Film Theory: Who ACTUALLY Won Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Welcome back to Whose Theory Is It? Now we are going to play one of my favorite games with scenes from a hat. I'm going to pull a suggestion out of the hat and all of you will have to give a theoretical presentation on the spot. Look, it's okay. Your scene is great theories that we will never do to eliminate food

theory

. How thick can you gargle? What is the thickest substance you can gargle with? Best game

theory

boobs in games? We already made that Tom. How many shirts can stop a bullet? You know very well that we had every intention of doing that episode Amy.

Film theory who won

whose

line

is it? Anyway, who got the most points? Yeah, you know, there are a lot of episodes to watch for one episode. That's not Oh, I like that. I love that guys. We're done here. No, wait. Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory, the show where evidence isn't made up and theories do matter. Today my friends is a monumental day. Today we're finally watching the improv show

whose

line

is

anyway

with a theory I've wanted to make literal for years. It is not a joke. This episode was

actually

one of my white whales, an idea I'd been kicking around since the beginning of Film Theory But you know it never made sense to do it because the amount of work it would take to search for an episode that no one on the Internet would care about or in the one that nobody would care about or that nobody would click on, I mean, that's just the break when you're an online creator.

That being said, when I decided that my time as a

film

theorist was coming to an end, I knew this had to be one of those episodes where I dated you, somehow you know nothing about this absolute classic whose line is that of all modes. an improv comedy show where the host asks comedians to play some games for us Americans. The host was originally drawn by Carey and later followed by Aisha Tyler. While the four comedians are usually Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles and a few rotating guests before that. The show

actually

originated in the United Kingdom, where it aired for a whopping 11 years.

But I never saw it. So maybe one day Tom can do a follow-up episode to that series in the games. Comedians are given characters. to play with or tools to use to make jokes They haven't been told anything until that very moment They have to make up all the jokes on the spot. It's classic improvisation at its finest. The important thing here is that after each game, the host awards points to whoever he wants. Sometimes he deserves it. Sometimes it's not sometimes. It's just a big joke. Sometimes points are given to people who didn't even participate.

Normally, I give Wayne all the points, but some for the way Greg tapped his toes every time. He reminds us that points don't matter. It's literally the catchphrase of the show. Hey, welcome to the who line. Is it

anyway

the game where everything is made up and the points don't matter? But what if they cared about seeing their friends despite this very clear mandate from the show that it's all just for fun and don't think about it too much? You already know how I am. I can't not think too much about this kind of thing. That's not how I operate.

So when someone tells me that points don't matter in a game that has been running in America for the last 26 years. Yes, my theoretical brain gets hard. would not you agree. It forces me to dive into that hard data to verify that fact. So after eight years of wanting to do this episode, I finally sat down and watched all 20 seasons of the show to find out if the points really mattered. Who would be the real one? Whose line is the winner? Anyway, let me tell you loyal theorists despite what they want you to think, Drew Carey is a liar, points matter and at least they matter a lot to Drew and the reason will blow your mind Take your name out of a hat my friends.

Let's get into the game, so I thought the best way to start was to just start watching and then count the points as we go. At the end of each season, we check and see who's ahead and who's lagging, it seems like quite a bit. simple, right? Most of the time Yes, it totally was after most of the games. Drew only gives like a thousand points each to the four comedians on the show. Even if they didn't participate in the game quite easily, but you've already seen the runtime of this. video Of course, not everything will be easy immediately after starting the first season.

I started having problems. I see that comedians aren't the only people who are awarded points after these games. Sometimes random celebrities or people referenced in the game itself can also receive points ranging from the NAACP to the mafia to whoever made Drew Carey's t-shirt. Just for the record, there is no mafia and I would like to give a million points to each of our Italian-American independent business friends. Most of these are one-off jokes and don't affect our totals much at the end of the day. But the biggest beneficiary of these random points has to be the audience themselves.

For example, in episode 15 of season 1, Drew gives one hundred points to all the audience members sitting behind him. I'll give a hundred points to each of the people sitting behind me because they look so happy. Since Drew sits on one side of the stage, he doesn't have the entire audience behind him, but is instead looking at wide shots of the studio in this part. from the audience We can see that there are five rows with nine seats per row plus three additional people sitting in the top row. That gives us 48 people, which means the audience scored 4,800 points total, sure that might seem like a number you can catch up on quickly, but these numbers add up quickly.

