all the unused footage, the deleted scenes often seemed funnier than what made it into the episode. Maybe we could kickstart an effort to take the unused footage and assemble proper hour-length episodes the way they should be.

I loved hearing the backstory about the Safety Town bit. One of the things that makes listening to the boys so enjoyable for me is how much I know exactly what they're talking about when they talk about their social anxiety, wanting to know the rules, and fleeing a situation when it becomes unbearable. However it sounds like they were able to generate a lot of that enjoyable, funny, relatable content by just sticking them into genuinely unpleasant situations which is probably not sustainable if they're ever going to do more seasons.
posted by bleep at 11:38 AM on January 29, 2018

That's pretty depressing to hear about SeeSo's meddling. One suspects they were ensuring all the content they produced met all the requirements for broadcast, either because of NBC or because they held out hope that the shows they produced could make it from internet-only to TV. A half-hour of three weird brothers would be easier to sell than an hour, even if they produced more than twice as much footage as would ever be seen. With SeeSo dead it's anyone's guess who holds the rights to that footage. A kickstarter-funded director's cut of the MBMBaM show would be great (likewise, a kickstarter-backed second season would be fine too...)

Hearing from J.D. Amato is cool too, the only reason the show worked at all is because they had a showrunner that understood how the brothers make comedy. It's possible that some of the bits would have worked better if they rehearsed and clued everyone in beforehand, but that's so counter to the McElroy's spontaneous style that I think he did the right thing in just letting them run wild and trying to catch as much of it as possible.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:01 PM on January 29, 2018

I was also surprised to hear how much of it actually was spontaneous, to the extent that Justin felt uncomfortable with his resume bit (which was hilarious).
posted by bleep at 4:03 PM on January 29, 2018

This was so good, and I completely would have missed this, if it wasn't for you, fellow MeFites. Thanks!
posted by bigendian at 5:06 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

For the record, here's the link to the first episode commentary which didn't get a FanFare post at the time.
posted by bleep at 6:37 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

With SeeSo dead it's anyone's guess who holds the rights to that footage.

VRV, a streaming service owned by the same holding company as Crunchyroll, bought MBMBAM (and Harmonquest and a few other properties) from Seeso before it went under.
posted by Itaxpica at 2:03 PM on January 30, 2018

I wonder if that includes also the rights to the unused footage or does that go back to their Big Giant Head production company?
posted by bleep at 2:25 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

ALSO I thought it was interesting that because they're "bad at contracts" they don't get a cut of any iTunes sales. I definitely bought it for that reason, though I would have bought it anyway to bolster their numbers.
posted by bleep at 3:19 PM on January 30, 2018

Man, I did not understand Justin's instructions for the sync up point. I ended up using them saying "Daddy!" when Clint showed up in the disclaimer.
posted by meese at 8:02 PM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

ALSO I thought it was interesting that because they're "bad at contracts" they don't get a cut of any iTunes sales.

Between this, and the overall lack of hustle demonstrated by their agent (as heard in the prestige podcast series The McElroy Brothers Will Be In Trolls 2) I really hope they're shopping for new representation in the entertainment arena.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:47 AM on January 31, 2018 [2 favorites]

Man, I did not understand Justin's instructions for the sync up point.

They made so little sense I thought they might be another part of the ARG. Why was he counting down to pressing pause? We will never know.

But, yeah, their frequent exclamations at seeing family and friends helped to sync things up, so it all came out in the wash.
posted by howfar at 3:23 PM on January 31, 2018