Count The Rice – Game Changer S8 Review

HI FRIEND

A new Game Changer released last week, I did predict what it was, and I really want to talk about it as it is probably my favourite episode ever.

As usual, this post will contain spoilers about the episode, so if you don't want to be spoiled return once you've watched it. I highly suggest not being spoiled, as this is definitely an episode that's better experienced blind. The first quarter of it is even free on YouTube!

The premise of Count The Rice, is that they count rice!

…

Yeah but that's not all. After every round they sing a little song, and the person who guessed the closest says a line, and then the person who guessed the furthest leaves the game. Then, they count the rice again, and repeat!

… Okay but for realsies, the game is much more than that.

The player who leaves the game gets taken backstage to Loser's Island (Room 2) where they get to chill for a bit, but after three people go to Loser's Island they play another game, "Fiddle Me This", where they have to guess a song playing on a violin. Whoever guesses correctly gets a token back to Count The Rice (Room 1), and the two people who don't guess get tokens and have to go to Room 3. In Room 3 they play another game, Pic Pong, where the two contestants go back and forth guessing images until one of them runs out of time, with the winner getting a token back to Room 2, and the loser getting a token to Room 4.

The game keeps going from there. Each time a player goes into a room and wins the game in it they get a token back to the previous room, but if they lose they go deeper into the next room, until eventually they reach Room 8, where two contestants play Carrot In A Box — I mean, Bluff Box, with one of the boxes containing the win condition needed to officially win Count the Rice. Then the winner gets sent back up to Room 7, and from there they have to make their way back to Room 1 by winning every game they previously lost. The winner of the whole game, as the song says, is the first to "do the win condition twice".

I absolutely love this premise of having to lose a bunch of games and then go back and win them, and especially how it does get harder, as the games are easier to lose than to win. According to the behind the scenes they've apparently wanted to do a game like this for years, so I'm glad they got around to it! What makes this episode an all-timer for me, though, is the cast.

This is a packed episode with seven contestants, consisting of Zach Reino, Jiavani, Anna Garcia, Demi Adejuyigbe, Ify Nwadiwe, and two new contestants for the show with Catherine McCafferty and Hannah Pilkes. Hannah has previously been in some other Dropout stuff, including Make Some Noise and Dirty Laundry, and her energy in those definitely fits Game Changer as well and she was hilarious. Catherine McCafferty of Pretty Gay fame has not been in any Dropout stuff before (except a short Smartypants special last month), but she was an absolute delight and easily my favourite of the episode, as she got a hold of what the game was very quickly and had a very nice positive energy throughout it! All seven of them together were a treat, they had so many fun interactions with each other and the hosts, and they were all very energetic in their own ways throughout.

Speaking of hosts, Sam isn't alone in "hosting" this episode, as all of the rooms have other people hosting the games inside of it, most of which are (perhaps on purpose) hosts of other Dropout shows! Jordan Myrick hosts Loser's Island in Room 2 (plus Marina Schon on the violin), Jacquis Neal hosts Pic Pong in Room 3, and Becca Scott hosts Bluff Box in Room 8, plus Grant O'Briens appear in Room 5 and you could count them as co-host of Dirty Laundry… or at least the original.

Once again, the chemistry between the players, Sam, and the rest of the hosts was incredible the whole way through. You could maybe even extend that to literally everybody that appears on the episode, as one of the highlights of it for me was Hannah flirting with one of the bouncers.

Speaking of Sam, as said in the behind the scenes, this was probably the easiest episode ever for him, and I loved the cutaways to him just doing whatever to entertain himself while alone.

There isn't much more I can say about the specifics of the episode, as all of it was just awesome. All of the games were very fun, the cast (all of it) was fantastic, and it had so many hilarious moments that I literally couldn't share them all… well I could, but at that point you might as well just watch the episode.

I was unsure at the time about if Night Shift managed to dethrone Deja Vu as my favourite episode of all time, but as soon as I watched this one, I knew it was my new favourite, above both Night Shift and Deja Vu. I definitely share the sentiment Sam had that this was an all-timer episode, and it was one that I was theorizing on before it came out, so it definitely met my expectations, if not more!

I'm excited to see what more the season has in store!