Secret Base Reviews: Drunk History

Earlier this year, Drunk History was canceled. Derek Waters, the show’s creator, said it wasn’t supposed to end like this, and he’s right.

Drunk History had the perfect format. It had the potential to tell an infinite number of stories. As we’ve been seeing, history is made every day, why not make it Drunk? The show’s concept worked from the start when it was released as a miniseries on Youtube:

Through hilarity and the unpredictability of each episode, Waters aimed to learn and bring stories to life that were not necessarily taught well in school, or at all.

The Format

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the ways of Drunk History, I’ll break it down. Every episode is based around a certain city. Once there, Derek and the crew link up with three friends/comedians to tell three different stories. They get drunk as hell before telling the stories, of course. While they’re relaying their stories the audience gets treated to reenactments of whatever the comedian is talking about. The kicker is that Waters would bring in celebrities to play these characters: Drunk History has featured folks from Jordan Peele to Maya Rudolph.

The funniest bits are actually when the narrator starts messing up and forgetting what they’re about to say. The actors lipsync those parts as well which makes for great TV.

Exploring history isn’t all the show does. They also have a great time showcasing the present-day life of the city they’re spotlighting.

For each city, Waters and the crew would go to a popular bar and interview the people inside, asking them about popular local attractions. Some of the commentaries are actually insightful, while other commentaries just ended up being some wild drunk shit. Waters would also go out of his way to try a popular thing to do in the city. whether it be LARPing, riding in a swamp, or gun twirling. It’s like a fan-made tourism video from an outsider's perspective.

Speaking of tourism videos, I’m going to get sidetracked a bit here. A couple of months ago Jon and I were sharing tourism videos with each other, because some of them can be HILARIOUS. They don’t have anything to do with Drunk History but I feel compelled to share this with you here and now anyway.

Here, for instance, is Cleveland. FUN TIMES IN CLEVELAND TODAY:

There’s also this Memphis one that has me in stitches all the time:

All right, back to the main point of this post.

Drunk History does a better job explaining history than tour guides at most museums. It’s a simple, endless treasure trove, and the number of potential episodes is basically limitless. As someone who tries to make binge-able content, I’m extremely jealous that someone thought of this before I did.

Even though the show got canceled, I hope that somehow, someway it ends up somewhere else. Netflix, Hulu, Youtube. I don’t really care. The good news is that Drunk History episodes are on Hulu and Waters’ work is still on the Comedy Central Youtube channel, where you can search for videos by topic and even the actors themselves.

Anyway, Derek Waters, if you ever need people to tell drunk sports stories in the future, I’ll do it. Let’s work.

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