For example, later in Season 1, Drew Carey gave an audience member named Dennis 1.5 billion points in one go. I'm just saying don't count the audience out of this race. So are we finally ready to get started? To that nitty-gritty of counting? Well, I don't quite see it, before I got much further into season 1, I ran into another major problem that would end up repeating itself throughout the show. In some cases, both Drew and Aisha can be incredibly lazy with the number of points they get. Gives a good example of this in episode 20 of season 1, Drew says that Colin gets all the points, so he doesn't really give a number here because there isn't really a base of points awarded after each game.

He wasn't entirely sure how to count points in this type of situation. So, to be as fair as possible, if there isn't an exact or easily calculable number of points, I won't count it toward the total. Don't worry. It won't make much difference in the long run. I promise eventually, although this won't come out until after season 1. I wanted to go ahead and say that sometimes physical items or money are also jokingly given away as prizes ranging from a Send a Lipstick to a Christmas Goose. By the way, tonight's winner will receive a lifetime supply of lipstick.

That's right, a tube of lipstick, obviously these are all jokes and while they certainly won't affect the points total and therefore the overall winner of all of this, I will keep a record of everything so we know exactly what points they won everyone and otherwise, at the end of the episode, great, great. And now, with all the methodology out of the way, we can really start counting aside from the strange moments. We just talked about the only other strange, standout point-scoring moment in Season 1 coming in the episode. 6 where Drew awards points to Ryan and Colin based on his shoe size.

Now, as you heard there, it's a bit of a joke that Ryan has huge feet and wears size 15 shoes, that's an easy 15 points for Ryan. However, I couldn't find Colin's shoe size documented anywhere. So to give you the best estimate, we'll give it 12 points, since that's the average shoe size of a man standing 6 feet 1 inch tall at the end of Season 1. Which leaves us with these rankings first. place by several digits is the Audiencia with one thousand five hundred one million eight thousand eight hundred points in a distant second place. We have Wayne Brady with two million four thousand six hundred six points in third place is Colin Mochrie with 1 million twelve thousand seven hundred ninety two points, while Ryan Stiles is completely down not in fourth place but in fifth place with a bird corral five hundred twelve thousand two hundred ninety-five and a half points Yes, believe it or not, but Fourth place actually went to the famous musician Louis Armstrong, who got 1 million points as a joke.

I'll give full points to Louis Armstrong for that. It's a pretty good start for the audience, but can they keep it up? short answer? No. At least not during Season 2. You see, Colin Mochrie actually shoots up to first place with over a billion points, closely followed by Ryan Stiles and newcomer Kathy Greenwood, who also earned a billion points. , all in exactly the same game: 1 billion points. 1 billion points eat my dust, Regis, while the public clings to fourth place and Wayne Brady falls to fifth. So you can see why calculating this is going to be a wild ride.

The numbers go up and down very quickly. every season And I mean, season 2 didn't even have points that made me do a ridiculous amount of calculations. Unlike season 3, in episode 1 of season 3, Drew awards the four competing comedians Colin, Ryan, Wayne, and Kathy Greenwood. I'll give you time hit points for that. That's right, one point a month for the rest of your stinking life. You know where this is going. It's hard to calculate since none of these comedians have died yet, I hope not, they live forever. I love them all, they are national. treasures, but that also means that, in theory, they still get these points to this day, 23 years after that episode first aired before our purpose here.

We can approximate how much they are getting. Although we're not exactly sure of the date the episode was

film

ed, we do know that it first aired on October 12, 2000 using this as our start date, meaning that currently each of these comedians would have earned 12 points annually for the last 23 years Totaling 276 points, but what about the rest of their lives? To get that number I decided to look at the average life expectancy of men and women and then compare it to the ages these comedians were during the time the episode aired, the average life expectancy of men is 73 years old.

