Earwigs – Game Changer S8 Review

Welp, I got my prediction from the previous episode wrong, but that's okay! This was actually my guess for Episode 8, and I do think that my guess previous prediction will be the next episode, but we'll see.

As usual, this post will contain spoilers for the episode (as well as a mild spoiler for S7Ep5 The Drinking Game), so watch them yourself first if you're interested in doing so. I feel like this is a particularly spoiler-heavy episode, so I think it especially applies here.

It seems we've been getting a lot of mega-sized Game Changer episodes! Count the Rice had seven contestants, Noise Some Makes had ten (fight me), and this new episode has eight! Coincidentally there has only been one other episode with eight contestants, last season's Drinking Game episode, and they're actually a bit similar!

Earwigs is a social deduction game where all eight contestants are wearing earwigs (listening devices) that let Sam give them instructions for a game they all play each round, but some contestants are "imposters" and aren't given any instructions to a game, so they have to figure it out themselves and try to blend in. On later rounds there are also "metagamers", who have a secret prompt they must follow for extra points during a game. They're also all wearing wigs, for funsies!

This cast was incredible, like I've said before I love mega-sized casts, and this one had a very good variety! The episode featured Zach Reino, Ross Bryant, Oscar Montoya, Jess McKenna, Becca Scott, Erika Ishii, Sephie Valentine, and Izzy Roland; the latter four were also in The Drinking Game episode. All of them are always very fun, but since they were given these massive elaborate wigs, the wigs fully changed them and they all essentially became these decadent British-accented aristocratic character for the whole thing. I guess that's the true power of a good wig!

The games themselves were very fun and very well made! You could get some hints towards who the imposters and metagamers were, but nothing explicit enough to make it obvious, and there was a bunch of room for misdirection.

The dance party was an amazing start that gave the episode a lot of energy immediately, but it was also definitely the most surprising outcome for me, and a great example of the misdirection I mentioned earlier (plus it gave us the absolute bangers of Dance Like it's a Bit and You're Mr. Bit Guy and Full Fop Mode!). I also really loved the drawing game, Bop the Mark, and — of course — Frog, Fish, or Crab. Also one of the rounds was a game of Never Have I Ever/Put a Finger Down, and I think the idea of having people not know what the questions are was incredible, and would make a great party game!

I really liked how the reveals happened as well. With the exception of the first round, the imposters were revealed at the start of every round, but the metagamers weren't, which added a very nice layering where we knew about one of the twists but didn't know about the other, which made speculating very fun for me. It's like a condensed version of the Drinking Game twist, which makes sense as repeating it exactly would be a bit too obvious. It maybe isn't as rewatchable, but I did find it more interesting upon first rewatch, and there's still a little bit of rewatchability with the metagamers.

The episode still had a big final twist, where one of the contestants was a super secret supermetagamer, who was given a prompt at the start of the game, and that landed on Becca Scott, who was rewarded one point for every time a contestant voted against Sam. This wasn't the biggest twist ever, in part since it only ended up being a factor at the very end of the game, but Becca played it extremely well, making everyone else vote for Sam in the final round and absolutely nobody suspected her. She's always great and I love her, but I do suspect that Sam chose her for it since he felt bad that she was out first in The Drinking Game; there's no proof of this, but I can feel it.

For some quick final notes on the episode, I absolutely loved the vocal Alex Horne cameo! I suspected it was him as soon as I heard it, and I felt super vindicated by the credits. I also really love this set! I already liked its use in Kangaroo Count, but I feel like this episode uses it even better. I love all the decorations next to the pillars, and the way they're set up makes it feel like a much larger room that fades into an infinite darkness, which is a very cool effect!

In conclusion, I think this is a very good episode! I am not fully sure about if I prefer it to The Drinking Game yet, which is the main thing I've compared it to, but for now I am actually leaning towards liking this one more. As for the season as a whole (since I guess I am stack ranking them now), there are quite a few episodes I prefer more, so it's probably the 5th best for me, which I guess is the bottom half, but this has been such a good season that even the episode I like the least I'd still have somewhat high on my list, but I guess that's just what happens with such a high-quality show!