Harland walked Sam Hyde like a dog. A gorilla dog. But that isn't surprising to me; I think Harland has been absolutely crushing it since he started up the Highway and got back into the limelight. He's got a weird irreverent style. It's an approach reminiscent of Norm MacDonald, although they both have / had very different executions / tones. Been thinking he has been somewhat filling that Norm void in his own unique way for a while now. I don't watch Kill Tony often but whenever Harland is on, I'll actually sit through a good chunk of it.
I ain't a diehard Sam Hyde / MDE fan, but I think they are great in their own way. Nick is often off-the-cuff hilarious and definitely shines in Scuffed Realtor. Charls has an entertaining crackpot conspiracy vibe. Eric nails the roles in skits but seems pretty reserved outside of sketches, kind of a sleeper. All the Alex Schultz standup I've seen is insanely unhinged and entertaining. And I think Sam really hits his stride when he is playing strange, almost horror-tinged characters, like the Guilt Simulator, or just the short videos on Insta they'll post where it is him making the weird constipation face edited behind a peephole of a front door and SFX of someone trying to break in. Or when he goes full goofy with things like Candyman or the Ted Talk.
All the same, I think my favorite aspect of any MDE related content is the epic graphics and animation designs between sketches. The Alex Bot set, for example, was a genius multimedia setup...he is lip-syncing and pantomiming to prerecorded / designed audio, they have 7 camera angles, the MGS style intro, the sound design of all the voice acting. You can tell there was lots of genuine effort put into that. That specific layer of the MDE comedy...the culmination of their multimedia coming together...is really their golden goose. And that's a clear Tim and Eric influence, although when MDE is on point I'd say they have way better editing. (But then have a ton of other shit that looks like mediocre cell phone footage with a murky lens.)
The podcast with them all was definitely entertaining. Harland carried it effortlessly. The MDE crew were too reserved; should've spoken up more. And Sam just seemed paranoid. The numbers are pretty damn good so all in all I'd say they made a success out of it. I imagine they paid him for any gear that got trashed. The desk flip wasn't even that bad, but the whole grabbing Harland and shaking him, then later putting an elbow to his neck just seemed unnecessarily hostile. Nick was visibly having a 15-minute panic attack. I think after sperging out Sam realized Harland had got in his head big time and staggered him, so he tried to smooth it over by inviting him to their comedy show, but by then it was too late. Sorta like the Dennis Reynolds rant in Always Sunny about starter cars, then he looks around and the guy he was screaming it had just walked away, and he realizes he just sounded like a psycho. Harland's team editing out all the plugs was hilarious and seemed like a half-assed gag referencing the very animation shit MDE does I was just praising earlier in this post. But overall Sam just didn't riff well, prime example being the "Cunnilingus County" setup Harland gave him that he completely botched.
A funny joke no one seemed to catch on to or point out...as Sam was flipping the table, Harland was making gorilla noises.
But I'm drunk and rambling. Found the whole thing entertaining. Harland is a gangster. I'll pirate the new Extreme Peace season when it pops up somewhere, I ain't paying for that shit, but definitely wanna watch it.
for once and very pathetically tried to, if you'll excuse the phrase, flip the table on him but it was completely ineffectual, and trying to "The Weak Should Fear the Strong"-arm him after that failed to get a reaction backfired even harder as Harland flipped the Bigdogging back around on him by no-selling it. Just a masterclass in completely disaming this carfeully crafted but shallow image of a tuff guy Sam's tried hard over the last decade to build for himself. A humiliation ritual of his own making.