Well, the average life expectancy of women. That's 79 years old, which gives Kathy a slight advantage here. But remember that Wayne is actually the youngest of the four comedians here and he is by far at least a decade younger than any of them. So assuming everyone lives to their average life expectancy, Colin would be done. with 360 points, Ryan 384, Kathy Greenwood, with 492 and Wayne Brady with a whopping 540 points. Is this too much work for such a small amount of points? You bet. The only other notable point additions in Season 3 see series regulars Ryan, Colin, and Wayne each getting an extra 2 billion points, including Colin in first place, Ryan in second, and Wayne in fourth.

That's right. Despite scoring just over 26,000 points in Season 3, that billion points from one game keeps Kathy Greenwood on the board in third place for almost the rest of the show, let that be a lesson to you, Wayne Brady . That's why they didn't finally skip record days, although at the beginning of the show they had a commanding lead, the audience has now fallen to fifth place and now with whose line reaching the fourth season, the points become less and less of a source of jokes Here, until season 8, the totals don't really change much. The only really noteworthy fact in these seasons comes from season 5, where Ryan awarded you an extra million points, a million points.

But this barely beats out Colin for first place. Funny enough in season 5 also features Colin receiving what Drew describes as You're a little off in your calculations. Drew, the millionth point actually went to the audience in season 1. Remember that 1.5 billion points were given to audience member Dennis. Regardless of whether this was It's a really funny story. Colin and Ryan were the two contestants who appeared in every episode alongside Drew, so having them side by side makes sense. Well, that would have been the case if it hadn't been for season 8, the last season was introduced. for Drew, who came and ruined everything.

Although most of season 8 features fairly secretive point spending on Drew's part, he is incredibly generous in a single moment at the beginning of season 8, episode 2, Drew laughing at a joke made by recurring actor Chip Estin. and grants you this. That may not seem like much, but that's one with 30 zerosbehind as in one this is more for the sake of the editors than for you zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero You understand the point that would be fair.

This isn't the first time that chip has scored points in the game. In reality, he was at a respectable two billion two million forty-two thousand points before this But that's right I put him far and away in first place as of this moment, so far ahead that there was no way anyone could catch him in the program and from there. That's basically it, season 8 was the last season hosted by Drew Carey. If you just look at the point totals from his career as host of the show, the top five point totals from Drew Carey's tenure fall.

Next, put Estin in first place, Ryan Stiles, second Colin Mochrie, third Kathy Greenwood and fourth and shocking, I think all of us, Wayne Brady. fifth place, but he wasn't finished. I wanted an overall American series winner for this show, so I also reviewed the entire Aisha Tyler series after it was revived on the CW and it actually ended up being exactly the same. Yeah, although the show's revival is incredibly fun. The points just aren't used as much as a joke by Tyler during her performance. So even though she's a whopping 12 seasons old, the needle doesn't really move from where it was in the finale. of Drew Carey's career So, is that what makes Chip Estin the undisputed winner of whose line?

Anyway, a comedian who only appeared in 45 total episodes of the entire series. Well, not so fast, my friends. There's more to this story: a point gain that I politely ignored and left to be revealed until this moment for maximum drama. All the way back in season 2 episode 16, Drew gives guest comedian Greg Proops zero points for the last game he was in, but to really emphasize that points don't matter, he then does this... Similarly , in episode 21 of season 10, Aisha Tyler Awards, Laura and Linda get like a million points, the series' musical collaborators, Laura Hall and Linda Taylor.

So how much is a trillion and a trillion? Well, as far as I could find in my research, we don't actually have a concrete number for that. Millions and millions. They are not real numbers. They have never actually been quantified as a specific numerical value. They are more or less exactly the same. They are slang terms that represent an unfathomably large number, basically something so big that it completely melts our little human brains. But these are points that were given. So how are you going to be able to tell all that? Fortunately, we are in the theoretical channels.

We already found an equally unfathomably large number six years ago in our sister location game Theory. We calculated the number of possible level permutations you can do in Super Mario Maker and that number ended up being the awfully large ten to the power of twelve thousand four hundred and thirty-one, which is a one with over 12,000 zeros behind it, a number that is actually greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe. We call it the Mario complex, pretty unfathomable, right? And it seems like the perfect substitute for millions and millions, but wait for Ryan Collin and Wayne, it gets even crazier when you realize that Drew awarded each of them millions of millions, making the total number of points granted here be from ten to twelve.

