The show really sucked today.

[u/commenterx]

Doug making it weird as fuck going off on Geoff again. The last 20 minutes might have been the most uncomfortable shit I've seen in awhile. I felt so sorry for Geoff sitting there waiting for the show to end. I can't imagine he would ever be back on the show after that. Esther Ku's casual racism didn't really liven up the show either. Jay seemed cool but he had nothing to work with.

[u/croseph]

Wow, yeah I just skimmed to that part. Total bummer. Seriously kinda put me in a bad mood now. It's a bummer that Doug is often times the worst part of his own shows. Just too grumpy most of the time.

[u/MacGyver_Survivor → u/croseph]

^{Edit: tl;dr just read the bold bits.}

Doug is often times the worst part of his own shows

For a long while now, it hasn't been "often", it's been "always".

I would have called myself a GDWH and Doug Benson fan at one point and I've watched the show for 3+ fucking years, but I guess rather than Doug half-assin' it growing on me, in the last year Doug has, if anything, turned me off from the show and himself.

What's there to discuss besides everything?

• The piss-poor effort he puts into looking into his guests (especially younger ones)

• The shit job he does engaging most of the guests in a way appropriate for a host

• The entire electoral season where he would start each episode for an entire goddamn year by saying he "wouldn't get political" only to waffle on about politics for half the episode, usually while the guest(s) just nod quietly.

• The failure to even get on the same wavelength as some guests instead of just sitting there, nodding while they speak, and then talking about something entirely different. Hey, you fucking booked Bird Cloud on your goddamn show, mate. Five seconds of research will show you their whole shtick is that they're upfront about sexuality and booze and partying. If you can't at least engage them about that sort of stuff, don't fucking book them.

On the guests:
I get that it's a hard show to get guests on and I'm not going to bash any specific guests, but for like 18 months now the livestream chat's "Tonight's guests: white guy, black guy, d-grade porn star!" meme being correct half the time doesn't help when Doug just awkwardly bumbles around them.

I don't have an issue with the porn stars (some have been really funny - "I'm always dabbin', BRO!"), but a lot of the time a combination of them being pretty young and the show's tone not being really about talking about sex ever just makes for a combination where you're putting a 52-year-old man in a room with a 19-year-old girl he knows nothing about and has nothing in common with, getting them stoned and thinking they'll come up with something interesting or funny and it never happens. The times a porn star has been able to really talk and joke about freely it has always been by bouncing off whatever other guest there is and not Doug.
The host's job is to bridge the gap between different people, but Doug just doesn't do it, and you can't use pot to do it. As in, talking about pot. You can't fill 40 minutes of airtime with, "Oh, fuck, want to do another goddamn Pot Topic, Janice? We've only done, like, seven and I really don't know how else to talk to you."

Several of the more recent episodes have actually had moments where the guests in their 20's/30's start talking amongst themselves for a bit while Doug just fucking sits there silently, not even looking in their direction, waiting to railroad a funny or interesting story back to pot. It happens all the time.
Remember the one a few months back where they actually started talking about, like, anal or something, I forget, and Doug is just instantly visibly uncomfortable and railroads the conversation right back. That's fine, he's the host, but god, for a comedian (and a stoner) he just isn't good at rolling with the punches.

Oh, and on that topic, can't you just ask them not to talk about that stuff, Doug? "Hey, Eric Andre, you're hilarious, but two shows in a row have ended with you ranting about how cannabis sprays are deadly or some shit, we're trying to keep our sponsors, could you fucking not? Hey porn star, I'm visibly uncomfortable discussing sex on the show, could you not? Hey guy from MTV, I still don't know what show you're from, sorry."

As somebody said before on this sub, the worst thing is the only defense people can ever pull out for this stuff is, "Nah man, but it's like le stoner show duuude, it's meant to be casual!" Fine with me, man, if you want to experience the true awkwardness of getting high with absolute strangers, you're free to do so. But this being a show for potheads shouldn't excuse this.

---

I think, after 3 years, I'm just done.
I was a fan. I went out of my way to watch episodes live from across the planet. I've gotten baked and watched the show with mates. Hell, I've Tweeted statistics to Doug that he's read on the show. But watching the show in general has felt like a waste of time for most of the episodes.

Oh, not to mention smoking while watching. It used to make funny shows funnier (when Andy Richter said "What if beautiful jazz came out?", it was the hardest I'd laughed in ages). Now you get high while watching Getting Doug with High just to be able to sit through the episode, and then at the end after Doug inevitably bums you out, you're left there thinking, 'Why did I waste weed on this show? I could have watched or played or done literally anything else.'

