Last Talent Standing – Game Changer S8 Finale Review
Finally, we have reached the finale of Game Changer Season 8! I feel like I've said something similar for almost every other episode, but seriously, this is the episode I was most curious about from the very small glimpse of it we got in the season trailer, and it really didn't disappoint.
Um, actually, no spoiler warning for this one! This post doesn't go over who won, who lost, or even any really big moments of the episode. There's some minor stuff, but nothing that wasn't given away with the trailers and teasers for the episode. You may proceed!
Last Talent Standing is the grand finale of Game Changer Season 8, which I was sure of since the trailer first came out; there is absolutely no way that an episode with over twenty contestants wouldn't be the finale. I had no idea of what the game was gonna be, so I never made a real prediction, but I did see a lot of people comparing the jumpsuits they were wearing to those of Squid Game, so I had the feeling it would be something elimination-based. As it turns out, that was correct!
The game is pretty simple, it's a talent show… that's it. The contestants all have to show off a talent to three judges, and if it doesn't impress them they're eliminated, and that repeats until there is one person remaining. In later rounds they got access to some props, in one of the rounds they had to pair up temporarily, and as it went on the eliminated players returned as additional judges in case the main judges didn't make a unanimous decision, but that's it, the core of the game remained a simple talent show!
As I alluded to earlier, the main reason this episode excited me is that it had so many contestants, 23 of them! And yes, I am about to list them, they were: Jiavani, Persephone Valentine, Kaylin Mahoney, Ele Woods, Zach Reino, Katie Marovitch, Kimia Behpoornia, Jordan Myrick, Kurt Maloney, Anna Garcia, Caldwell Tanner, Demi Adejuyigbe, Jacquis Neal, Brian David Gilbert, Jess McKenna, Ify Nwadiwe, Raphael Chestang, Hannah Pilkes, Oscar Montoya, Erika Ishii, Grant O'Brien, Jacob Wysocki, and Josh Ruben.
The judges were three stand-up comedians, Maria Bamford, Kumail Nanjiani, and Gianmarco Soresi. I really like the dynamic they all bring, with Gianmarco being the mildly mean Simon Cowell-type judge, Maria being an absolute wildcard, and Kumail being more neutral and generally reasonable.
Given the simple format and sheer length of the episode (1h 27m 13s, the longest single-part episode ever by a lot, and third longest if you include multiple-parters), it's hard to talk about all that happens in it simply due to how much there is, similar to What's The Catch. There are some general design things I can talk about though, so at least I can do that!
Firstly, I love the set! It's mostly a standard soundstage, but I really like it, as to me it makes it feel like a big audition, which is kinda similar to what the episode is. I also absolutely love all the boxes, how they're used as seats for the contestants and for the judges' podiums, and especially how the podiums have the face broken to reveal the light display, which sort of foreshadows the other boxes having props in them! Also the big wall of lights behind Sam is fantastic, the lighting in general is great, and — of course — I love the adorable Henry piggy bank. Seems the crew had a lot of fun making them too, which was nice!
Secondly, I also wanna give credit to the "Game Changer Band" [Scott Passarella, Marnina Schon & Dana Wickens] for providing background music throughout the whole thing, they were great and quite seamless, I sometimes even forgot they were actually doing it there, and I liked that they provided the contestants with some help and even props via the instruments themselves! Also whenever a contestant was eliminated they got to describe how they wanted to die, and those moments were accompanied with fun sound effects that I also loved. They did a great job with sound this episode!
Lastly, I just really love the dynamic between the cast themselves. Having 23 contestants, plus Sam, the three judges, and sometimes even Paul as Grim Repearino, resulted in a lot of fun interactions between everyone. I feel like that's the biggest advantage of having such a big cast, not only does the episode have so much talent on display, but it also leads to people interacting with others I've rarely or never seen them interact with before, which is great!
In the end, this was an incredible finale for the season, I seriously couldn't think of a better way for it to end. To me this whole season really focused on two things: experimenting, and showcasing the amazing cast, and this episode really felt like an embodiment of that. I do have to admit that it's not my favourite of the season, but having an episode where so much is dedicated to just showing off the contestants, and having them control so much of it, feels like such an incredible way to end it.
Massive kudos to the entire cast, including the guests, and all of the crew, not just of this episode, but of the entire season. This could be recency bias, but this might just be my favourite season of the whole show so far, and I admire them all so much for creating something so amazing!
Btw, I have been sort of power ranking the last few episodes, but I won't for this one yet, as I got the idea to write a post ranking all the episodes of the season! That way I can also talk about the first two episodes, Don't Wake Standards & Practices and Roulette 2, which I didn't write reviews for. Stay tuned for that!