The power fourteen hundred and forty seems like this one also needs a name. We can call it the wholineplex. I mean, it's a big enough number that it doesn't really matter, it feels like the perfect fit for the show. And with all that said and done, I can definitely say that the overall winner whose line it is anyway is Ryan Stiles, who ends up with a point total of one trillion, three billion, nineteen million, four hundred and twenty thousand, seven hundred and forty-three, point nine six points plus one whose lineplex as well as one thousand one hundred and forty-seven dollars and eighty-eight cents per can of posing oil and a Christmas goose completing the rest of the top three.

We have Colin Mochrie in second place with one trillion three billion eighteen million four hundred sixty-four thousand eighty-seven point four six points one whose lineplex $1,247 and eighty-eight cents, another bottle of posing oil and another Christmas goose. And finally Wayne Brady occupies third place with five billion eighteen million three hundred forty thousand nine hundred fifty-five point four Six plus one whose lineplex plex is worth points one thousand two hundred and forty-eight dollars and eighty-eight cents a tube of Chapstick a goose of Christmas seven rubles three pierogies and a mail order bride Lots of faults spread around as you can see So basically the show's most recurring contestants and contributors round out the top three as well as the top five and that makes sense, right?

I think so, but as I was looking at these numbers, folks, something stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Now that I sat down and re-watched all of these episodes one more time, I'm now convinced that Drew Carey was lying every single time he said he was. that points didn't matter because they did matter, they mattered a lot and there was no way Ryan Stiles wouldn't end up with the most points simply because he's Drew's favorite contestant on the show. That's how it is. It was manipulated from the beginning Ryan Stiles is a Nepo baby whose line, in case you didn't know, Drew Carey and Ryan Stiles have a well-known friendship outside whose line Is it the universe anyway?

Ryan was a series regular and main character on the Drew Carey show long before it all, whose line began appearing in hundreds of episodes alongside Drew and this favoritism rears its head several times throughout whose line, some examples In episode 27 of season 3, Drew gives Ryan 500 points simply because he can be seen every Wednesday. at 9/8 central on the Drew Carey Show. It doesn't get any clearer than that, he does it another time after giving everyone a thousand points each. Ryan tells Drew that he wants 2000, easily influenced. Drew gives Ryan an extra thousand points before saying "I love you." In episode 3 of season 4, Drew gives Ryan 10 times more points than everyone else to make up for being mean to him.

And in episode 18 of season 2, Drew gives Ryan a thousand points just because he likes what Ryan is wearing, he doesn't give it to Ryan's scene partner Colin. I'll give you a thousand points just for the shoes, honestly, I could go on and on, but at this point, you get the idea that Drew gave more and more points to Ryan just because their friendship rigged the game from the beginning and maybe the most interesting part of all this despite consistently getting more bonus points than all the other comedians Ryan. In fact, he earned noticeably fewer episodes than all other series regulars like Colin and Wayne.

Colin won 211 episodes Wayne won 210 Ryan just won 172 a pretty big difference, but why does the guy with the most points actually win the fewest episodes? Well, because the winner of each episode is the one who replaces Drew as host of the final game of the episode, while the rest have to play one last game of improv alongside Drew. Ryan was named the winner of far fewer episodes because Drew wanted to play with his friend in general, despite the favoritism shown toward Ryan, the fact that the show's top five winners end up being the show's most regular contributors: Ryan, Colin, Wayne . , Laura and Linda just feel good, you know, right now.

It is unclear if the Who Line will continue after its 20th season. And if he does, it probably won't be with the same cast after more than 25 years of acting together, this particular cast feels. Like it's time to move on, which is appropriate and bittersweet. In fact, it's part of the reason he wanted to do this episode. This is an idea I've had since I started Film Theory and as I now pass the torch of these channels to the next generation, I felt it was the right time to finally check This is off the wish list because in the end, of course? who is the real winner?

It's been us It's always been us, the viewers, literal generations of us, as we've come to smile and laugh to the point of tears. These incredibly funny people performing at the top of their game and also the cast and crew of whose line. Thank you. . Thanks for three decades of incredible comedy, it could have all been made up. But it certainly did matter, but hey, that's just a theory, a film theory and a cut.