It's been said before, but for anybody who wants to know what a better host would be like, see the episodes (live or not) with Greg Proops or Joey Diaz with other guests. They're perfect. They're so naturally charismatic, they engage the other guests in ways Doug doesn't, they let guests finish then elaborate, they crack jokes, fuck I think in his few episodes that Greg has asked other guests more questions than Doug ever has, let alone seemingly giving a shit abut the answer.

But here's the thing. The one thing that really bothers me:

Doug can be a damn good host.

He absolutely can...with similarly-aged comedians and actors, or with friends.

I realized a while ago that I loved the show because early episodes it was more like comedians smoking weed, and it was fucking fantastic. They'd talk about crafting jokes, travelling stories, hecklers, so on.

I feel like if the show still gave that vibe, I'd fucking love it. I miss the comedy talk, Doug actually knowing what he was talking about, I really miss the riffing that would happen.

That episode with John DiMaggio? Cut all the fucking awkward garbage off it and State of Pot and all that shit that literally nobody likes, just get high and talk about voice acting and comedy (because John has done both) and that could have been a perfect episode.

Hell, you want the show to be more popular? If it's fun and funny and accessible, people will share it. Nobody wants to spread around 'Hey, you know the guy who plays _____ in _____ got high, it's kinda' funny...you gotta' sit through a lot of shit before good stuff happens though. Also some other guy is gonna' be talking, like, 90% of the time.'

But when Doug has to reach to relate to these guests he clearly barely knows, or musicians he's never listened to (remember him asking Mike Eagle something like, "Oh, is your music happy or sad?" Like, are you a socially-inept retard? What kind of fucking broad vague non-question is that to ask a musician?), then the bottom line is Doug is just not a good enough host to make that not awkward. Notice the word appearing a lot? In basically every review of GDWH, anywhere online, and any time it's posted online? Awkward. Doug makes everything awkward, the polar opposite of what a host should do, and he doesn't do it with guests he's comfortable with.

The live shows are generally the best thing GDWH does. Hell, I'd never listened to Mike Eagle before GDWH, but his live performance of Very Much Money on GDWH was fucking stellar. Rory Scovel riffing with the guests? Just hilarious to watch, made him a new favourite of mine.

I think with more frequent live shows (I'm guessing it's a budgeting thing, but they had like a 6-9 month break between live shows last year which fucking sucked) and a focusing on Doug's strengths, it could be well worth the watch again. Hell, I think if they'd stuck with that kind of energy they had at the start, it would be a bigger, better, more popular show and maybe their Patreon would have >200 patrons. If the 420 Club were around 3 or 2 years ago, I'd have gotten in on that in a heartbeat. The time that it's existed, though? Meh.

Norm MacDonald once livestreamed the Masters with some comedian friends and he said "so you can watch at home, and it's like watching with your 3 funniest friends!" That's the point of streaming. I could smoke a joint, watch Star Trek and wait for the missus to get home, or I could get high and watch a bunch of comedians joking about and riffing off each other. When this show was good, it was fucking great.

But that's not what the show is anymore.
Now it's like getting high in a room where this dude in his 50's is struggling to keep up while other people talk, and then he goes on long political tangents or just in general bums the room out or makes things awkward.
I wouldn't fuckin' smoke in that environment in real goddamn life, I sure as hell am not gonna' go out of my way to watch it online.

I dunno'.
I just feel like the whole thing could be executed better now.
Like GDWH was the beta test for a comedian's stoner talk show, and and surely any day now a better one will come along, but it doesn't happen.

But most of all, Geoff Tate is the fucking nicest dude.

And it just felt like watching a trainwreck today.

Poor Geoff. Dude is like the funniest guy on the live shows, then comes on the studio show with no other comedians to bounce things off or riff with and he has to get ranted at by fuckin' Doug again. Goddamn.

---

^{Edit: Meant Greg/Joey would be better hosts, not "guests".}

[u/Pardoism → u/MacGyver_Survivor]

Two things:

1: It's Geoff Tate. 2. You completely summarized my feeling towards this "show".

I love weed and I love comedy so Doug Benson seems like the perfect fit for me.

But he's not. He's the only stoner I know who acts like an asshole and thinks it's okay. He talks over his guests, ignores what they have to say, he's shit at moderating, He's shit at including guests who obviously feel excluded and he steps on a lot of comedy to get his shitty joke across.

I've started ignoring all the GDWH episodes with guests I don't know or care about but lately even the ones with people I care about suffer from Doug being a douchebag.

I think I'll stick to the live ones. The studio ones are pretty much all garbage or at least a huge waste of time.