When the writer’s strike brought the TV and film industries to a grinding halt this summer, a pair of senior producers for The Daily Show found themselves with no platform to mock Fox News and Republicans on a regular basis.
Matt Negrin and Ryan Middleton, along with Middleton’s partner Kate Brankin, bounced around ideas. What if they started a weekly podcast to joke about politics and right-wing media? Better yet, what if it was an Adult Swim-like animated show in which they played aliens commenting on the cable-news signals they’ve been picking up in deep space?
And thus was born Alien Super Show, a YouTube series that debuted in August and is broadcast by MeidasTouch, a liberal media group known primarily for its anti-Trump content. This is the first time the trio has revealed themselves to be behind the program.
ADVERTISEMENT
Since its launch, the show has taken off. The latest episode, which debuted last weekend, features a sitting congressman taking part in the show’s Mystery Science Theater-style antics, at one point being “transformed” into an alien via the show’s “alienator.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) joined Gleep, Spornak, and Zotox—the alien alter-egos of the show’s creators—in making fun of Donald Trump and Moskowitz’s congressional arch-nemesis, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY). Of course, they covered Comer hilariously calling Moskowitz a “smurf” while cursing the Democratic lawmaker out for comparing Comer’s familial repayment plans to the Biden loans.
“Yeah, he’s gonna get a candle at my kid’s Bar Mitzvah,” Moskowitz snarked about Comer at one point, joking that being on the oversight committee “literally feels like being at a Broadway play.”
“I’ve watched some limited Alien Super Show,” the lawmaker also admitted during his appearance. But he’s not alone. Since its premiere, all but one episode of Alien Super Show (or A.S.S. for short) has pulled in over 100,000 views, with several nearing half-a-million. The Moskowitz episode, which premiered just five days ago, has already hit 400,000 views.
Negrin, who has been a senior producer with The Daily Show since 2016, told The Daily Beast that while his industry sat dormant, he and Middleton had an insatiable desire to call out the usual insanity.
“I think it’s because we have ‘Fox News brain’ and we just couldn’t stop watching this stuff even though we didn’t have a show,” Negrin said. “So we were like, ‘What should we do with all of this anger inside?’”Along with Brankin, a beverage brand and product development specialist with improv experience, they decided on the simple premise: “What if we just pretended we were aliens and played clips and made the jokes that we want to make?” as Negrin recalled.
“And so we just, like, did it.”
From the outset, the trio’s intention was to never show their human faces on camera or do a standard video podcast, leading them down the route of an animated series. At the same time, though, they had no experience in animation.
“When we started I was like, the idea of animating something—I don’t know how to do that,” said Middleton, whose tenure with The Daily Show dates back to 2006. “I wondered if there's some kind of webcam capture program and then, sure enough, there was Adobe Character Animator that’s been around for, I don’t know, a decade.”
According to the A.S.S. crew, their process is now so streamlined that it only takes a couple of days to record, edit, and publish a standard 10-minute episode. Each episode’s creation begins with the three hosts freestyling in a Wednesday night Zoom call on whatever topics they want to cover, usually related to MAGA media and GOP politics.
“We actually don’t really script it,” Negrin said. “We pretty much just riff. There might be one or two jokes that we’ve come up with beforehand because I really want to play this clip of Jesse Watters getting really excited about Trump’s mugshots. You might have a written joke for that.”
Middleton and Negrin both cite the influence of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, calling A.S.S. a “marriage” of those cult TV hits with their work on The Daily Show.
Ultimately, as Brankin described it, the show boils down to a simple ethos: “It’s pretty powerful and even cathartic to laugh in the face of those determined to erode democracy and women’s rights.”
While the show is self-produced, the crew has partnered with MeidasTouch to distribute A.S.S. to the liberal network’s massive 1.8 million YouTube subscribers. MeidasTouch founder Ben Meisalas also adds an intro to each Alien Super Show video that airs on his site’s page.
Moskowitz’s guest appearance, meanwhile, wasn’t a one-off for the show. The show plans to bring on more big-name guests: Next episode is set to feature a famed comedian turning into an alien to crack jokes at Fox’s expense.
“We got the comedian Bobcat Goldthwait coming on for the next episode,” Negrin declared. “Also, I think we want to abduct every member of Congress now, in a totally non-threatening way.”
Despite the show’s unabashed liberal politics, Negrin is open to bringing on any prominent conservative willing to chat.
“I actually would love that,” he exclaimed. “I think it'll be so fun because we can finally prove the theory: Are Republicans funny? We could really put it to the test for us and be, like, can we make them funny? That would be our greatest challenge ever.
“So yeah, if there are any Republican members of Congress who want to look funny, please come on Alien Super Show.”
