Here we are at last, the very final match-up of the FAN Podcast Championship! Having offed such greats as WTF, Comedy Bang Bang and The Nerdist, we are left with the final two. The elder statesmen, stalwart and almost signature voice of the US podcasting scene: Jimmy Pardo with Never Not Funny; facing up against the human cipher, the honest ridiculousness and the brutal realities of Greg Behrendt and Dave Anthony’s Walking The Room. Which of these two grand shows will be crowned champion? Find out down below!
Dave Anthony, Greg Behrendt
Highs: Walking the Room’s greatest strength is it’s distinct sense of humanity and distinct personality. The show is pointedly individual, sourcing directly from Behrendt and Anthony and their moods at the time of recording, harnessing these emotions to create something truly special. Their intense relationship grounds the show in the acute details of their lives, which they then gloriously raze, using candour and comic skill to turn this into something brilliant. Together they make a show that feels almost alive, such is it’s visceral reality, granting them this license for brutal hilarity, carving out the niche of difference and exception that is WTR’s hallmark. Never Not Funny’s key strength lies in it’s dedication to comedy, again a direct outpouring of the host. Designed to highlight and harness Pardo’s abilities, the show is his plaything, with the first thirty minutes of the show displaying him at his very best, popping and fizzing with comic elegance between the members of his crew, guest and own life, dazzling with a genuine humour and pinache. It is a much more light-hearted and openly comedic show because of this, furthered by the great majority of guests being his friends and comedic peers, providing a distinct angle a lot of podcasts lack, their drive to retain the show’s atmosphere.
Jimmy Pardo! c/o OmniPop
Lows: But no podcast is perfect, and minor as these problems may be, in a final they are worth noting. The worst that one could say of Walking The Room is that it occasionally drifts into unresolved sadness, becoming a touch melancholy rather than the crazed fiesta it often is. But this is because of the direct humanity that fuels the show and unites Behrendt and Anthony to one another and the listeners. As the filter is so unrestrained on WTR, if they are unhappy, it will undoubtedly come out on the show, not be blithely covered over and ignored. In a sense, their greatest strength can too be their weakness, whole-heartedly cuddling at you when at their giddiest, verging on the painful when at their more desperate, but in honesty, WTR is almost better for this. The same dichotomy retains in NNF. The show always comes out sparky and firing, Pardo crackling with an instant, addictive comedy from the very first second, leaping from pillar to post with an odd but razor sharp personality, making the first half hour of the show an absolute treat. But after this the show can sometimes drop a little, occasionally miring in dull ‘inside comedy’ conversations, an already over-stocked area in podcasting. But this rarely happens when one of the regular guests is present, or when many of the more famous personages are present, as in these cases Pardo is far more comfortable either joking and anecdoting for ninety minutes. It’s actually a testament to just how funny and comedically inventive Pardo is that the occasional downturns are so noticeable.
Look at their happy faces!
Whys: Beyond specific merits and detractions, there are too reasons why these two podcasts ‘deserve’ victory. In this aspect, Walking the Room’s key boon is their fostering of community, and how much of themselves they put into the show. Though their band of listeners is smaller than they deserve, there is a key respect and love between both parties, which works to the benefit of all involved. The duo’s place in the community builds the show to greater heights, while the fans are ever more voracious in return for their charity. WTR works as a marvellous distillation of their friendship also, the two at once being so different and so similar, the pod beautifully magnifies their ‘bromance.’ These aspects work to make the show much more human, revelatory and humorous than it already was, crafting something genuinely brilliant and beautifully personal to Anthony and Behrendt. NNF on the other hand is a podcast stalwart, one of the earliest adopters of the medium, a definer of the shape of podcasting and still one of the most potent voices in the scene. Displaying an almost alarming level of consistency and quality over their many years as a show, they move decisively from one season to the next, rarely dropping their level and really perfecting what they do. Never losing sight of what makes them a great podcast, the spark and fizz remaining week on week, never abandoning the things that turned the show into the very special voice that is now.
And so we come to the end of the FANPodChamp, with only the winner to name. For all it’s emotion, rawness and hilarious brutality, in spite of it’s small audience and it’s lack of respect within the podcast pantheon, my champion is Walking The Room. A triumph by Dave Anthony and Greg Behrendt, a show rendered so human, distinct and different through the magic of their chemistry and personality, it is my FAN Podcast Championship Champion!
You can comiserate with Never Not Funny on iTunes or through @NeverNotFunny on twitter, and celebrate with Walking the Room through that same iTunes, or directly @GregBehrendt and @DaveAnthony. Bye now!